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    Photos from Australia

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    The dam at Barossa Reservoir, which supplies much water to the valley and its wineries. The dam was built in 1902 and was one of the first concrete arch dams in the world. Nowadays it is especially known for its acoustics, and is popularised as the “whispering wall.” When standing on the platform at the top-right edge, one can clearly hear a person talking on the opposing platform, 140 metres away, as if they were standing right next to you. It's all due to the particular angles of the wall, and it certainly works!: by flyted, Views[1294]
         		 An impressive distances sign post at the Toy Factory. Farthest away: New York City, 17,594 km, followed closely by Montréal, 17,438 km. Vancouver is a short 13,873 km from the Rocking Horse.: by flyted, Views[1105]
         		 On a day tour of the Barossa Valley wine country, about an hour north-east of Adelaide. First stop, The Toy Factory in Gumeracha, South Australia, home of the world's largest rocking horse. It weighs 27 tons, is 60 feet high, has three observation platforms (excellent car-park viewing) and is in the Guinness Book of Records.: by flyted, Views[378]
         		 ...and at night turns into something like this. The squares are always changing, coming up with all sorts of crazy patterns. It is called a “digital art project.”: by flyted, Views[374]
         		 Rundle Lantern in daytime, one of the latest public art projects in Adelaide. The city wanted to create a Times Square-style corner downtown, but decided against big video screens with advertisements. Instead, 748 LED panels were wrapped around a parking garage..: by flyted, Views[374]
     
    Rundle Mall looking east, the Adelaide Hills in the distance.: by flyted, Views[334]
         		 Rundle Street from above, next to the Adelaide Arcade.: by flyted, Views[317]
         		 Back over on Rundle Mall, this is the popular public art piece known officially as “The Spheres,” but of course known to everybody as “The Mall's Balls.” They have been around since 1977.: by flyted, Views[735]
         		 Next to the Art Gallery is the South Australian Museum, dating back to 1847, and particularly noted for its Aboriginal efforts. It has the largest collection of Australian Aboriginal artefacts in the world, displayed in the massive Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery.: by flyted, Views[431]
         		 The Art Gallery of South Australia, next to the University, and 3rd largest Art Gallery in Australia.: by flyted, Views[557]
     
    Bonython Hall at the University of Adelaide, the Great Hall of the campus. Adelaide Uni is the 3rd oldest in Australia and has produced 5 Nobel laureates.: by flyted, Views[1103]
         		 A number of delightful roses were still blooming in the National Rose Trial Garden, the first such garden in Australia to test roses' suitability for the Australian climate. : by flyted, Views[351]
         		 Adelaide is famous for its Mediterranean climate, which is celebrated here by the Mediterranean Garden.: by flyted, Views[634]
         		 Another nice canopy of trees through the Botanic Garden.: by flyted, Views[307]
         		 This looks like a pathway winding through the Garden, but it is in fact a dried up creek bed; probably hasn't seen any action in a while.: by flyted, Views[289]
     
    The Palm House, one of the focal points of the Botanic Garden in Adelaide.: by flyted, Views[433]
         		 by flyted, Views[286]
         		 The scintillating story of what happens after hours on the lilies, apparently akin to “a nightclub for scarab beetles.”: by flyted, Views[420]
         		 The waterlily pond, in winter.: by flyted, Views[513]
         		 At the Adelaide Botanic Garden, the award-winning Amazon Waterlily Pavilion, made almost entirely out of glass, and housing one of the world's largest lilies, the Victoria Amazonica.: by flyted, Views[604]
     
    Adelaide is best appreciated by map, which really gives you a sense of what this city is all about. It was laid out starting in the late 1830's by William Light, the city's first Surveyor-General. The locals call it “Light's Vision,” which is still the general term for the city's distinctive look. He envisioned two urban sections, one north (North Adelaide) and one south of the River Torrens (Adelaide City), with the entire area surrounded and immersed by parkland. There are 29 designated parks surrounding the city, divided by roads or natural features, covering about 7.6 square kilometres. Adelaide truly feels like an island in a sea of parks, which is both a wonderful blessing in that it is one of the greenest cities in the world (and very far-sighted for the 1830's), but it also leaves the city feeling cut off and isolated from its suburbs, plus a lot of water is needed to keep the parks from drying up.: by flyted, Views[565]
         		 Rundle Road, leading to Rundle Mall in the city. This street was at the top-end of the F1 circuit, the cars would fly around the far corner, head in my direction and then cut right where the painted lines are, onto the back straight.: by flyted, Views[1152]
         		 The pit straight and paddock area of the circuit, half of which sits in the former Victoria Park Racecourse.: by flyted, Views[906]
         		 The crews were just finishing taking down the last of the temporary grandstand from the V8 race in March. The track maintains the same layout as the original F1 circuit, and it all happened right here. The pit straight and paddock area is the white building at the far-right.: by flyted, Views[582]
         		 From 1985 to 1995 Adelaide hosted the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix, before it moved to Melbourne. The track was made up mostly of city streets on the east side of the CBD and parkland. Although F1 left town, the track still exists and is used every March for the wildly popular Aussie V8 series, which locals would say is far more exciting (they may have a point there). I was in Adelaide about three weeks after the V8 race, and traces of rubber were plentiful around the route of the track. The distinctive blue, yellow and red curbing though, which was famous during the F1 days, still exists and is a permanent fixture on certain corners.: by flyted, Views[1930]
     
