Em and Stu do Australia Part 5: South Australia
Adelaide for the second-last leg, huh? The first destination we couldn’t pretend had ever been part of our plan.
The River Torrens.
Tasmania had always been on the itinerary, even if we’d brought it forward and lengthened it to two months. But Stu and I had already, eight years or so ago, done a reasonably comprehensive fortnight in South Australia, including Goolwa, Victor Harbour, Barossa wineries, Kangaroo Island, Normanville, Glenelg and Hahndorf. We weren’t super interested in repeating it.
Typically pretty street near our place in North Adelaide.
We just needed a COVID-19-free destination state for November that Mark McGowan would be reasonably sure to let us back from, albeit knowing there was no guarantee. Adelaide was, frankly, the only one left, seeing as we’d saved south-west WA for the final leg, the first half of December.
We considered just cancelling the rest of the trip and heading home, but our house was leased until mid-December, we’d not be able to get this leave together again for a long time, if ever (as Stu is on parental leave, me on unpaid sabbatical), and to go home and pay for accommodation somewhere in Perth seemed even more aimless.
Augie fell in love for first time at Sensory, with instructor Rommie
We didn’t have the energy left to venture far outside the city with all the complications Augie brings, so we focused on the city as a stable base for work and parenting.
Was it Sydney or Melbourne? No. Was it a place Emma could finish rewriting her manuscript and submit it to a potential publisher? Yes. Where Stu could do full-time dadding to extraordinary standards through four different city library branches, Baby Sensory classes, Baby Gym and Baby Swim? Yes.
A place Mum could visit us for two weeks to enable us to go to our first movie (Halloween Kills) in 14 months? Yes! And we went out for dinner! And to the Art Gallery! ALONE! We actually gazed thoughtfully at paintings and read signs next to them. Instead of carrying writhing, yowling baby past them, casting swift glances at them while hissing desperately ‘SHHH, SHHH.’
Mortlock Chamber at the State Library contains beautiful museum.
We also did Adelaide’s rightly revered Central Markets, its Popeye boat tour of the River Torrens, Rundle Mall (as homogeneous retail-wise as every other capital, but still with beautiful arcades), the Zoo with Australia’s only giant pandas, the Himeji Japanese-style gardens, the Botanical Gardens and State Library with Harry Potter-esque Mortlock Wing. And, of course, bookshops.
In the hills outside the city, we strolled up and down the main drag of the gorgeous historical German village of Hahndorf window-shopping (with some SHHH, SHHH-ing), wandered through the country town of Stirling, and Augie cuddled koalas at the Gorge Wildlife Park. Mum’s help Augie-wrangling also facilitated the trip that proved the highlight of South Australia: a tour of The Cedars, just outside Hahndorf.
Hans Heysen’s studio at The Cedars.
This was the family home of one of Australia’s greatest ever landscape painters Hans Heysen, a contemporary of the Lindsay brothers, known for his light-filled paintings of eucalypts: the first time an Australian artist studied gum trees as a subject. It was at the Cedars he painted and his daughter Nora Heysen began her career in portraiture and still-lives. Nora became the first Australian female war artist and the first woman to win the Archibald, the country’s premier portraiture prize. She was the subject of a wonderful recent biography by Perth author and art scholar Anne-Louise Willoughby which for me made seeing this stunning country property, still owned by the family, a must-do.
Gardens at The Cedars.
The Cedars is surrounded by the eucalypt forests Hans was able to protect bit by bit as he grew his landholdings alongside his fame and success. On the edge of the forest is Hans’ studio, the country’s oldest purpose-built artist’s studio open to the public, with its special light-diffusing glass that was brought from Europe, a truly inspiring space, left just as Heysen left it with a half-finished painting still on the easel.
The studio, perched on a hill, overlooks the gardens that provided the abundance of fruits and flowers shown in the still-lives by both Hans and Nora that now hang in art galleries across Australia. It also overlooks the heritage-listed Arts and Crafts style home in which the family not only raised its eight children, but provided a kind of cultural magnet that drew celebrities of the day such as Lawrence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Dame Nellie Melba and Anna Pavlova to visit and perform on a tiny stage in its living room. The house is just as the family left it, still furnished and filled with books, and its walls feature a sizeable collection of both Hans and Nora’s works and Nora’s studio is also there, containing more of her works and also her paint palette, a gift from Melba.
These spaces were powerfully evocative and moving to move quietly through, or as quietly as we could with the mini-tornado in tow. Steeped in beauty and history, they are a rich source of inspiration for creatives, something that whispers that achievement is possible, that it is possible to make a way of life around art. They also provide information, visual data on a historical way of life that now seems almost otherworldly, yet enduring in its continuing influence on Australian art and culture, what we find beautiful and what we value.
Entry road to the botanical gardens and zoo.
Like Perth, Adelaide has excellent food, natural beauty and a thriving arts scene. With Adelaide’s emphasis on sustainability and renewable energy, its parklands both studding and surrounding the city to create a green belt urban boundary forcing a more walkable, shady and public transport-friendly core, it’s arguably even more liveable. But like Perth, the city proper lacks a certain depth and richness of signature tourism experiences: dramatic spaces, events and structures.
But we really enjoyed these quiet times, me focusing on a creative project, hanging out with my Mum, Stu and I watching our baby get ever more adorable, watching him spend quality time with his Nanna. And as my manuscript approached its latest finish line we looked forward with excitement to our reward for our months of hard work: to return to Perth on November 30 and drive straight to Albany for the final leg. An AirBnB was booked steps from the beach, a pub, a café and best of all, near the home of one of my oldest and dearest friends, not seen for many months.
And then.
Less than a week before our flight, covid cases began to pop up in South Australia.
Three days before our flight, Mark McGowan announced arrivals from SA would need to spend two weeks in home quarantine.
Hours later a text arrived from WA Police saying our entry passes were cancelled and we must reapply.
Then a text arrived from Qantas cancelling our flights.
We calmly put the baby to bed, calmly poured some wine, then sat down to commence completely freaking out.
Our Perth home was still tenanted; our Albany AirBnB now disallowed; we were 24 hours too late to get a refund; our Adelaide accommodation booked out, so staying longer not an option. In other words, the final performance of Em and Stu’s Shit Show was in dire need of a venue.
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Bookshops visited (Em): 6. Parmas eaten (Stu): 1
Dymocks Adelaide is between homes but has lovely staff; Matilda’s and the Book Shed in Stirling were fantastic finds; the Central Markets has TWO shops; O’Connell’s is surely one of Australia’s best secondhand bookshops.
The Lion Hotel in North Adelaide has a good parma, but will it be the best in the country according to Stu? You’ll have to wait for our final instalment to find out.
