Adelaide

As the restaurant at our motel doesn't open on weekends (!), and the room had only tea and coffee making facilities, we had to find somewhere else for breakfast. So we did something completely wacky, and went to Ikea!

Being still on Victorian time, we got there over half an hour before they opened, but the car has the ability to entertain us:

It has a TV! We watched a guy travelling between Bucharest and Instanbul by train, eating interesting things along the way, on SBSFood. We have tried the TV once before in Ballarat, but the signal was poor or something and it was unwatchable. But here, it was fine.

Although we thought breakfasting at Ikea was a wacky idea, apparently that is a thing people do. There were quite a few waiting outside by the time the store opened, and most of them went straight to the restaurant.

After breakfast and a wander through Ikea we headed off to the Adelaide Botanic Garden. The first section we encountered was the rose garden:

The roses were looking pretty good. At home ours only have buds, but Adelaide is well ahead of us.  Included in this section (but not labelled, and no signs anywhere about it) is the National Rose Trial Garden. This was established in 1996 to test new roses and promote those most suited to Australian growing conditions.

One rose I was very taken with was this one:

It is a ground-cover rose, which the bees loved. The flowers open with that deep colour, and gradually fade to almost white. It is planted in a large patch, and the colour variation across it looks fantastic. Of course there are no signs anywhere to say what it is! However, with a bit of googling, I think it is probably "Eye Shadow", which won the gold medal and several other prizes in the trials in 2016.

A few other highlights of the gardens.

The beautiful old Palm House, built in the 1870s, is now a dry hot-house full of plants from Madagascar:

There are two large wisteria walks, both just about finished now, but enough remains to be impressive:

One of the gates into the gardens is the ginkgo gate:

And yes, just inside there is a ginkgo tree:

There is a whole section of eremophilas (emu bushes). This one caught my eye:

And it was labelled, so I know it is a grafted Eremophila cunefolia, which comes from Western Australia.

The Museum of Economic Botany is in the gardens. The building is from the 1880s, as is most of the collection of plant materials useful to humans. Part of the building also contains temporary exhibitions. The current one is on grain crops grown and used by Aboriginal people before European settlement.

 The fascinating old display cases are arranged by plant family. Here is a sample:

Linen fibres and flax seeds in the foreground, and some amazing pinecones in the background. You could spend ages examining all the displays in this beautiful building. We did!

Several years ago I learned that these gardens have the giant Amazon waterlily on display, so really wanted to see that. However, this is what confronted me:

No waterlilies here!

Empty for repairs. That was a disappointment. But the rest of the gardens did not disappoint at all.

It is a wonderful garden!


After the gardens we headed out of Adelaide, towards our stop for the night. But who could resist stopping at this tourist trap:

It's the world's largest rocking horse!

Although it doesn't actually rock.

Our stop for tonight feels like the world's largest motel room:

It is enormous! And quiet and very comfortable. It is the Birdwood Motel, and it is right beside tomorrow's first attraction.