    Inside the Adelaide Arcade; every city has to have one of these too.: by flyted, Views[365]
         		 Adelaide Arcade & fountain, off of Rundle Mall.: by flyted, Views[552]
         		 Rundle Mall, the pedestrian-only shopping street of Adelaide, and opened in 1976 as the first pedestrian mall in Australia. Now they are ubiquitous in every city.: by flyted, Views[1469]
         		 The fountain in the middle of Victoria Square represents the three rivers that supply Adelaide with water: the Torrens, Onkaparinga and Murray Rivers. Beyond the fountain is King William Street, the main north-south route through the city, and the widest main street of any Australian capital city. King William IV was monarch at the time of Adelaide's founding in 1836, and the city was named after his wife, Queen Adelaide.: by flyted, Views[1533]
         		 The Aboriginal Flag was first flown here in 1971, and is now permanently displayed here next to the Australian flag (in most places in Australia it is only flown intermittently).: by flyted, Views[1357]
     
    Victoria Square, in the heart of Adelaide. The city is laid out in a very distinctive one-square-mile grid, with Victoria Square in the exact middle.: by flyted, Views[519]
         		 Later in 1901 the Australian National Flag was flown for the first time above the dome of the Exhibition Building. This was where the Victoria State Parliament met from 1901 to 1927, when the Federal government moved to Canberra and the State officials got their old building back. The Exhibition Building also hosted many indoor events during the 1956 Summer Olympics.: by flyted, Views[1523]
         		 A typical busy laneway scene in Melbourne. The laneways are basically little alleyways built perpendicular to the main cross streets. Melbourne's city blocks are huge, and are divided in half already by the “little” streets, which are not quite laneways, they allow for traffic, but are not as big as main streets. So there is Collins Street and Little Collins St, Bourke St. and Little Bourke St., and so on. Then the laneways join each of those streets together in a random, twisting, haphazard and thoroughly adventuresome manner.: by flyted, Views[781]
         		 Melbourne is famous for its “laneways,” as we will see: they often have interesting names, including AC/DC Lane, Dame Edna Place, and here we have Niagara Lane.: by flyted, Views[446]
         		 The sun sets over fabulous Melbourne and the Grampian Hills, way off in the distance.: by flyted, Views[506]
     
    The Royal Botanic Gardens from above, one of the pride and joys of Melbournians. It is 36 hectares of landscaped, sculpted gardens, the first in Australia and often recognised as the finest. The building in the middle is Government House, home of the Governor (aka Lieutenant-Governor) of Victoria. The Shrine of Remembrance is on the right-hand edge of the park. A bit further back on the right is Fawkner Park, also very nice; I stayed for a week at a hostel in between the Shrine and Fawkner Park.: by flyted, Views[509]
         		 The light turns red, which means green for a hook turn, and away they go – darting across the huge intersection to the far left-hand lane. As you can see, the opposite light is now green, so these cars are directly perpendicular to the line of traffic going straight through. In most cities there would be furious honking of horns, but in Melbourne they know, green does not mean go, not for a few seconds at least...: by flyted, Views[1517]
         		 Most intersections have a white box conveniently painted on the road, to show where to park yourself while waiting to turn. As you can see, this van is about as far over and as far away as it can get from where it wants to go, with cars going straight ahead driving past it on its right, and it will have to cross the entire intersection to make its right turn.: by flyted, Views[344]
         		 One cannot spend time in Melbourne without learning about hook turns. Watch how it's done in the next series of photos. Hook turns allow for the trams to have right-of-way on the main streets, and are not held up by cars waiting in the middle of an intersection to make a right-hand turn. First, notice the sign at the top, hanging over the street. A car turning right must hug the far left side of the street, letting through-traffic and trams go past on their right.: by flyted, Views[349]
         		 More laneway scenes. Most of the businesses in lanes are cafes and restaurants that cater to the business crowd; it gets pretty quiet on evenings and weekends.: by flyted, Views[327]
     
    Cafe culture is wonderful in Melbourne. This city has some of the best coffee in the world. Locals would not accept anything less. There is no Tim Horton's here, you must order a latte, cappuccino, or the like, and it is all freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee. Even 7-Elevens have self-serve barista machines with a container on top holding fresh beans that are ground for each customer. Of course, the best cafes are in the lanes, which always offer a canopy for the next brief rain shower.: by flyted, Views[1348]
         		 Speaking of Dame Edna...: by flyted, Views[387]
         		 The Royal Arcade's highlight, statues of the mythological figures Gog and Magog, who strike their bells on the hour.: by flyted, Views[563]
         		 The Royal Arcade, a heritage indoor shopping lane in central Melbourne, built in 1869.: by flyted, Views[732]
         		 Looking down Bourke Street towards the Bourke Street Mall, 12:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, another busy, buzzing day in Melbourne.: by flyted, Views[405]
     
    Hardware Lane features some great Italian restaurants and entrances to a couple basement bars.: by flyted, Views[1172]
         		 The W's clatter and clunk along the track, making strange whirring sounds, with interiors not much changed from the days they entered service, in the 1930's and 40's. But they really are one of the icons of Melbourne. : by flyted, Views[341]
         		 One of the classic “W-class” trams on its only regular route, running from north Richmond to St. Kilda, a relatively quieter route that suits the W's top speed: 40 km/h. These guys are constantly under threat of being taken out of service, and there are only about 50 of them left out of a fleet of 500 trams. But they have their fans, who have managed to block them being mothballed completely.: by flyted, Views[533]
         		 A few blocks over; Smith Street, the heart of Collingwood, a bit more eclectic and alternative than some of the trendier suburbs. I bought my WWOOF book at an organic cafe & market store here.: by flyted, Views[356]
         		 Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, one of the inner suburbs just past the CBD. The neighbourhood is full of lots of interesting shops and restaurants.: by flyted, Views[1506]
     
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