Soundwave

Everyone's been telling us we came to Adelaide at the right time, and so far it's been true. On Saturday we went to Soundwave, a huge music festival with 6 stages and a ton of bands from all around the world.



Even more drunken redneck teenagers showed up here than the Fringe! Can't wait to see what the Clipsal will be like.


Paramore was great, and Placebo followed them:


They did an awesome performance, but people went crazy for AFI:



The crowd was wild. Drunk people jumping everywhere and dirt, smoke, and dust getting all over. It was crazy but fun.



Then Jane's Addiction and Anthrax were playing as well. Celebrities all over the place!


Jimmy Eat World did an awesome show, and to top off the night, none other than Faith No More. They were epic!



Insane! When we left, there was a sea of hundreds of thousands of people walking down North Terrace, which closed a whole lane because of it.


Blurry picture, but you can see the craziness. So many drunk kids! I have to say that one of the only problems I have with this country is that the drinking age is 18. Much like in Canada, you get stupid kids acting even stupider even sooner.


^ A skateboard park on North Terrace on our way home that actually had more razor scooters than anything else. One 12 year old kid was about to beat me up for laughing at him. The attitude here is very British street punk with a large amount of the kids/teenagers. This dude reminded me of the co-star in Son of Rambow. Scenesters and rednecks make up the majority of the Adelaide population.




^ Surprisingly these are all projections onto the same building. The historic strip on North Terrace has become part of an art exhibition for the next week or two.


Random pix of cool places around town:



I'm starting work tomorrow so this will probably be the last post in a while. We met a few people over the weekend who told us about how cool Tasmania is, despite what we'd heard on recent documentary, so that's definitely on our list of places to go during our stay here. New Zealand will probably happen at the end of the 6 months so we can have more time to explore. Ok more to come soon. Peace from the future!

Cleland Wildlife Conservation Park

When you go to Australia, people will always ask "did you see any kangaroos or koalas?" and if you haven't, what else were you doing during the visit?? The problem is, you don't want to go to a zoo to see "native" animals, and you can't go roaming around the outback safely without a guide, and that could get expensive. Since we're in Adelaide and there aren't too many places that these animals exist in nature, we went to Cleland Conservation Park. The space all the animals lived in was very open, built on the environment, which was refreshing after coming from the zoo which was 80% concrete.



The Tasmanian Devil was hard to photograph because he kept moving around. Cute little bugger though!



The koalas actually had a line to see them, because they slept so much and would be rotated out for people to get pictures with. Not nearly as friendly or soft as we expected. Back to the kangaroos!






These guys were super soft and very friendly. We hung out with the roo's for a long time.


Random bug on a railing.


The emu's were a surprise. The bellowy sound they make, and the sheer size of them when they stand up is pretty scary. For the most part, though, they were very chill and just got to know us. Once we gained their trust, they would eat out of our hands.


Cuteness continues! The wallabies were awesome. They were like ratty little cats that just wanted food and love. It's becoming more apparent that all animals are the same, as all humans are the same.


The bandicoots were no exception! They were running all around the park freely. You'd randomly see a few running across the path, and even though they were really skittish, you could feed them. Marina even almost picked one up! This place is amazing, and we'll definitely be coming back often.

We missed the last bus and were talking to some American tourists who shared our feelings of how friendly everyone here is. They were waiting for a cab, so we decided to walk the very long hike down the hill to the bus. Less than 5 minutes later, an insanely nice German family picked us up and gave us a ride all the way back to town. At night we popped over to the Garden of Unearthly Delights for an amazing circus act, followed by a man who could breathe through his eyes. This guy has such an enlightened outlook on life and we left feeling immensely better about the world. I'll have to get a picture with him.


Last weekend we ran into this Aboriginal didgeridoo player on Rundle and he asked us to play along with sticks. He was, again, just a genuinely friendly person who just wanted to share his culture with the world. Aside from the white-trash meatheads with mullets (there are quite a few), the people around here are awesome and I can see why so many people want to visit.

Adelaide Fringe 2010!

Tonight was the first night of the Adelaide Fringe, a crazy month-long event of concerts and comedy shows. It started off with a parade right outside our place where just about the entire city showed up. This was probably the most people I've ever seen in one place at one time.








After the parade ended, the sea of people filled the roads (which were mostly closed off because of this) and the street performers came out to play. I apologize for the quality. My camera sucks at night:






^ This is a really blurry shot, but you can somewhat make out the scale of this concert. Thousands of drunken smoking teenagers WOO!

Since we're right off the main street, I can't imagine we'll be sleeping much the next few weeks, but it's a lot of fun so far. Surfing possibly Sunday!

The Garden of Unearthly Delights

The Fringe Festival has started, and the first part of it is this carnival across the street.








It's got a few rides (ferris wheel, spinning puker of death, etc), a ton of eclectic food stands as usual, but what's cool about it are the classic carny themes. There's a freakshow, midgets/little people, a flaming unicyclist, and a large variety of shows ranging from comedy, musical, to adult.



It's very much the Sam & Max carnival. The Garden is free to get in and you can choose which shows you want to see once you're there, and most of them are fairly cheap. We saw a performance called Zeitgeist that was very unique, although strange beyond explanation. Next week we're going to try and see The Axis of Awesome, and comedic musical group, and pretty soon all the big bands from all around the world will be here for Fringe. Can't wait!