The Fringe

March in Adelaide is known as Mad-March (which has nothing to do with basketball and should not to be confused with March Madness). It just happens that in March, there are lots of Festivals and other big events on in Adelaide, including the Adelaide Festival, the Adelaide Cup (horse race and public holiday – no joke), Clipsal 500 (like NASCAR, but not on a race track), Womadelaide (music festival), and the Adelaide Fringe Festival. (Adelaide residents complain that there is too much going on for the first three months of the year, and then complain that nothing happens in Adelaide for the rest of the year.)

We went to two events: Be Yourself, a modern dance performance by the Australian Dance Troupe, and Tripod vs. The Dragon, a musical comedy. We thoroughly enjoyed both performances, which came as sort of surprise since we’re not all that into contemporary dance, and we weren’t sure whether we would get the Australian sense of humor. Turns out, we enjoyed the comedy more than our Australian friends who recommended it. The dance performance was unlike anything we’d ever seen before, and was essentially a dance of all parts of your body, including organs, muscles, and emotions. It was an intense experience, but very well done.

The dance performance was part of the Adelaide Festival, and the comedy was part of the Fringe Festival. They call it the Fringe Festival because a lot of the performances are pretty out there—definitely left of center, and not at all standard performances.

The name of the festival is fitting, but I think the real fringe in Australia is the small, slightly green, mostly-habitable areas on the edge of the continent. I’m reading this book right now called Country by Tim Flannery, and I highly recommend it. In the book, he and his friend decide to ride their little motorbikes around the country. The trip sounds seriously rugged, but he mentions how easy it is in Australia to slip out of the green, habitable parts of the country and into the red, hot, dry, sun and wind-blasted parts of the interior.


Our neighbors leant us a documentary of Lake Eyre, which really isn’t a lake at all most of the time. However, once about every 40 years or so, when it rains really heavily in Queensland, a massive flood slowly creeps down across the Outback, eventually leading to Lake Eyre, which drains about 1/6th of the continent. In its wake, the flood turns the dessert green, and fish, amphibians, and birds magically appear to eat, breed, and hibernate for decades until the next flood comes. It is truly an incredible thing to try and grasp—some of these eggs just sit in dirt waiting for up to 40 years for the water to come. How does something like that evolve? How do the birds know that the water is there in the middle of the continent? How can the frogs lie dormant for years, and then suddenly spring to life and catch insects? How do little country towns survive years of dry dirt and dust, and then suddenly welcome hoards of people who follow the flood waters to Lake Eyre?

We haven’t been to the Outback yet, but we have to go. You can read about it, but I don’t think we’ll really have a good sense for it until we actually experience it. But, even for those of you who might never get to the Outback, I highly recommend Tim Flannery’s books (I’m only part way through Country, but I’ve heard good things about his other books as well.) I also recommend the DVD on Lake Eyre, though I’m not sure if it’s available outside of Australia. Since I’m on a recommending roll, I also think the BBC should do another round of Planet Earth DVDs and include a section on the Australian Outback—of course it may be decades before they could film anything since there was just a flood in 2009. I guess this blog is mostly about how amazing it is that life has adapted to—and even thrives—in some of the world’s harshest environments. I get a little nervous even thinking about the Outback. There’s this saying that if you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space. I think in Australia, if you’re not living on the edge, you either don’t need fresh water to survive (some kangaroos can survive on salt water), you’re able to wait several decades before hatching from your egg (like the fish and amphibians), you live under ground (people really do in Coober Pedy), or you can cover yourself in a ball of slime and patiently await the rain (like some frogs do). Basically, if you’re not living on the edge in Australia, you are one hardy soul.

Destination: Melbourne

Last week we headed for Melbourne (that's 'mel-bin'), the capital of Victoria and the second-largest city in Australia. Melbourne and Sydney have a fairly serious rivalry going, a bit like Boston and New York. Except that they compete by trying to outdo the other in areas where the other isn't particularly interested. You can argue all day about Red Sox vs. Yankees, but where Melbourne is the capital of footy, Sydney is the heart of rugby. Sydney is the major banking centre, while Melbourne is considered the cultural capital of Australia. So the whole competition is a bit silly. Imagine if New York was full of soccer fans and Boston was football-crazy--how do you make any sort of comparison? I suppose they are a bit like two siblings that do different activities, but feel like trying to compete anyway.

