And on to Adelaide …

Well actually we are staying at Glenelg- sort of a better Brighton with a lovely soft sandy beach just a tram ride away from the city.

We enjoyed our drive here from Kangaroo Island through vineyards and fields with kangaroos. We arrived in time to admire the sunset.

Little did we know when I booked that we are here for the World Life-Saving Championships!

There are a lot of athletic scantily-dressed young people swimming, kayaking, bodyboard paddling and generally looking like the biggest possible episode of Baywatch.

This event is biennial and there are 6000 competitors – let’s hope no one gets into trouble in the water outside Adelaide!

We feel very safe. The safest we have ever been in the sea in Australia – and no danger warnings for the usual box jellyfish, tiny blue octopus, sharks or crocodiles either.

Before we went in the sea, however, we took the tram into wide-avenued Adelaide and headed past the spacious University buildings and grand governors residence, past the inevitable Flinders’ statue

to the South Australia Museum.

I was struck by the beautiful purple jacaranda trees.

The museum has an excellent exhibit of aboriginal culture and technology. Here are the many different types of spear throwers:

These are shields, the patterns refer to the Dreamtime stories and the carrier would have matching body paint:

I found it fascinating as it shows how sophisticated they were and in effect shows us how similar our pre iron-age societies must have been as here we can see more than just the stone record we have in Europe. All the wood, resin, artistic, medicine and woven technologies would have left no record and therefore we tend to overlook them when we think of hunter / gatherer or ‘stone-age’ societies.

Among many fascinating and well-presented exhibits are these intricate baskets:

And bundles of sticks for making fire

We also admired the huge 2500kg piece of iron meteorite- which is only half of it!

Afterwards we wandered round the beautiful and established botanical gardens. We preferred the duck wanting our sandwiches rather than seagulls.

There were strange and familiar plants,

and plenty of lorikeets

And a wonderful fig tree avenue planted in 1866

We saw a long-necked turtle (a favourite meal of aboriginals) in the lake

It was hot in the city, so after a pleasant stroll by the river

We headed back to Glenelg for a swim in the cool Southern Ocean

Here’s what seagulls are like if you give a crumb

In the early evening a huge wind blew in and branches fell off the trees where they were sitting! We were glad the storm didn’t come during the life-saving competitions!

We like Adelaide – a fitting finale of another fun road-trip.