luka – Page 18 – Kengūrija

Road Trip: Adelaide – Melbourne. Day 1.

It’s been quite a while after our first longer road trip in Australia, but just couldn’t start writing about it. We were too busy, and quite lazy. But finally here’s the first post.

So, the first road trip from Adelaide to Melbourne and back.

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Here’s our route. We drove along the coast to Melbourne and inland back to Adelaide. We did about 2000 km, but it’s just basically nothing on the map. You just drive and drive…

Little details and impressions from Luka’s notebook. It was drawn while going on the highway. We pass only a couple of cars, asphalt is old and very noisy. There’s a gap in doors and the wind is making a terrible noise. We jammed it with the only thing we could reach in the mess inside the car – a couple of socks. It’s inevitable when you pack 3 quite tall people and their things in the little, nearly adult Corolla.
Despite the car was already full, we saw a garage sale and went there. We had to show it to Reda, our joy and the inexhaustible source of junk. A pile of books, a bowl, a backpack and a big set of pencils, stamps and markers were tucked where ever it was possible. On the side road a guy with stylish hat was playing a guitar and selling mangoes. Oh yes, it’s the season of perfect mangoes now! All happy we left the city. Bought coffee for Reda in the little town, and some cookies, with too mush of soda. The baker must have been in love 🙂

We crossed the river by ferry. The river is like a road – with road, well, river signs.

We posed at the salt lake. It was a really strange feeling, if you were walking on the thin ice. But the sun was burning and everything was pink.

The snow of salt.

We didn’t go very far on our first day. We stopped at Coorong National Park – the place where a lot of birds live. However, we were not very lucky, as it was terrible windy there.

Laurius with the sand dunes and lagoon in the background.

It was really lots of birds there, just very far away. Black Swans.

And who knows what other birds. We put our tent under the bush where little Willie had his nest in. So, as you can expect, he or she wasn’t very happy. The wind wasn’t going down in the evening, so we just hid in the tent. There were only old people with there trailers resting around. But the funniest part is, that the toilet is about 2 km away from the campsite. You can never understand Australians 🙂

Mount Lofty

We haven’t been posting for a while, because we had a friend from Lithuania – Reda. We were on holidays, so to speak. One of the first days we had an attraction to go down the hill on bikes. We were picked from home, it was sunny, and we dressed quite light. However, on the top of the mountain it was fog. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say, the mountain was in the cloud. This was one of the cases when you don’t understand which direction it is raining.

We enjoyed the views of the fog. You don’t often see such thing in Adelaide. We haven’t seen a fog here since we moved here.

All three charming and ready.

Nice scenery.

Usually you see something like this.

Posers with helmets and gloves.

Going down. No need to pedal, just break.

The best view of the fog.

Big and noisy bird – Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo (lat. Calyptorhynchus funereus). It’s hard to get a good shot of it. It’s either to high, or in the mist.

Part of the track was paved…

…part of it was orange.

We stopped at Cleland wildlife park to show Reda some local animals. Find a kangaroo here.

Red-browed Finch (lat. Neochmia temporalis).

What feet has this Eurasian Coot (lat. Fulica atra).

Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (lat. Cacatua galerita) on the left, and Wallaby on the right.

Earth Station Festival

Remember T-Shirt design competition that I won? For that I got two ticket to World music festival at the Belair National Park.

We went there by train and then caught a shuttle bus for those travelling to the music festival. This festival was not just about music, but also about saving the nature and other “green” stuff.

We listened to some music.

Here’s Stan’s Cafe installation, where various statistical data expressed with rice. One rice – one person. This pile is the number of Australian population.

On the left, people who bought the single “Can’t buy me love” by The Beatles on the first day of release.
On the right – The Beatles themselves.

This was a really small festival.

They also disclosed freshly printed T-Shirt with the designs that won the competinion.

Mine is also among them!

the empty nest

Somewhere in the hills, next to a little town a sign tells you “Exhibition open, welcome”. Just stop here and you’ll find a big field with a little house – gallery under the old oak.

On Saturday we went here to see Kara’s exhibition “empty nest”.

Little nests – egg shells formed from handmade paper were trying to escape through a little accidental hole in the wall to the beautiful and sunny fields.