Anyway, we were headed to Melbourne for a Fulbright dinner and some related activities that Chelsea was part of. We felt a bit silly going all that way for just a day or two, so we decided to add a little more to the trip. On the way down, we drove with Chris (an Australian Fulbrighter from a couple of years ago) and his partner Trudie. The first afternoon we simply ate up the relatively flat distance between Adelaide and the Wimmera. The next morning, however, we found ourselves in the Grampians. The Grampians (Gariwerd to the local Aboriginal peoples; 'Grampians' comes from the range of the same name in Scotland) are a fold-thrust belt comprised primarily of Cambrian-Devonian sediments that were deformed in the late Paleozoic during the assembly of Pangaea. Today, many of the ridges in the Grampians are topped by dipping sandstone units that stretch off for kilometers. The Grampians catch whatever moisture comes in from the ocean, so they are relatively green and the area is dotted with waterfalls.

Descending from the Grampians, we headed towards Melbourne, detouring to drive through Ballarat. Ballarat was the center of the Victorian gold rush in the late 1800s, but today it is a moderately-sized town with lovely architecture that sprung from the prosperity of that period. Our major stop here was at a lake. This lake has historically varied in its water level, but last week it consisted of grass. It is interesting to observe the choices that Australia (and Victoria) is making with regards to water. Faced with distributing limited water between agriculture, cities, recreation, and long-term water security (storage and other measures to ensure there is at least some available water for coming years, even in a drought), the Australians have decided that recreation is less of a priority than the other uses. Sounds fairly sensible, but in the American West the typical decision is to sacrifice long-term water supply for the other three. I can't see that one working out very well for us.



Before long, we found ourselves joining the traffic of Melbourne. Experiencing what I would consider to be fairly normal big-city traffic made us extremely happy to be living in Adelaide (where traffic is a relatively minor issue) without a car. From there, Chelsea was off to a fancy dinner in the Great Hall at the National Gallery of Victoria and I was dropped at the house of our hosts in Melbourne, the Dales...

This blog is brought to you by the number 4 and letter ‘Haych’

At some point in my educational past, I remember learning about dying languages. People would talk about how sad it was to lose a language, because every language has words or phrases that describe unique concepts or ideas. When the language dies, these ideas or concepts die in a way as well, because there is no longer a word that represents them any more.

I’m not sure that I’ve identified words in Australian English that describe unique concepts, but I do think there are certain phrases that just capture a meaning so well here, it would be sad if they were at some point lost.

One of my favorite sayings here is ‘pear-shaped’ and you could use it in the following sentence: “When things go pear-shaped, don’t blame me, I didn’t have anything to do with it.” Essentially, if things go pear-shaped it means that things have gone all wrong, except I think it sounds so much better to say ‘pear-shaped’ than ‘all wrong’.

Australians also love to give everything a nick-name. You’ll probably remember Acca Dacca for AC/DC, but we’ve only just begun to realize all of the various nick-names here. Ambo is short for ambulance and arvo for afternoon. In addition to shortening words, they love to put everything in the diminutive. In fact, Australia is definitely Chile’s English-speaking counterpart. In Chile, they put ‘ito’ or ‘ita’ onto the end of every word they possibly can. My favorite, which took me quite a while to figure out, was ‘aguita’, pronounced ‘aweeta’, which is agua with an ita on the end—essentially little water. So, you would say, “Querias aguita?” if you wanted to ask if someone they would like some water.

Australia is very similar, adding ‘ies’ to the end of all sorts of words. For example, sunnies are sunglasses; swimmies are swimsuits; nappies are diapers; and my favorite, pokies are slot machines (perhaps short for poker, or something like that?).

