Adelaide -- Day Two

It's May 24th here, Saturday morning. Yesterday we took the train out into the country (what Aussies call the "bush") for a little nature hike or bushwalk. The train ride itself was a nice experience as we rode through the Adelaide Hills and got to see a lot of the uninhabited South Australian countryside.

We alighted in a place called Belair on one of the oldest train stations in Australia (from the look of things) and walked a few short feet into Belair National Park. The park was the first ever set aside in South Australia, back in the late 1800s, and as such the sign we passed under to enter simply read "The National Park." Immediately as we entered it was like stepping into the real Australia with towering gums trees (eucalyptus are called gums here) over head, parrots chattering annoyingly in the branches, giant termite mounds made out of the red soil, and an overall sense of the age of the land.

There we signs of kangaroos out there, but we didn't see any wild ones. We did spot a few wild (thought they hardly act that way) koalas and more lorakeets, cockatoos, and other colorful birds than you can shake a stick at. The place was also crawling with giant bulldog ants. The park is huge, and we only had enough daylight to do a part of it. Our hike led us around a duck inhabited lake, up into the hills, through a freaky tunnel under on of the hills, into a valley where it was cold from lack of sunlight reaching the bottom (where we spotted the first koala), and up to where there used to be a waterfall before the drought.

Today (Saturday) we've got tickets to an Australia Rules Football match in Port Adelaide, which is a bus ride north of us. Then tomorrow we are off to our final destination before home: Melbourne.