Police Cars and Wine

I rolled into Adelaide, and decided I was going to class it up a bit. I walked around the downtown for a while after indulging in the hostel's Free Pancake Day and ended up at the art gallery which was actually pretty cool because alongside the colonial portraits and a few Rodin sculptures were a few galleries of aboriginal art. The images are actually very complicated, telling long mythical stories of the Dreaming with what would to me look like just shapes and colours. Pretty neat actually. Keeping with the cultural theme, I also went to the museum which has the largest collection of Pacific Island artifacts in the world. My favorite, was, of course the mineral collection on the top floor. A gal can never get enough of hematite crystals or opalized calcite. Yeay! To finish the day I stopped off at the Central Market which was this wicked old warehouse full of different market stalls, all selling local fruits and vegetables and bread and honey and anything else you could possibly produce in South Australia. Buying local here is no great sacrifice.

I left the city, headed for McLaren Vale, which along with Barossa Valley is one of Australia's more famous wine regions. It was quite dark and I got a bit lost, but a friendly chap from the petrol station went out of his way to guide me with his own car to get me on the right road. I got to McLaren Vale at 8:30 and the RV park was already closed. I found the grocery store parking lot and pulled in near the back and snuggled up in my back seat for a sleep. I find that the best places to sleep in the car are in lots with other cars (perhaps with people on nightshift inside) so I don't look like a tempting target or too suspicious to police. Until that evening I was never quite sure what kind of grey area I was in, parking in public places overnight and having a snooze. Sometime in the middle of the night I was woken up by a car engine and voices outside. As my heart beat faster and I tried to remember whether I had locked all my doors, my closed eyes detected the brightness of a flashlight on my face. All I could hear was the voice of what I now assume to be a police officer saying "no worries, it's just a woman sleeping", and then I heard them drive off. My only guess is that someone on night shift recognized a strange car in the parking lot with fogged in windows and thought it was teenagers up to no good... rather reassuring when you think about it. If the police had nothing to do except check on suspicious vehicles in town, then I had little to worry about, crime-wise.

In the morning I stuck with the classy theme and did some wine tasting at a few wineries. I spent more on wine than I did on accommodation for the last three days, but it was damn good Shiraz. I'm staying in Warrnambool in a hostel and tomorrow will be off to the great city of Melbourne!

-A.