Adelaide Day Two

Japanese Pumpkin at Adelaide Market

We had ½ day left for Adelaide so we visited two beaches near Blackwood, Brighton and Glenelg, before returning to the city to Tanunda, an aboriginal interpretive centre for a cultural presentation at noon. The beach area at Brighton was very small but pleasant. Glenelg reminded us a bit of St. Kilda’s outside Melbourne. Both St. Kilda’s and Glenelg are reached by a ½ hour tram ride from the city centres. Glenelg’s historic waterfront was larger and more developed than Brighton’s.
We parked the car and walked for about 15 minutes before reaching Tandanya. The museum has existed since 1989 and changes exhibitions every few months. A very agreeable man from the Kaurna tribe showed us a map of all the indigenous tribes that had inhabited Australia before the convict ships began arriving. They covered the entire country and there were hundreds of them. The Aboriginees only got the right to vote in 1967 and prior to that there were civil rights demonstrations that paralleled those in the US. I read in The Lonely Planet guide to Australia that 97% of Australians voted in favour. It seems the politicians are the slowest to respond and implement change. Why is that?
The plight of the aboriginals is similar to the First Nations people of Canada and the US, they were forced onto mission sites sometimes far from their homeland. Their means of supporting themselves was taken away and now many have drug and drinking problems. My friend knew a woman of our generation who trained as a nurse but was unable to work as a nurse in Australia only a nurse’s aide. She went back to school and is now a teacher.
Our guide played the didgeridoo explaining that only men could do so because the circular breathing required interfered with childbearing. I doubt this is true but there were signs in the gift shop warning that women were strictly forbidden to play the instrument in the shop. The demonstration was fun, he played various imitative sounds e.g. a kangaroo hopping, a motorbike.
We left Tandanya and headed to the Adelaide Market for lunch and shopping to stock up for our Miner’s Cottage self-catering experience as we weren’t sure if the shops would be plentiful or open when we reached the Barossa Valley. Many of the shops were closed on Wed. But we stocked up on fresh fruits and vegetables, local cheeses, bread and salmon fillets for dinner.