Having a Hoot in Adelaide

We were all roadweary and quite content to stay in camp on Tuesday morning. It was the smallest and most awkward site we've had to squeeze into, but at least we were protected from any wind. It was finally warm - about 24 degrees - so the pool occupied us (twice) and we managed to get a map of the city before trying to find our way back after zooming out for supplies. Jackson tried his hand at navigating. His verdict? "Stressful!"

One of the sweet shops in Hahndorf

Hahndorf, a small village of distinctly German heritage was our destination on Wednesday. We sailed merrily out of town with our new map and managed to get lost ... the map is a summary of the place, apparently, and many streets are missing! On the bright side, we had a lovely drive through Belair National Park (South Australia's first National Park) and the Adelaide Hills. Our little excursion through the hills lead us back to the M1 so we found Hahndorf in good time for lunch! The main street is lined with mature trees and it is a gorgeous town. Ella was thrilled as we had lunch in a fairy garden and Lachlan was in heaven with lots of sweet and chocolate shops lining the avenue. We spent ages in the German Candlemakers which was stocked with many traditional German Christmas decorations. The beautiful and intricate decorations are all hand-carved and many have mechanisms which spin with the heat from a lighted candle. No batteries required! Marcus and Jackson, with a gleam in their eyes, were reaching for their pocket knives before we got out of the door! If only we had found the German Wood Block shop, the caravan would be full of German-inspired Christmas decorations by now!

The Puppet Shop was another favourite

Detouring slightly, we visited Don Morrison, a luthier, and spent an interesting hour with him in his workshop. He makes resonator guitars, mandolins and ukuleles out of reclaimed Lysaght corrugated iron; aptly named "rustbuckets"! We ordered a custom resonator guitar ... and left before we could order a mandolin and ukulele as well.

727 metres - the summit of Mt Lofty

We drove up to Mt Lofty on the way home, the summit of which gives incredible panoramic views over the port, the city and the surrounding countryside. Memorials to the lives lost in the Ash Wednesday fires in the eighties sat at the bottom of the tallest Fire Tower in Australia. Volunteers staff this tower and hope that early warning of any fire in the area will minimise damage and prevent further deadly bushfires.

Adelaide Botanic Gardens

The possums were using our tent as their personal trampoline early on Thursday morning, so we got a cracking start on the day! The possums were probably surprised at their cracking pace as they left the roof of the tent, propelled by Dave, as they flew through the air and over the fence! We spent the morning organising busking licences and such, then decided to visit the Botanic Gardens. Rain was threatening but we managed to complete a circuit of the lovely gardens before it started. The highlights were the enormous Amazon lilies and the Church Engineering Department was most interested in the historic pre-fab iron and glass exhibition building. The Palm House is an exquisite, painstakingly restored Victorian glasshouse imported from Bremen, Germany in 1875. It is thought to be the only one of its kind still in existence.

Jackson's photo of the Palm House

The rain overnight was bizarre - it dripped and drizzled all night. At least it discouraged our possum friends from their nightly playground visit! Due to terrific good luck, the van was needed all day for servicing so we unloaded it and soon you could not swing a kitten in the caravan, so it was apparent that avoiding the rain in camp was not an option. We donned our coats and waddled off in the rain along the Torrens into the city, passing the zoo and more churches than we would have thought possible in that city area. Possibly the city was thinking the same thing about us! We spent the morning happily exploring the city and buying fresh book supplies. Although Confucius was correct in saying "You cannot open a book without learning something" we could add "You cannot open the caravan without being hit on the head by a book". We will have to send a few more boxes home to make room for Gran and Pap to join us next week! The Museum seemed the ideal place to avoid the rain for another few hours, so we spent an absorbing afternoon there. The Buss was ready late that afternoon and we were all glad of an early night. As we read, we heard Elton John on rotation and getting louder and louder. We were about to ask for the CD to be turned down when we realised it was the Elton John concert just down the road! Everyone in the caravan park had a free show.

We awoke to the sound of the monkeys in the nearby zoo on Saturday morning. They were having a fantastic time by the sounds of it! We had organised to go busking at the Central Markets on Saturday morning, but it was wet and we decided that we couldn't be bothered lugging all our gear for blocks through the city in the rain. The Blunderbuss is too high to park in the underground city parking lots! Instead, we drove out to a shopping centre where we got haircuts so the Hermits look less like the Beatles! After some abortive Christmas shopping - way too difficult with the 4 kids there! - we came back to camp where swimming, games in the park and handball occupied everyone until dark.

The HMS Buffalo

I spent my birthday morning trying to keep up with the delivered cups of tea and reading PG Wodehouse. I haven't read any since I was about 12 and was delighted to rediscover his comic genius. Dave got stuck into them too and soon we were all quoting passages to each other and crying with laughter. Jackson and Marcus were soon on board - that'll spin the reading material out a little further! We drove out to the coast at Glenelg, where we celebrated my birthday on the HMS Buffalo in the Captain's Cabin. Fantastic fun!

Monday morning saw the Hermits in costume again - busking in Rundle Mall. We lugged all our gear from the carpark to the distant mall and found a pitch. We hadn't done any street busking before and it was a lot harder than the markets. However, by our second set we had gathered quite a crowd and really enjoyed the couple of hours. Two Canadian girls loved the music and helped get the crowd going and a local musician invited us to come to the Hillbilly Hoot - a live community radio show. We knew about it and were going to go anyway, but it was nice to be invited!  After taking the instruments back to the car, we had a late lunch and checked out some more bookstores. We were on a high until we trundled back down to the carpark to find that we had a parking ticket! Back at camp, the kids had a swim and we relaxed for a while before heading out to The Hillbilly Hoot. We did a song live to air in front of the live audience of about 70 and were invited to do another. I had to join the "band" for the last two songs as this meant a total of 3 double basses on stage - a record for the Hoot!  The people were really friendly and we had a jam with lots of the musos afterwards. We had an absolutely fabulous time - we hope to return to Adelaide sometime on a Monday night so we can go again!

A rare photo of the Hermits in action - with Dingo, a ring-in!

Onwards on Tuesday - across the border into Victoria and we are looking forward to meeting Gran and Pap in Warrnambool on Wednesday. The Hermits will include 3 generations in our next busking efforts, although Pap doesn't know that yet!

Stay tuned ...