365 New Zealand: Day 8: Australia Day!

Some of you might look at your calendar for 26 January and see a notation that says "Australia Day." This is a national holiday in Australia. I was lucky enough to be here to celebrate it. Australia Day commemorates the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of 11 convict ships from Great Britain, and the raising of the Union Jack at Sydney Cove by its commander Captain Arthur Phillip. It is a day to celebrate everything that is great about Australia and being Australian. It is, however, celebrated under some protest, including those who contend that Australia Day leaves out the original Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia.

Originally, I thought that Australia Day must be similar to America's Fourth of July. In some ways it is, but apparently Australians are not nearly as excited about displays of patriotism such as hoisting an Aussie flag or singing the Australian National Anthem (which I am working on learning - so far I know that it starts out: Australians all let us rejoice; for we are young and free... that's all I've got so far.) Apparently Australian media has been pumping for displays of Australianism on Australia Day, since we saw tons of people dressed in yellow and green (the colors of the leading sports team) or wearing Aussie flags as capes, towels, shorts, shoes, hats, tatoos, etc. Eve says she has never seen so much of that on Australia Day before.

To celebrate the holiday (it is the day before children return to school after their summer holidays) Eve and I went for a bike ride along the river Torrens in Adelaide. We rode about 16km (10 miles) from the city to the beach. There is a bike and walking trail along the Torrens called the Linear Park. It is quite beautiful and used by many people on bike or on foot.

The first thing we needed for our trip were bikes! We scrounged around in Eve's family's shed and found her dad Pete's bike, which he kindly let us use (it is a nice road bike) and Eve's bike, which she got for $50 from a Subway promotion. We did some maintenance on her bike and also found two helmets - one belonging to her dad and the other to her brother, which was more of a skateboarder's helmet than a bike helmet.

After Eve's admonishment to "ride on the left!" we were off, but right away faced a couple of challenges: I found that Pete's bike's brakes didn't really allow you to come to a complete stop, they would only slow you down. I also didn't understand at first how to shift gears. And Eve's bike was rife with issues: the handlebars were loose and would twist up and down in your hands and also move left and right; her rear tire was soft and she couldn't change gears at all! Undaunted, we slowly made our way to the beach, arriving about two hours later after several stops to tend to the bikes.

By this point in time, both of us were, as the Aussie's say, "stuffed" (exhausted) and the beach looked beautifully relaxing to our hot, stiff and sore bodies. We got some fish & chips from a local shop, as well as some skorthalia which is a greek garlic and potato dip that goes really well with pita or chips. Then we went for a swim and bobbed in the ocean for an hour or two. The water was a perfect temperature - not too cold but cool enough to be refreshing. Neither of us were too keen to ride all the way back along the Linear Parkway, so we caught a train back to the city. Our efforts to return to our car were thwarted by Australia Day, as we ran smack into the Australia Day parade after exiting the train station downtown. Our route was blocked by the parade so we had to wait it out. Once it had finished we cycled back to the car, drove home and then dashed to Eve's friend Hannah's house. It was after 7pm and we had told her we'd come over at 2! Luckily, Hannah's party was pretty low key since we were both tired. Despite all of the snags to our plans, it was a really fun way to spend my first Australia Day!