Friday 5th December - Belair National Park - Adelaide

We had a big day planned - art shop, BMW shop, visit Mal's old Adelaide locations of interest and possibly catch up with Mal's friend Harie Lam.

Mal woke early and did a lap of the local Koala haunts - one had fled and the other just changed location in the tree.

We headed out to breakfast at a small local café where Gecko Outback Tours also operate from - in parking lot was a Landcruiser 6 wheeler - a bit old but still with the Gary Briggs logo - mmm we wanted to ask the owner how it goes when the going gets rough. After breakfast on the deck where we could hear the trains run by in a cutting below us and view a parrot as it taunted a cameraless Sue in the dead tree across the driveway, we got to speak with the owner of the six wheeler. He told us what we already had heard - all pretty OK but stay out of the sand - even with tire pressures lowered to 15psi - it probably will be hard going or more likely bogged. Mmmmmmmm.

We rode down into Adelaide and visited the lovely Art shop - oh what a delight. Sue scored a rather tasty sable brush and Mal restocked on some watercolours and paper he needed.

Finding the BMW shop proved a drag, as again we ended up at the wrong location. We went out to West Beach, skirted the airport and doubled back via Henely Beach where the old post office had gone, replaced by condos or such. We ran down along Valetta Road where Mal used to ride his push bike and looked sadly at the housing development that replaced the Underdale Campus where Mal had studied various art subjects - we did find Flinder's Park Primary School where Bill did year one.

The old house Mal and Wendy lived in when they were in Adelaide has been demolished and replaced with a new house, however it seems that the large block of ground has remained intact and maybe Mr Ciano just built himself an Italian villa in the suburbs - good on him,

We caught up with the BMW shop finally and then rode back to Belair where we picked up a light lunch at a local bakery.

In the afternoon we took a ride up into the National Park where we spotted several koalas and the last one was quite close and Sue had a lovely portrait session with him. It even included a grunting and hissing altercation with a possum in a hole in the tree - unfortunately you cannot see the possum from the camera angle but Mal could see his pointy pink nose and wiskers.

In the evening we met Harie and his wife Denise and children Bella and Joshua at the Central Markets for Coffee and eventually for an evening meal - lovely family.

Bella did a great drawing for me and I will take a photo of her drawing post it very soon.

We stopped at Windy Point on the way back to camp and checked out the city lights - Sue wants to do a timelapse of the lights gradually coming on as the sunlight fades. Harie has undertaken to take us up to Mount Lofty on Saturday night to do just that.

Saturday 6th December

It had rained over night and the ground was wet and the air was cold so we decided we would download photos and do a bit of reading before heading out. Well we finally took Gertie for a run around to Mount Lofty to check out the location for the evening shoot - all looks good.

We then rode down into Unley to buy groceries for the trip to Kangaroo Island (K.I. down here) - in the afternoon Mal started his drawing of a tall gum tree - he has a long way to go on that - Sue took it easy and we waited for Harie to pick us up at 7.30pm to do the trip up to Mt. Lofty - the evening had turned cool and by the time we stepped out onto the deck at Mt Lofty it had dropped a few more degrees. Sue needed an hour for her timelapse - so be buttoned our collars and waited while the wind increased and any resemblance to summer vanished - it was damned cold. We were glad to lob back into Harie's warm car, except Sue clobbered her freezing knee on the car, so that was extremely painful.

We tested the hot showers when we arrived back at camp and they were A OK.

As we sat outside our tent watching the clouds racing past a nearly full moon, a possum came out onto a small branch and was silhouetted against the light of the evening sky - the things you see when one is out and about.