I got up early and hit the road. I just continued driving north, checking out towns along the coast with the intention of heading back to Adelaide. I stopped off by a few places but there wasn’t all too much to see. I ended up in Adelaide by the early afternoon.
The heat was stifling in the city. It was 41 degrees Celsius which translates to about 105 degrees Fahrenheit. I checked and it was almost a record high for New York City. So in a way that was pretty cool to experience.
I checked into the hotel and made a beeline for the museums in the city. My original intention was to check out Adelaide for a few days before I headed off into the Outback. But because of the whole COVID mess in Brisbane, I wasn’t able to make it out to explore. So I’d have to settle for one day I suppose.
The South Australia Museum was actually the best museum that I have been to in Australia. They paid real good attention to their Aboriginal exhibit. It was two floors worth of information. And they separated the exhibit out by region as well. So they had different artifacts and information for groups living in the desert as opposed to those living near Cape York.
It was cool to read about some of the Aboriginal groups that I have encountered on my travels in Queensland and South Australia. It helped me understand my experiences with them a bit better.
They also had a really good biodiversity exhibit. Similar to the Queensland Museum, they detailed all the different types of animals you can see in South Australia. The animal life here is just so crazy and different from what I have seen elsewhere. I can look and learn new things about these animals all day.
The geological exhibit was also very cool. They had a really large collection of different rocks and minerals. Opalized fossils and even some meteorites. They dove into such detail at this museum but you can only read so many things until you start to get a little tired and a little bored.
I had a little bit of extra time after I left so I moved over to the Art Gallery of Australia which was a really fun museum. I have to give credit to the curators of this one. The pieces were so interesting and the way it was set up made for a really fun visit. I’ll just share a few pictures here instead of trying to explain it.
At that point, I went back to the hotel and took a nap. I still had the car for the night so I took a look to see if there was anything else I could do close by to town. I stumbled upon Hallett Cove. It’s a short little walk by the beach a 30-minute drive away from the CBD. It’s very famous for its geological formations and I figured I’d check it out.
On the way there I thought there was like a volcano that went off in the distance. There was a huge cloud of smoke towering on the horizon. I found out very quickly that it was a forest fire burning in the hills outside of Adelaide. It didn’t affect me in the slightest but it was a bit concerning to see.
The walk itself was quite enjoyable. I felt like I accomplished seeing a bit of Adelaide before I left. It was still very hot even though it was 7 o’clock in the evening. So after the walk I stripped down and took another swim. So refreshing.
When I woke up in the morning the sky and the air were all smokey from the forest fire. It had rained overnight and it put out the fire. Which was great. But it created an air quality problem. It’s kind of like when you have a campfire and you throw water on it. It puts it out but it smolders and gets very smokey.
I was concerned there were going to be problems with the flight. Maybe it wouldn’t take off because of visibility problems. But everything went off without a hitch. Off to Sydney.