ANEWAGEFOR ADELAIDE
South Australia’s historic coastal city buzzes with culture, cuisine — and cricket
St Peter’s Cathedral presides over the manicured lawns of Pennington Gardens, with sturdy Victorian terrace houses on one side and Adelaide’s famous cricket oval ready for action on the other.
It might resemble a classic english scene, for sure, but Adelaide is trying to update its image to fun-loving, with an emphasis on bars, restaurants and culture. Located on Australia’s south coast between Melbourne and Perth, it’s home to 1.3 million people and was founded in 1836 when the first ships arrived at Glenelg — Adelaide’s chief seaside playground today.
those first ships were famously full of free settlers, not convicts, and at one point Adelaide was called the City of Churches due to its diversity of faiths.
Its museums are famous, too. the state Library’s dignified reading room is packed with musty old books and maps that evoke the reign of Queen Victoria.
But now the city’s architecture is changing: shiny new buildings rise dazzlingly on all sides and a brand new central plaza is almost complete.
Its many arts festivals are rivalled only by edinburgh’s, on which the whole enterprise was based. there’s even evidence of edinburgh’s architectural heritage — it’s a city surrounded by parks with a grid of regular streets not so far removed from edinburgh’s
New town. I listen to writers discussing the future of technology among a crowd of dignified Panama-hat sporters; I see a circus show where performers throw themselves around in a way that makes you fear for their safety and sanity; and get picked on for being a ‘Pom’ by a stand-up comic doing a free show on rundle Mall.
One afternoon, I dive into the waters of the Gulf st Vincent — avoiding the venomous blue-ringed octopuses sighted that day — then dry off under the fierce Aussie sun on the wide, white beach in front of the marble monument to that 1836 landing.
A fun way to traverse the city is on the O-Bahn — a unique bus that rides on its own concrete guideway. trams also clatter up and down main streets, including to the picturesque Oval ground, so getting around is easy.
Formula 1 fans will want to take a stroll in King rodney Park, which played host to the Australian Grand Prix from 1985 to 1995. the race has long moved on, but Adelaide is moving at great speed to become a contender in the race to be one of Australia’s most fun-loving — and cultured — cities.