Some of the other day-to-day differences that I really enjoy include “How ya going?” instead of “How are you?” or “What’s up?”; “ta” instead of “thanks”; “heaps good” which I think may roughly be the equivalent of “wicked good”; and the weather report! We recently heard this for the weather, “A few spots tomorrow, and then it will be fining right up,” which means, “A few light showers tomorrow morning turning to clear skies later in the day.” There are of course many other words that are different. For instance, today, as we were driving, I realized that the car was driving on sealed bitumen instead of paved asphalt. Red peppers are capsicums; backpacking is bushwalking; Rice Krispies are Rice Bubbles (I wonder if they still go Snap, Crackle, Pop?!); and Burger King is Hungry Jacks (Do you think they also give out golden crowns to kids with their meals?)

My favorite difference of all, however, has to be the letter haych. That’s this letter: ‘H’. They just put a hard ‘h’ on the front instead of saying it as if it started with an ‘a’. When I first got here, I was having trouble getting an ID card to access my building. The woman who was helping me told me she would call “Haych R”. Then, we were talking about banks, and someone mentioned Haych SBC. And, there’s Haych 2 Oh for drinking. When Dave spells his last name, he’s started saying Haych at the end—except he must say it funny, because people usually give him a strange look when he says it. I’ve started saying words that begin with the letter ‘h’ as though there were an extra guttural h sound at the beginning, like, “Hhhhhi there, hhhhoney.” Australians do not pronounce words like this, but for me, it was somehow the logical extension of pronouncing the letter ‘h’ as ‘haych’. Good thing Dave is so tolerant, because even though he doesn’t find it that funny, I think it’s hhhhilarious.

I don’t know why I love all of these differences, but I really do. I know I felt the same way when I was in Chile and also England. It’s interesting because I’m sure there are things we say in the US that other people really like, but I can’t appreciate in the same way. I guess I can just be grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to hear other languages and dialects, and to have the chance to really listen to them and appreciate them. And, between the diminutive, pokies, and the letter ‘haych’, I really feel like the Australian dialect was designed just for me. Now, if only I can figure out how to say the word ‘so’ with three syllables, the way some people do here. Succeeding at that will be like finally rolling my ‘r’ in Spanish—I can’t wait for the day when I can say it just right. It will be so-o-o good.

The Barossa

This weekend my friend from college, Gabe Nelson, came for a trip up to the wine country of the Barossa Valley and the surrounds. It turned out to be a great adventure. After navigating the often-unreliable bus system to the airport to meet Gabe, we headed to the Central Market for some dumplings. Saturday morning, we had loaded up the rental car and headed into the Hills.

We actually had a fair bit of rain during the night, and it was still quite cloudy in the morning. However, as we climbed up into the hills toward Mt. Lofty, the weather “fined up,” as the Aussie weather forecasters say. I hadn’t seen Gabe since before he came to Australia almost two years ago, so it was great to hang out, chat, and laugh as we enjoyed the view over Adelaide and drove on through the hills.

GPS navigation has definitely come a long way, but we had a few issues with ours. Probably I should say that I had a standing disagreement with it. Either it tried to send us entirely on highways, or it directed us to take dirt roads that dead-ended in the middle of nowhere. Despite some skepticism from the driver, using the gazetteer worked quite well. And given the low clearance and squeaky shocks of the Toyota rental car, I’m glad that it did.

After following the road up and down and through about a dozen name changes (including Cork Screw Road), we arrived in the Barossa Valley, or typically just “the Barossa.” The Barossa has been full of vineyards since the 19th century and is the best known of the wine regions around Adelaide, standing well above the Clare Valley and McLaren Vale in notoriety (particularly outside of Australia). A favorite escape of Adelaideans and tourists alike is to head out to the Barossa for wine tasting and great food. We started our pursuit of these twin goals with lunch at Lyndoch Bakery, followed by our first call at a winery—Burge Family Winemakers. If you ever find yourself in the Barossa, definitely focus on the small wineries. You’ll find out a great deal more about the grapes, the people who own the vineyard and make the wine (almost always the same people in these small vineyards), and the wines themselves from someone who is happy to talk to you one-on-one and is probably closely connected to the winemaking. The larger wineries are much more perfunctory with a more impersonal atmosphere—have a taste and either buy some or go on your way. If you were going out for Italian food, would you go to a local trattoria run by a Milanese family or would you go to the Olive Garden? It isn’t that the larger wineries don’t produce some excellent wines, but you can usually buy them in the grocery store (at least here in Adelaide). And in our brief experience this weekend, the quality and taste of the wines from the smaller wineries was almost always much higher (which certainly could have had a lot to do with the atmosphere).

