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We had enough time this morning to spend a while in the Australian Arid Lands Botanical Garden which was, a bit surprisingly, very nice. They have a series of lovely courtyard style gardens, all based on local drought tolerant plants. They call the philosophy Aridsmart. A lot of the desert plants are in bloom at the moment and there is an amazing array of colour. The local specialty is eremophila (check spelling) which means 'desert loving' and includes 200 different types of all shapes and sizes from ground covers to small trees. They were first collected and catalogued by Matthew Flinders' expeditions. Several walks take you through the different areas. The Red Cliffs lookout promises to be more impressive on a clear day. Add friendly staff, a very attractive café and groovy gift shop and A and I really liked this place.
There's an intersection right near the park where the sign on the highway points right to Darwin and left to Perth - pretty cool.
The road down the edge of the Gulf St Vincent towards Adelaide takes you through some very pretty farming country. With water on the right and low mountains on the left, rolling fields of green and yellow looked resplendent in the gentle light provided by the clouds. A ruin of a stone building or a gnarly old gum tree have been left standing here and there in the middle of the fields. There are about a million wind turbines along here - I have never seen so many.
We arrived in Adelaide about 5 and got set up. I like this place. It's right on the beach. We have an ensuite and there's heaps of room - partly because the site is big and partly because it's half empty.
Adelaide turned on a show for our arrival with the evening sun shining on a rainshower off to the south east over the city providing a spectacular "rainbow at sunset" show. Tried to catch it on camera but, not for the first time, found that the scene was just too 'big' to do it justice.
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