Adelaide

Adelaide has the distinction of being the only place in Australia (aside from the Sydney airport) that we visited twice. Both visits were very short, however. The first time was a stop of a few hours on the Indian Pacific train. I spent just enough time there to get mad at a tour bus driver, and then we were gone.

The second visit was also train-related, and also short. We arrived on the Overlander train from Melbourne at about 5pm, and the Ghan, the train we would take to Alice Springs, left the next day at around noon.

Adelaide is not a nightlife city, so that evening, we didn’t do much beyond dinner and laundry. I once paid $15 to have a resort in Hawaii wash a pair of pants, so I was happy to discover that our Adelaide hotel had self-service laundry machines. (I didn’t even mind that the laundry room was so far from both the front desk and our own room that I was given a map to follow.)

The next morning we explored what we could of the city. The hotel was within walking distance of Adelaide’s Central Markets, the largest produce market in the southern hemisphere. It had row after row of stalls selling fresh meat, produce, and other tasties. If you can imagine Seattle’s Pike Place market, only with fewer flying salmon and more kangaroo, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what it was like.

Pipi and I stocked up on bread, cheese, and jam for the upcoming train ride. This photo was taken at a stand where we only window shopped, having been cured of any desire to eat kangaroo in Perth. The array of goods was pretty amazing, and I learned more than I ever wanted to about kangaroo preparation. It was as if Forrest Gump’s army buddy was from Australia: “Kangaroo sausage, kangaroo fillet, kangaroo pepperoni, kangaroo curry, kangaroo stir-fry….and that’s about all you can do with kangaroo.” You could also get crocodile several different ways, and they had a few emu steaks. This was not your typical Bay Area farmer’s market, that’s for sure.