Back to the Burge Family, who have one of these small wineries. In the wine community there is a fair bit of concern about the demise of many regional grapes due to the expansion of about a dozen varieties that you have undoubtedly heard of and probably dominate the wine shelf in your local grocery store. The Barossa is one area that bucks this trend to at least some extent. One of the wines that the Burge Family is known for is their Semillon, a white grape that once was well known. Today I would be surprised if most of you reading this have ever heard of it—I certainly hadn’t before coming to the Barossa. The Semillon was a lovely wine to taste, as was their Grenache, another grape that falls outside of the widely produced varieties. Grenache vines are what is known as dry-grown, thriving on normal rainfall and thus requiring little or no irrigation. Over their long lives Grenache vines sink roots 10 to 20 meters into the ground to take advantage of subsurface groundwater. This makes them ideal for Australia, although the vines take longer than typical to mature and begin producing grapes that can be used for wine. The flip side to this waiting period is that the vines are incredibly long-lived and the grapes actually improve with age—several Grenaches that we tasted this weekend were from 70 and 80 year-old vines. Chelsea liked this wine most because it doesn’t require irrigation water to survive, which means grapes can grow and rivers can flow, all at the same time.

After a mistaken stop at a larger winery that will remain anonymous, we found Bethany Wines, situated in an old quarry on a back road. The woman at the cellar door (the front tasting part of a winery) was terribly friendly, and we found ourselves talking about the Barossa, Adelaide, the Tour Down Under (which in some years has come right in front of Bethany), and our purposes for being in Australia. Part of me wanted to just hang out there for the rest of the afternoon, but eventually we decided it was time to move on. Before we left, however, we did taste what would typically be an $85 bottle of wine—open special for that weekend. Having never tasted wine that expensive, I can say that I do now understand why a person will pay that much for a bottle. No plans to rush out and start doing so, but certainly a very, very enjoyable wine.

Following the roads to the northwest, we came to the Seppeltsfield Winery, a Barossa landmark. I have maligned the larger wineries of the Barossa in this post, so it bears saying that they are not as terrible as I make them out to be. They do produce the majority of the wine that comes out of the Barossa, which includes nearly all of the Barossa vintage that can be bought outside of the valley. And some of their wines are very good. It’s just that we weren’t here for wine that could be bought elsewhere in Australia—that would defeat the purpose. But back to Seppeltsfield, which was founded by the Seppelts family in the 19th century. They grew hundreds of acres of vines prospered for decades and were bought by a larger wine producer, eventually passing by the late 20th century to the Fosters company, which owns Penfolds and a number of other large Australian wine labels. In the last ten years, however, the winery has actually been bought back by the Seppelts Family—one of the few times that you will hear of that happening. We didn’t actually taste their wine, but we did stop at the family mausoleum up the road. Topping a hill with a lovely view and flanked by palm trees, the Roman-styled mausoleum is a bit of an oddity in the landscape, but reading the list of members of the Seppelts family that are buried there, you get a feel for just how long they have been making wine in the Barossa.

On our way back towards the main towns of Tanunda and Nuriootpa, we stopped at Heritage Winery on a whim. You couldn’t have picked a sharper contrast to Seppeltsfield. The proprietor of the cellar door was watering the plants when we arrived. While we played with the puppy, she went into her house and got the key to the cellar door. The vines, planted in the 70s or 80s by a local wine enthusiast, stretched out behind the house and the cellar door. The wines were not my favorite of the day, but they were far better than many others we had tried, and the personal experience was unbeatable.

We finished the touring part of our day with a stop at Maggie Beer’s farm. Maggie Beer, if you haven’t heard of her, is somewhat of a South Australian icon. About the time we arrived in Adelaide, she was voted the Senior Australian of the Year, which might be a bit like getting a Presidential Medal of Freedom in the US. Maggie and her husband Colin started raising and selling pheasants in the 1970s, and she became quite good at cooking them and making various dishes (particularly paté, for which she is famous) involving pheasants. One thing led to another and today Maggie markets a wide range of gourmet foods including patés, ice creams, savory jams, dukkahs, and more. And she teaches cooking classes in her spare time—we saw her through a glass door, busy at her work. She looks a bit like your favorite aunt, bustling from one thing to another, quick to smile and laugh. And we found her burnt fig ice cream to be just the thing after a long day and perhaps one too many wine tastings. We sat on the deck overlooking the pond, chatting and eating, as a slight sprinkle passed through.

