I have more scandal on Donald Trump!

Wednesday 11th January 2017

Whilst we have been away, one thing has been consistent.  Donald Trump has been the news headline every day.  Not wanting to be left out of the scandals I am revealing today that Donald Trump had a tryst with Kylie Minogue and Rolf Harris in an Australian hotel watched by Dame Edna Everidge.  I know this is shocking news to you as he is such a nice man who is so universally popular and deservedly was voted as the next President of the United States.  I'm still exploring the possibility that Jimmy Saville 'fixed' the election for Donald, before he died!

Anyway, back to our holiday.  We drove in the Jazzy Banana (my name for our borrowed Honda Jazz) through Tea Tree Creek to a park and ride.  From there we caught the O-Bahn (a mega-bus that runs on a special concrete track) into Adelaide centre.

The main shopping street.  Lovely weather and temperature for looking around the city.

We wanted to see the South Australia Museum to get the social history of the city but it was more of a natural history museum but we had a look around the Aboriginal sections of the museum.  

I am now going to risk a brief synopsis of what I think is the Aborigine situation in Australia.  We have had a chat with Jack and Jill about the Aborigines and they are very knowledgable but these comments are my own....very risky!!  I apologise for any generalisations that might follow.

Of course white European people essentially invaded the Australian Continent and have ousted The Aborigines into the margins.  However, the Aborigine culture is a primitive culture, it involves hundreds of tribes and about 400 language variations.  They have no/little sense of property and ownership and places high value on maintaining their old stories and way of life. The Aborigine people haven't been assimilated into a modern lifestyle, largely because they don't engage in education and modern lifestyles.  There was also the discredited 'stolen generation' period where the agencies forceably took aborigine children from their parents and rehomed them with white families in an effort to integrate the aborigines into modern western culture.  The Australian Government has made unreserved apologised for past mistakes and atrocities.  Another issue was a change of Government policy about pay for Aborigine workers.  Many agricultural farms employed aborigine workers and paid them by providing accommodation, food and clothing and then government policy forced the employers to pay them in cash instead.  The Aborigines couldn't deal with having money and many have succumbed to alcohol and illegal drugs which is now widespread in their communities.  Overall, the whole situation is a BIG MESS.  Many Aborigines seem to be dependant on Government payouts and blame white people for all their problems and White Australians are split between appeasing the Aborigines or being completely fed up with the lack of 'self help' of the Aborigines as a whole and the political correctness being applied to the Aborigines.  I think that's about as much as I can say about it....it's far more complicated than this.

That's enough serious stuff.  We moved from the museum to the next door Library where there was an exhibition about the city and state history.  It was in the Mortlock Building....what a lovely building.

I think it is based on the British Library.  We also learned about Charles Sturt who was the first explorer who travelled from South Australia to the North Coast.  He was looking for an inland sea in the centre and took a boat with him for the purpose.  Now, it seems a silly thing to take to the centre of Australia!

We saw this football programme.  It made us think about matching other aspects of Australia and Blackpool as holiday destinations......no contest, it's Blackpool every time!!

We moved onto the State Parliament Building and timed our visit perfectly (by complete chance) to get on the only tour of the afternoon.

The parliament is based on the British Parliamentary System but 47 representatives, elected for 4 years in the lower house and 25 representatives in the upper house elected for 8 years.

This is the Cycling Village being set up prior to the Tour Down Under.

Back to Jack and Jill's where I did a chicken curry for tea and watched a Big Bash Cricket match (20 over match) on telly between Perth Scorchers and Brisbane Heat.