Holidays From Real Life
Looking after Chocolate was like taking a holiday from my regular life. I didn't have the laptop with me so I entertained myself by reading whatever books I found at the swapping library in Port Adelaide. I didn't have the car so I went where my feet or bicycle could take me.
In the spirit of getting out and about in the glorious weather I caught the train to Brighton and rode home along the seaside with a brisk southerly for companionship.
The tide was out. |
All the sailing clubs were out enjoying the wonderful weather and holding their end-of-season regatta/parties. |
Tractors waited patiently for the ships to come back to shore. |
In between the patiently waiting tractors the surf clubs had set up Marquees and were busily holding their end-of-summer carnivals with lots of megaphone noise and swarms of little nippers racing in and out of the water.
Some people were taking things a little more easily, kicking back and enjoying the sunshine. |
And some people looked really out of place in their over-the-top sun protection gear. |
I left the beach at Semaphore, where the foreshore was packed with people who had obviously been on a colour run. They were lined up three deep at the outdoor showers, mothers washing thick gobs of colour out of children's hair. "It's a colour festival", explained the young indian man at the traffic lights. "It's a very important festival in India. Very colourful!" He told me the name of the festival and I promptly forgot it.
The next day I jumped back into my sun protection gear and tootled off to catch the low tide at the Garden Island ship graveyard.
Unfortunately I couldn't get any closer to the ship corpses than this, but that was good enough. |
Having trekked the whole 7km to Garden Island I figured I may as well go all the way and check out the Adelaide dolphin sanctuary, so off I went to do some dolphin spotting.
It was soon clear that any self-respecting dolphin had headed out to sea first thing in the morning, leaving the dolphin sanctuary waters to hordes of kayakers of varying ability levels. The picnic grounds were densely inhabited by birthday parties, picnicking families, and small clusters of very serious middle-aged men whose kayaks came complete with little wheels to improve the ease with which they could be pulled across car parks and picnic grounds.
I went for a walk out along the boardwalk anyway. I'll have to come back on a weekday. |
"Don't swim here,' said a sign on the road. "The water is too hot." This is the outflow from the Torrens Island power station. |
That evening I sat at Fletcher's Slip and watched night creep over the old Harts Mill. The waters of the port stepped through all shades of blue to black as the sun set and lights popped on, one by one, along the waterfront. Across the way someone drummed and sang a song as seagulls winged their way to roost for the night.
I rode home in the dark, past families having dinner or watching TV in their lounge rooms, windows and curtains open to the sea breeze.
Chocolate, having napped while I was away, demanded a second dinner.
He didn't get it.
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