From Maggie Beer’s, we headed for our lodgings in Springton. Springton is a bit off the beaten track in the Barossa—in fact, it’s not really in the Barossa at all, but in Eden Valley, the adjacent vale to the east. After arriving and checking in with the friendly proprietors we entered ‘The Stables,’ which were once precisely that. They had been re-done in slightly unusual but quite enjoyable shades of red and purple, with a smattering of the corrugated sheet metal that is ubiquitous in rural Australia. We made use of the well-stocked kitchen to cook up some kangaroo steaks, potatoes, and sautéed vegetables for dinner, which turned out excellently. The advice we received on cooking ‘roo is right on—hot and fast. After dinner, some people were hankering for something sweet, so we headed next door to Buck’s Bistro, which is run by the same couple as the Stables. After a bit of a chat, we had some excellent dessert that Chelsea was particularly excited about (see the previous post). After a walk to look at the stars and the Herbig Tree, we eventually drifted off toward bed.

In the morning, it was up and over to Buck’s for a tasty English breakfast (included with the room). After some back-and-forth, we were convinced that no Australian experience would be complete without Vegemite. Although the kitchen was somehow out of it that morning, the cook popped next door and came back with some of the yeasty stuff, adored by some and feared by others. In retrospect, it is quite salty but doesn’t have an overwhelming taste otherwise. I found it quite tasty, and ended up having about four slices of toast with it—I can definitely see how a Vegemite sandwich would be perfect for long bike rides or Rogaining.

We capped off our Barossa visit with a hike in Kaiser Stuhl Conservation Park. The trail rambles up and down over the landscape of the hills that separate the Barossa from Eden Valley. We saw kangaroos and wallabies, not to mention the largest stand of pines we have yet encountered in Australia. Part-way through the hike, it turned out that the return part of the loop was closed, so we hopped the fence and wandered across fields to make our way back. It turned out to be a nice way to finish, with the fields stretching away in front of us, the occasional trees and rock outcroppings dotting the landscape.

On the way home we stopped in the German town of Hahndorf, nestled in the Adelaide Hills. Hahndorf advertises itself as the ‘oldest German town in Australia,’ and it has a well-deserved reputation for its sausage. It also has a fair bit of tourist kitsch, but we found some enjoyable German food and (I say this somewhat sheepishly) an amazing gingerbread latte. For all that I have said against coffee in my life, Australia has forced me to eat my words. Don’t get me wrong, I will never be a ‘cup-a-day’ sort of fellow, but the coffee here is really quite nice.

As I write this, the rain is pelting down on the roof of our flat. Not so good for getting out and about, but great for the vines. With this much water from the sky, 2010 should be a good vintage for the Barossa winemakers.

Guns, Germans and Delicious Baked Goods...finally!

I was trying to think of something that I wanted to write about and also sounded like ‘steel’ so that the title of this blog could be really clever, but I couldn’t. It was taking too much time, and I just wanted to write the blog. And, the most notable thing that I really wanted to share is my first delicious dessert experience since we arrived. So that’s how I arrived at the current title.

I recently came to the conclusion that the thing I will miss most during our year over here is yummy baked goods. I don’t know what it is, but up until this weekend, I hadn’t had a single good baked dessert here. The blueberry muffin I tried tasted like it had been made with the whitest flour possible, as if the flour had been bleached four times over. The cookies are really hard here—perhaps they’re meant to be dunked in hot drinks, but they just don’t taste like cookies to me. And, generally, I’ve felt like the desserts have been overly sweet in a sort of sickening way.

You’re probably wondering why I don’t just bake some desserts myself. I would, except we don’t have an oven in our granny flat. We have invited ourselves over twice to Brad and Laila’s house to make them dinner and bake in their oven, but I think they’re on to us already. Good thing they’ve liked everything we’ve made so far.

