Day 22 Tuesday A touch of gardening

And chocolate tasting :D 11am saw me at the Haigh's Visitor Centre. They make 'award winning chocolate'. I had to go, for research purposes, obviously.Walked down there, only took about 20-25 minutes. Opening the door to the shop which precedes the visitor centre and factory, you're hit by this wall of smell of chocolate. At first you think "Wow yummy", then after a while "Hmmm could get sick of this, don't know if I'd like to work here". There was complimentary tea and coffee while you wait for your tour, then you're off! Into a small room where a young lady tells you about the company, how and where the beans are grown and you get your first tasting. Then to the viewing galleries. The workers rotate their jobs three or four times a day, thank goodness. It would get tedious in the extreme on most of the positions. Take ball, dip it in chocolate, line it up in sprinkles, when you've done a line cover them up and start the next..... When you've got enough sprinkled balls for a box, put them in the box. And so on. And on. And on. Or you could handwrap chocolate frogs. Or assemble selection boxes. I was surprised with how much manual input there was. Something like 50% of the chocolates have some manual intervention. Fascinating though :D More tastings and then back into the shop where, of course, you'll buy something. The tour is free, after all.

I headed back north to go to the aboriginal centre. On the way, I discovered a bmx park! Then, going through yet another of the parks circling the CBD I came across a Japanese garden, established to celebrate the twinning of Adelaide... with somewhere Japanese! Was a beautiful garden, very calm. I stayed there, taking pictures and generally being peaceful.

Eventually, I got to the aboriginal centre, the main galleries were shut. Story of the week I think. It wasn't as in depth and interesting as the blurb suggested. Some of the museums have been far more informative. Then lunch. I found another contemporary art/craft shop which was really good. Lots of fresh, imaginative and amusing things on sale.

Finally, I reached the Botanic Gardens. I've discovered that, compared to Kew, most botanic gardens are small. This was no exception, however, it was very good. I got excited about the Palm House - before I'd seen it. Tiny! I'm sure there are people at home with bigger conservatories (none of my friends but you know what I mean). This didn't bode well. The next glasshouse was completely different. A similar shape to the new arid house at Kew but huge. It was full of rainforest type plants along with some birds, introduced for pest control. Outside, I finally found a map and made sure I covered pretty much the whole place. One delight for me was the wildlife :D Plenty of birds, including a free-range kookaburra which let me take photos of it. The ducks were funny: I sat down on a bench by a few, next to the lake. As soon as I rummaged in my bag, they looked interested and waddled over. I'd put an apple core down which some fancy pigeon type things had ignored. The ducks on the other hand argued over it! There were more rose gardens. At the Melbourne Cup, Sarah had told me the Flemington race course is famous for its roses. One of the things to strike me about Melbourne suburbia was the roses growing in the gardens. And again here, in Adelaide, lots of roses. Don't know why we bother to try at home if they do so well in this "Mediterranean climate"! And I haven't seen a single greenfly.

Toddled off back to the hostel via a bottleshop and finally got chatting with someone, in between dodging the ping pong ball which kept coming in my direction. Only trouble was, the person I was chatting to was English and the ex-husband and coach of a top marathon runner and he caught on to me saying something about running. I got him off the subject occasionally.....

Today, it's been raining but has gone sunny just now. I'm off to Kangaroo Island this afternoon. So I may be missing for a couple of days.

No worries!