The school year here
in Victoria runs a little differently than it does back in Canada. Instead of having a long summer break along
with a two week break at Christmas and one week in March like we do in Calgary,
here in Victoria (and throughout Australia although different states run their
school breaks at different times) you go to school for between 6-8 weeks before
getting a two week break. Hence, this inevitably
leads to four semesters separated by three two-week breaks and a month long
summer/Christmas vacation in December.
This means that
at the moment I am on holiday and that I have just returned from the first week
of my two-week break. I spent it driving
from Bendigo to Adelaide inland and then back to Bendigo along the Great Ocean
Road. This not only is a beautiful
drive, but it now allows me to claim that I have visited all of Australia’s
capital cities.
Adelaide,
the capital of South Australia is a quaint city, if that word can be used to
describe a city that has a population of over 1 000 000. It has the feeling of a country city but on a
grand scale. The downtown core, which is
a square mile (think area), is surrounded by parkland, running and hiking
trails and
a slow running river. The zoo, while not massive, already houses two pandas (eat your heart out Calgary). Adelaide is also situated right on the Pacific Ocean, which means it has beach access from the southern suburbs and that occasionally a great white shark nips an unknowing swimmer. Not bad for a city designed by someone by the name of Colonel Light way back in 1836.
We
spent three days in Adelaide, strolling, eating, shopping and generally
relaxing. Those three days were also
interspersed with long, lazy drives getting lost in the Adelaide Hills and the
Barossa Valley, which if I may say so, are some of the loveliest places on the
continent to get lost in. From the
dozens of wineries that line the laneways, to the rolling hills reminiscent of
northern Europe, to the small villages and hamlets inhabited by South
Australia’s wealthy or the ancestors of the Germans who first populated this
area so many moons ago, it is hard to take a wrong turn in this part of the
world.
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| A Local on the Great Ocean Road |
The
drive back hugs the southern coastline of Australia and rivals the Pacific
Coast highway from Oregon to California for dramatic vistas. The tourist hot spot is the “12 Apostles”,
which today should probably be called the “9, oops I mean 8, I mean 7
Apostles…”. It turns out the very thing
that has shaped the dramatic coast line and its rocky inhabitants has not
stopped working and as such is now destroying the very things it created in the
first place. Although if this makes you
feel bad, I understand that some millennia from now it will have recreated
something very similar. I guess that is
nature’s answer to Ozymandias, if you wait long enough something even greater,
or newer, or more amazing, or just plain different will take its place.
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| Some of the Apostles |
Next
stop…the Gold Coast.
