After three days at sea from Fremantle, we arrived at the Adelaide Cruise Terminal. This is located in Port Adelaide, a thirty-minute drive from the city centre. Fortunately for us, the the cruise ship had laid on a free shuttle to the Rundle Mall, a pedestrian shopping street at the north end of the downtown core.
There were a bunch of local tourism volunteers waiting for our buses when we arrived at the Mall. We had a nice chat with one of them, Sharon, who asked us about our interests and suggested some things to see and a route that would take us to them.
The centre of Adelaide is completely surrounded by a ring of parks, established in 1837 and claimed to be the first purely public parks anywhere in the world.
We walked north from the Mall, between the Festival Centre and Convention Centre and across the River Torrens. This is the famed Adelaide Oval, used for cricket, soccer, and many other sports. Australia is one of the few countries outside North America that calls soccer “soccer”, likely to avoid confusion with Australian Rules Football, which is kind of a big deal over here.
Past the Oval is St Peter’s Anglican Cathedral, which was constructed starting in 1868 after some complicated political wrangling and contractual issues. The Cathedral was consecrated in 1878 and has since been extended.
Since the Cathedral was open, we popped in for a quick visit, and ended up having a very pleasant conversation with a volunteer who told us about the history of the structure. He also noted that it’s extremely well known in the worldwide cricket community, since the two ends of the Adelaide Oval are referred to as the River End and the Cathedral End, the latter referring to St Peter’s. So, the Cathdral gets mentioned half the time the bowler switches ends. The Cathedral houses a number of unit colours and association banners, shown here.
Outside the Cathedral is a memorial gardens, which includes the Ataturk’s Tribute Memorial, reproducing the words spoken by Türkiye’s first President, Kamal Atatürk (who we’ve seen previously on these pages) in 1934 at the first official Australian visit to the Galipoli battlefields. The Galipoli Campaign holds much the same national significance for Australians and New Zealanders as the Battle of Vimy Ridge does for Canadians, marking the beginning of a national consciousness distinct from the British Empire.
The memorial gardens also includes this Health Services Memorial, a subject near and dear to our hearts. Greg served as a reservist in the Canadian Forces Medical Services during high school, starting shortly after the two of us began dating. His brothers Colin and Duane later served in the same unit, as did our daughter Shona – and that’s where Shona met her husband Daniel, also a reserve medic.
Karen spotted these beautiful allium and wanted to get a picture, but realized she’d left her phone on the ship. So here’s a picture of Karen almost taking a picture of a plant.
From the memorial gardens we crossed back over the river and walked along the north end of the city centre, which features a number of public and university buildings. One of them is the State Library of South Australia, which includes the historic and rather stunning Mortlock Chamber, dating from 1884. The lower level of the chamber is given over to museum exhibits, which we spent some time exploring.
We continued our walk from the library towards the botanic gardens. Near the University we passed this lovely square lined with jacaranda trees in full bloom.
We had a very pleasant wander through the Botanic Gardens. One of the greenhouses had a nice display of Victoria Lillies, which are native to Brazil.
We had lunch at the gardens’ cafe, where we bumped into a couple we’d seen around the ship but hadn’t spoken to. We had a nice time chatting with them before they had to head into town to buy another suitcase, as one of the two, from Vancouver, had “bought too much stuff”. Breaking stereotype, it was the man who’d overdone the shopping, not the woman. A bit later in our wander Karen made friends with this ficus.
We saw a number of murals in the area of the Rundle Mall. Some of them were completely abstract, like this one, and quite pretty. The artist is Seb Humphreys, who you can also find on Instagram as @order55.
The Rundle Mall currently features another lovely piece of public art, the Triumphant Elephant by Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali.
And, keeping with the art theme, here’s a selfie in front of The Spheres, which is the official emblem of the Rundle Mall and universally known as “the Mall’s Balls”.
We headed south from the Mall towards the Federal Square market. Along the way we passed this gamer’s cafe. Neither of us are really into gaming, but our kids and many of our friends are, so this one’s for them.
Federal Square was all decked out for Christmas, with one of the biggest goofy-looking Santas we’ve ever seen. The first thought we both had was “wonder where they store that thing in the off season”!
After wandering through Federal Square we headed back up to the Mall and caught the shuttle back to the ship. It was nice to know we only had one sea day left before disembarking in Melbourne.