It’s probably good for me that I don’t like all these desserts here, but I was sooo happy to finally have two delicious desserts this past weekend (we shared them -- I didn't eat two by myself). As you’ll read in the next blog, we stayed in a great place in Springton that was self-catering. We made a great dinner of kangaroo steaks and veggies, and then headed over to the restaurant to seek out some dessert. I’m so glad we did because we had the most amazing passionfruit cheesecake and hazelnut chocolate crumb cake ever. Yumm, it was good. So good I just had to write about it.

And, now onto perhaps more interesting things. The first is guns. There were two instances this weekend when I realized how different it is to live in a country where no one has a gun. The first instance was when we were hiking in Kaiser Stuhl Conservation Park. We got close to the end of our hike, and found that the trail back had been closed. Our options were either to go all the way back or to walk through what seemed to be private land just along the outside of the Conservation area. We decided to walk through the private land, but I was a little bit nervous the whole time. This was probably enhanced by the eerie metallic squeaking sound that we would occasionally here coming from somewhere on the private property (we think it was meant to scare birds away from the vineyards, but we can’t say for sure).

As we were walking, Gabe (Dave's friend from college who came to visit this past weekend) happened to mention that he felt so much safer doing these sorts of things knowing that no one has any guns in this country. It’s strange, but once he said that, I did feel more at ease. I’m certainly not condoning trespassing—I don’t like doing it and I don’t think it’s a great option, but I do think it’s a good thing that you can’t get shot because you end up having to walk on someone else’s property.

The other instance was when we were talking about kangaroos and eating them. We agreed that it was good to eat kangaroo for many reasons—they’re native animals that don’t release methane and are good for you. I was saying that I didn’t understand why you have to be a professional hunter in order to hunt kangaroos, and Gabe said, “It’s because no one has any guns.” Aha. I then asked if anyone could hunt with a bow. I'm not sure what the status is on bow hunting here, but it was interesting for me because in this situation, I felt like it would be good if more people hunted kangaroos for food. It’s certainly a more sustainable choice than a lot of other meats.

The two situations certainly gave me something to think about. On a related note, to get rid of all the guns, the Australian Government initiated a gun buyback, which is what they are now using to acquire water rights for environmental flows in the River Murray (the subject of my research here). In the first gun buyback, the Government put a moratorium on prosecution for owning any illegal weapons that were handed in as part of the buyback. They collected and destroyed some 660,000 weapons. In the second buyback, they set up buyback centers at local gun clubs, and they paid people between $500 and $2000 for handguns. Could you imagine the NRA participating in a gun buyback program?

The final part of the blog is about Germans, but it’s not really about Germans. It’s about Hahndorf, which is a cute little German town in the Adelaide Hills with excellent German food and fun shops. Actually, this part of the blog isn’t really about Hahndorf, either, though we did go to Hahndorf this past weekend. It’s just a story that makes me smile, and that I wanted to share.

One day, I was riding the Adelaide tram. A woman, probably in her 50s, got on and immediately started talking to the ticket seller. It definitely seemed like they knew each other, and I assumed she must be a regular rider. I was standing sort of between them, and so heard the whole conversation, and eventually became involved in it. The woman asked the ticket seller if he wanted to see the special things she had purchased for Chris in Hahndorf. He agreed and she showed him a sign that said, “Parking for Chris Only”—the kind of sign that a young child might put up on a bedroom door. And, she had purchased a very large chocolate bar—the kind that a parent should not allow their child to eat all in one sitting. I thought it was sweet that she had purchased these cute things for her son.

The two kept talking and the woman said to the ticket seller that she and Chris had shared some special moments in the past. “That’s quite cute,” I thought to myself, “she really enjoys spending time with her son”. Then she said that she knew things would work out as they should, but she would really like for her and Chris to be more than friends. “Hmm…” I thought, with the slightest lift of my eyebrows, “I sure hope Chris is not her son”.

