The Old Gum Tree

This is where the proclamation for South Australia was made more than 150 years ago.

There’s this old gum tree which was where the proclaimation was made for the colonisation of South Australia. I saw it in the tourist flyers and tried to walk to it thinking I would be seeing a very old tree. I couldn’t find it but today when I mentioned to Steve and Rick I found out that it actually a dead tree. We went to take a look it anyway, on the where to (another) Steve’s house up in the hills to celebrate his completion of his Ph.D. The second Steve is already 57 and he spent about 8 years part-time working on his thesis while teaching full time at UniSA. Met a few interesting people, a couple promoting cycling and another who’s wife is from Seremban and doing a lot of work on sustainability. The old gum tree is at Glenelg which is the original site for Adelaide. It’s really interesting learning about a Brit who kidnapped rich underage heiresses, married them and ended up in jail and they consider him the father of South Australia. It seems that when he was in jail he wrote some letters promoting the systematic colonisation of South Australia. And this guy Edward didn’t even get to set foot on public.

Matthew, left, at our first meeting and briefing for the 20 students going to Penang next month.

Had dinner at Matthew’s place last night. Hey, did I say I brought the stork with me? His wife Jenny went into labour on the morning I arrived in Adelaide. And they were actually planning to drive me around that morning. So our schedule is all upside down but we will manage.

With old friends Rick and Steve on the left and Hillary (above)

Below is the Glenelg beach and jetty.

Got a chance to explore the Central Market further and discovered that there’s a lot more than I thought. Found a shop selling kangaroo meat. Maybe one of these nights I wll buy some and throw it in the oven for dinner.

Monday Patrick James, the Head of School of Natural and Built Environmental will show me Mawson Lake campus and has asked me to sit in on a meeting on active learning with their consultant from Gloucestershire. Looking forward to that.

Written on 9th Aug 2008