SOSA Day ten

After the travel of the past nine days, today we decided to stay put and take advantage of all that Adelaide has to offer. Sniffing out breakfast we headed down to Central Market, a large covered market offering the best South Australian produce. We found dead a lot of the animals wed seen alive this week - managing to see kangaroo curry, fillet and sausages! Having feasted on delicious coffee and muffins, we picked up some goodies for lunch and headed for the pedalos on the Torrens River.

Hiring a pedalo enables you to cruise along the river the runs through the centre of Adelaide in front of the Adelaide Oval (cricket fans!) Not content for a gentle, scenic paddle we rode straight into the fountain in the middle and came out dripping wet the other side! I was just wringing out my dress when a chunky-looking jogger shuffled past on the bank. I made some quip that he might as well be walking only to realise, on closer inspection, that it was none other than Aussie tennis legend Pat Cash! We beat a hasty retreat to the Adelaide Hills.

The Hills have also suffered fire damage in the last decade but are well on their way to recovery. From the summit of Mt. Lofty you can see all the way back over Adelaide to the sea and pick out some landmarks, like Glenelg the seaside resort and the Botanic gardens, too. We even managed to get a look inside a camper van after peering intently inside one, not realising its owners were behind the darkened glass watching us!

Our final destination was Cleelands Wildlife Park an animal sanctuary dedicated to looking after native animals. We were here for one main reason KOALAS but the place was full of exciting animals. There were red kangaroos as big as Henry and a Tasmanian devil which looked nothing like Taz! Finally we saw the koalas. One was crawling around in his tree which was quite remarkable because koalas sleep for 18 hours a day, eat for 5 and dont have much time for moving about! But the highlight was an up close and personal experience with Belle and Dot. Belle is a three year old female koala that we stroked her fur was like squashy, deep wool and Dot, an 11 year old matron who we got to cuddle! Initially, it was intimidating holding her and her 2 inch talons(!) but she was so cute (and smelled of eucalyptus) that in the end I was quite overexcited!

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Travel & Events

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