I figured out who Chris was when the ticket seller jokingly asked why the woman hadn't brought him any presents, and then promised not to ruin the surprise for Chris when he saw him later that day. Turns out, Chris is another ticket seller on the tram. The woman has an old-fashioned crush on Chris, carries around a picture of him in her wallet, and thinks he is sooo handsome. She was on her way home to drop some things off and clean up a bit before she got back on the train to see Chris while he was on duty.

I ended up chatting with the woman for the rest of my time on the tram (she told me she loved how Americans sounded, which made me feel good). She was so friendly, and I wished her the best of luck with Chris. I’m not sure what he thought of the parking sign, but certainly we should all be flattered to have someone think so highly of us.

I suppose that about covers it for now. I’ve been thinking through some other ideas for blogs, and am excited to write them soon. But for now, it’s time to get some sleep before another big day.

Acca Dacca rocks Adelaide

Walking around Adelaide today, there seemed to be a disproportionate number of people wearing AC/DC shirts, maybe about 1 in every 10. This evening on the way to ultimate practice, it seemed that the number had grown to at least 3 out of 5 clad in black. And as we made our way to North Adelaide, the numbers grew to the point that we were almost surrounded. Vintage 70s and 80s AC/DC shirts mixed with brand new shirts from their current tour that were probably purchased yesterday. Some people sported original “Back in Black” tour garb. If you didn’t have an AC/DC shirt, a black shirt was the next best thing, along with red blinking devil horns and very large tattoos.

Apparently we were the ONLY people in the greater Adelaide area that didn’t know that Acca Dacca was playing the Adelaide Oval tonight. We had Frisbee training (that’s practice) tonight in North Adelaide—close enough to the Adelaide Oval that we could hear the music. Heading back to the train station, we realized that lots of people were sitting on the grass outside of the Oval listening to the music. It was 8:30, so we figured AC/DC wouldn’t be on for at least half hour, but just as we got close, lights started flashing and we heard loud booming sounds.

Sure enough Acca Dacca had come to the stage. We stayed to listen for a few songs, and then were going to head to the train, which was leaving at 8:55. But just then, Back in Black started. So, we listened to that, and to make a long story short, we missed our 8:55 train, went back out to the grassy hillside along the River Torrens, and listened for nearly another hour to the concert. I reckon it was the best place to hear the concert. We had the lovely river and colorful fountain right in front of us, the music wasn’t too loud, and there were all sorts of people, including families, sitting and listening next to us. They were all so civilized—not the kind of crowd you would expect to be at an AC/DC concert—which makes us think that perhaps AC/DC is a bit more popular here than in the US. In fact, we saw a group of fairly inebriated folks pick up their beer cans in the box and then place the box right next to a trash can.

The sheer variety of people out tonight highlights an interesting difference between Aussie and American culture. I call it the ‘cable TV effect.’ In the US, there is a channel for everything, so you can get your fix of home repair, bull riding, Dr. Who, 1940s movies, or whatever. You can get your news and commentary in whatever ideological slant you want. The result is a culture that has a lot less in common than the Aussies. Here, nearly everyone watches the same few national news channels and is at least aware of the major Australian music groups, particularly someone as big as AC/DC. As a result, everyone has a common cultural ground that makes society a lot easier to move around in and discussions about political and social issues a lot less polarized (compared to, say, the United States). People with a certain amount of shared information are much more likely to understand people with different opinions. Perhaps we have something to learn from the Aussies on this one.

Anyways, the concert was excellent. We heard Hells Bells, You Shook Me All Night Long, and TNT Dynamite, which we didn’t realize was an AC/DC song. It makes sense though, since we hear it all the time in our local grocery store. And, they actually sounded pretty good, which is impressive considering their singing style and their age.

Tonight was actually the second night in a row that we’ve just missed our train, which means waiting for an hour, but both nights, we’ve managed to come up with some pretty decent ways to entertain ourselves while we wait. Last night, we were on our bikes. Just missing the train, we decided to ride back into the city to look at the Northern Lights. Adelaide lights up several of the older buildings on North Terrace, and they’re actually quite beautiful to look at. We’ll take some pictures soon and post them.

It’s definitely time for bed, but we were just so pumped up after listening to Acca Dacca with the rest of Adelaide, that we had to post this tonight. You should all go rock out to Acca Dacca as soon as you can!

