This morning, I woke up still feeling a longing to be back in Melbourne. I got myself ready and had a cup of tea with Tricia. We discussed our options for the day and made a plan to go into the city on the O-Bahn; apparently an interesting and unusual form of public transport. I had a look through the brochure for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and picked out a show that I might like to see, with the idea of going to the bookings office when we arrived in the city to see if I could get a ticket.
We hopped into the car and drove to a road near Tea Tree Plaza, where we parked up and went to the bus terminal, waiting only for a couple of minutes before the bus arrived. The bus seemed normal enough to me – it had a driver, tickets, 4 wheels, seats, people; what could be so different about it?! It didn’t take long before I discovered the O-Bahn’s secret; it is a bus that turns into a kind of tram! Apparently it’s the world’s longest and guided busway; the intention is to get the buses off of the roads and onto a designated track running parallel, to avoid the traffic. What happens is that the bus drives onto this kind of rail thing and then the driver doesn’t have to steer or anything, just puts his foot on the accelerator and bombs along until he gets to a terminal, slows down, stops, then carries on until it gets to the city, when it just drives off the rail and back onto the road. Strange indeed!
When we arrived in the city, I was quite impressed with the old architecture of the university buildings along the main road. It looked very British and the buildings are clearly well looked after. We got off the bus and went to the Festival Theatre, to find the box office for the Cabaret Festival, where I bought a ticket for a show tomorrow.
Tricia then took me for a walk around the city; to Victoria Square where I will be going tomorrow for the Centenary event, then to the Metro travel centre to work out all the bus timetables for my journeys tomorrow, then to the shopping area along Rundle Mall where we stopped for a coffee. We went for a wander around the shops, looking in quite a few of them, before Tricia headed home on the bus.
I spent the rest of the arvo wandering the shops and came across the Scout Outdoor Centre – a shop selling outdoorsy stuff downstairs with a small Scout shop upstairs. I popped in there and had a good chat with the lady behind the desk (who was interestingly from Essex!) and she gave me details about some Scout groups near Tricia’s house. I went back along Rundle Mall (it’s a pedestrian only area) and found some rather cool statues of bronze pigs, one of which was rummaging in the bin! There was also a rather funky sculpture-type-thing of two large silver spheres, which looked interesting and made one’s reflection go a funny shape if stood at the wrong angle. From there I hit the shops a bit more – all window shopping – and then managed to get on the correct bus to get home.
I had a chat with Tricia and decided to go to visit one of the Scout groups which was meeting tonight, so quickly looked up the address on the internet and worked out how best to get there. We had a lovely dinner of chops, then I hurriedly got ready and headed off to find the Scout Group in Ridgehaven. This involved a walk to the bus stop, a short bus ride and then a walk down a fairly long road until I came across it.
When I went in, I found a lovely lady called Val, who was the Aussie equivalent to a Group Scout Leader. She welcomed me warmly, saying I was more than welcome to visit the unit. We chatted for a bit and she showed me around the hall, then she noticed the time and thought it was odd that the other Leaders hadn’t arrived. She called one of them up and discovered that the Group had actually gone out on a trip tonight to the city! Val was very apologetic, but I didn’t mind as I had only tried on the off-chance, it had been nice to meet her anyway. She then suggested I went next door to where there was a Guide meeting going on, I was really surprised at this lucky turn of events as it meant it wasn’t a wasted trip after all!
At the Guide meeting, I met Kerry and Claire, the Leaders of this particular group – the Modbury Kangaroo Guides. Their meeting was coming to a close, so I watched as the girls sang some campfire songs and chatted at length with Kerry about all things Girl Guide! At the end of the meeting, she reminded the girls about tomorrow’s Centenary event and then told her about me – we’re hoping to sort something out between our two units when I get back (Note to Brenda, Kirsty etc: if that’s ok with you guys?). After the girls had gone, I spent a little longer chatting to the Leaders about anything and everything, not just Guides, and then Kerry dropped me home.
Tricia and Sam had gone out to a quiz night with their son, Ray, and daughter-in-law, Livvy (I’m guessing it’s short for Olivia!). When I got in they were not back, so I just chilled out in my caravan for several hours, with my own thoughts for company, clicking about online and doing a lot of thinking, before eventually lulling myself to sleep.
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