stitch and collect with raelene: my mad March

It is a wonderful, crazy time in Adelaide each March. There is so much happenning, with the Clipsal Adelaide 500 car race, Adelaide Festival (of arts), Fringe Festival, Womadelaide (world music festival), Writer's Week and more. I haven't booked for anything yet this year, but I did get to and enjoy a few things in 2017 including the brilliant Australian premiere of Barrie Kosky's opera Saul, and the opening concert with Neil Finn in Elder Park below

To add to that I fitted in a few more things -
Walking around the city I photographed a couple of less well known, side views of notable Adelaide buildings - the the much loved State Library Mortlock Building, and the Adelaide Oval

This leads me to the inside of the Adelaide Oval. I took a tour with several other family members (I gave them all vouchers as Christmas presents) of the oval which underwent a major re-development a few years ago The tour was really interesting. As the home of the Adelaide Cricket Club there is so much history incorporated from the old complex, the structure is quite amazing and there is so much that goes on behind the scenes, upstairs and downstairs so to speak. For the more daring there are tours around the top of the 'sails'

There is a new digitised scoreboard but the old iconic wooden one was kept and they still put up who's playing who on it. Inside it was fascinationg - a cramped rabbit warren with flaps and peep holes, wooden name boards and number for scores, pulleys and several flights of steps, hot and stifling in summer, and cold in winter. It was apparently very crowded with men dashing up and down the whole time. Not the greatest photo as they were doing some work on it before the start of the football season.

The last picture taken from one of the balconies, looks back over Elder Park and the city. The huge complex is used for all manner of events now. They have alternate cricket pitches being grown out the back, and they can transform it from a rock concert arena to a soccer field, football or cricket oval in a couple of days.

We also visited the David Roche Foundation museum and gallery of fine arts. It is the result of a life time of collecting of superb pieces by one man. (see it at www.rochefoundation.com.au/ ) These are 2 fine needle-work pieces and some beautiful tassels on drapes that David Roche had specially made copying those in places like Versailles Palace.

A little later in the month I visited one of the jewels of South Australia - Kangaroo Island - with my daughter and her partner. It is quite close to home, being about 45 minutes to Cape Jervis and a 1 hour ferry ride, but as always priorities to travel elsewhere mean one doesn't necessarily go there often. It was actually about 30 years since our last visit which Rachel was too young to remember, but coincidently we booked into the same accommodation at Hanson Bay. It was all that I remembered and more. This was the view from our cabin.

and here are just a few other photos.
Cape Willoughby Lighthouse and old whale bones

Don't know why or how come, but spotted these turkeys beside the road.

Typical scrubland

and I loved these chomped leaves.

You can't not see a koala. There are concerns that they are over populated which is stressing and denuding the trees. We spotted them in the open, but these photos were taken in a wildlife park, where you have more chance of seeing them up close - and we were lucky.