Weekend Warriors

Waking up this morning, my legs were an immediate reminder of our action packed weekend. We went with our neighbors, Liz and Ryan, down to Victor Harbor on Saturday for a 4 hour Rogaine. For those of you who haven’t heard of Rogaining (we certainly hadn’t before we got here), it is essentially an extended orienteering event. Rogaine originated in Australia in the 1970s and stands for “Rugged Outdoor Group Activity Involving Navigation and Endurance”. Apparently, the fact that the acronym is also the name of a well-known hair re-growth product is just a coincidence. Typically, Rogaines go for 12 or 24 hours. At only 4 hours, ours was titled “A Brief Encounter.”

Since we’re used to doing our family Thanksgiving orienteering in less than 2 hours, 4 hours felt like quite a bit—especially since we ran substantially more than half of the event. But, it was an excellent time. Usually Rogaines are out in the bush, but this was in an urban setting, so we found ourselves running through neighborhoods and along busy streets. We opted to go for the most scenic route instead of trying to get the highest possible points, so we went out to Granite Island, known for its Little Penguins, and also up to a bluff overlooking the rest of Victor Harbor. And, despite doing the scenic route, we ended up first in the Novice category. Of course there were only two other teams in our category, which was for people who had never done a Rogaine before, but we finished 14th out of 63 teams overall and felt pretty good. Two women actually won the event, and they ran the whole thing. We worked it out and realized that they essentially ran a marathon! For those of you considering doing a marathon, Rogaining would be excellent training because the navigating takes your mind of the running, and it’s really good fun.

The other aspect of a Rogaine that makes it different from orienteering is that it always includes some time navigating in the dark. In fact, they always do the Rogaines during a full moon so that you are less likely to run into things while you’re navigating at night. We did alright following the streets on the map to find the controls, but it will be a different story at night out in the bush without trails to guide us. Our neighbors told us that Rogaining always involves getting lost at least once, and that you’re supposed to carry a snake bite kit with you. Those two facts make me a little nervous about longer Rogaines in the bush, but I think we’re going to give it a go either in March or April, and we’ll let you know how it goes. Assuming we find our way back at the end, and aren’t eaten by feral camels or rabbits.

One of the best parts of a Rogaine is the Hash House. This is where all the food is, so once you finish running around, you can come back and eat a hot meal. On a longer Rogaine, you are required to stop in at the Hash House at some time during the night. When we finished, we were mostly just happy to have water since we hadn’t brought quite enough with us for the four hours. But the pizza tasted great as well. The event definitely made for deep sleeping that night.

Since we were all the way out on the Fleurieu Peninsula, Ryan and Liz decided we should head over to Deep Creek Conservation Area on Sunday before driving home. They took us on one of their favorite hikes, which was an undulating 12 km walk along part of the Heysen Trail and also out to the coast. It was a lovely hike, and even though our legs were tired, walking was probably one of the best things we could do the day after the Rogaine. We saw some amazing vegetation, including yacca plants (grass trees), which are many hundreds of years old. Some of their trunks looked like they had been burned, and Ryan explained that they had probably survived numerous fires. They seem to be ideally adapted to this environment, with roots that stretch some 20 m down into the ground, and an ability to withstand fires. In fact, I’m pretty sure they actually need the fires to reproduce. They were really neat looking plants, and seemed like they would make for an excellent game of hide and seek.

The hike took us through areas unlike anything we’ve seen yet in Australia, though apparently much of South Australia used to look like the Deep Creek area. As we were walking, I was wondering if perhaps Australia’s vegetation favors shorter bushwalkers. This was because, as the tallest walker in our group, my head kept hitting branches that seemed to be just at the exact height of my head. Everyone else walked along, oblivious to these overhanging branches, but I kept checking to make sure I hadn’t lost major chunks of my hair, as a lot of the vegetation was rather sharp.

Anyways, we just about had the whole trail to ourselves even though it was a Sunday. It was rather windy, but not too hot at all, which was great. We had great views of the ocean, beaches, and Kangaroo Island. We saw a few fairy wrens, kangaroos and sheep. And, we arrived at home tired, hungry, and feeling like we had really made the most of our weekend. (If you want to see more photos from the weekend, they are online here.)