Day 8

Jan. 27, 2012

         We left the hotel today ready to go see some more cool things. We went to a place in Adelaide called the North Terrace. The National Wine Center of Australia is in the famous North Terrace. It's also near many other landmarks, like the Cleland Conservation Park. That's where we will be going to sight-see today. A popular tourist destination, the park is a natural bush land filled with koalas, emus, and much wildlife. 


          Waterfall Gully is a specific part of the park in the western area. Everybody wants to visit there first so that we can look and take pictures of the awesome waterfall called First Falls. The actual Waterfall Gully is a suburb of Adelaide, much like Apex is a suburb of Raleigh. There's a kiosk for tourist sales and a restaurant if you get hungry. When we reached that part by a cab, the whole place was almost packed with parking. I guess we picked a popular day to come. The trail was paved and everyone walked down to see the falls. A few tourists had beat us to the good view at the top of the trail but we made sure to push our way up. After clicking a couple pictures of the pretty surroundings, we made our way to another common attraction.


        The summit of Mount Lofty is in the boundaries of Cleland Conservation Park. It's over 2,385 feet over sea level. Sadly, today, we were not able to make our way up. The group loved the scenery so much that some of us might want to try climbing a mountain like it one day. Much like the Waterfall Gully, there is a small kiosk and restaurant located near Mount Lofty. 


        All of the bush land is inhabited by a lot of animals and vegetation, of course. It was kind of interesting to see the species walking around in their own habitat. We observed the emus, which are much like an ostritch. They have long legs and a stout body and have the strut of any bird with legs too long for it's body. Koalas, kangaroos, wombats, dingoes, and many birds and reptiles are just some of the animals in Australia. They are widely known and considerably popular. 


        The interesting path we took was the 'Cultural Tour of the Yurridla Aboriginal Trail.' It includes an explanation from the native point-of-view, folk-tales, and myths about creation. Some of these tales were just about animals and how they interact with nature. I think it was a lot more exciting than taking the normal beaten path. 


        Considerably the most exciting part was the nightwalk. It made us uncover the 'mysteries of the bush.' That is, the secrets of how the ecosystem in the bushland behaves. It wore us out though, since we jumped quite a bit thanks to all of the sudden shocks. After that, everyone ate dinner at the restaurant by Mount Lofty as we passed by. It wasn't really a restaurant, because it was so small and homely. The food was average, but we definitely had better during our trip.



         We ended up back at the hotel and were pretty glad to have a good day. Everyone was really tired, except for the few who still had a little bit of adrenaline from the 'nightwalk.' 

One of the guides took this picture for us.

A view from the bottom of Mount Lofty.