Down Undercover: An Englishman In Australia

PART II: EXPLORATION

Dawn split over the River Torrens as I crossed the gleaming glass footbridge from the CBD to the northern parklands, and the Adelaide Oval. The bridge had only been opened a few weeks before my arrival in Adelaide, and it was, as usual at this time in the morning, being kept fastidiously clean by a pair of workers with litter pickers and brooms. In the evenings, the glass rails along the sides of the bridge are underlit with colourful LED’s, and thousands of people amble in that glorious state of noisy joy that infects sorts of crows, from the railway station to the Oval, and back again later. Now, however, it was deserted, except for me and the cleaners, and foreign songbirds tweeted along its length as it swept over the and the free-to-use pedalos (complete with parasols) bumped quietly together at the jetty below. The sun cracked over the Eastern skyline, peeping a glorious orange between the University buildings upstream, and I stuck to the left-hand edge of the bridge, so as to catch its warming rays. It had not escaped my attention that I would be doing the opposite in a few months, as the oppressive summer heat I had been promised set in. I faintly wondered if this biannual migration from the warming sunlight to the cool shade would mean a vaguely even wearing of pavements across the city.

I was on my way to the gym; a habit which had infected me since my arrival; attached as it was to a dim notion of becoming harder, better, faster and stronger, as if somehow to rise to the standard of the new continent. I had found a pricey but well-equipped centre near the stadium, and set about a regular routine. Today, after my workout, I decided to head a little further north to explore some of the park that surrounded the CBD, as the core of the city was known.

Adelaide was designed a city; in the early 19^th century, a British chap named Colonel William Light stuck a pole in the ground somewhere nearby, and decided that he would erect there the capital city of the newly founded state of South Australia, which was to form the first freely settled colony of the continent. He designed the city, named it after an obscure royal, and began construction just in time to expire and be buried in one of his brand new squares. Colonel Light had planned Adelaide to be a central grid, approximately one mile square, surrounded by public parkland, with suburbs and whatever else spreading outwards from that. Gloriously, his plan was realised, and his vision evidently lived on in the town’s curators, for today the heart of the city – the CBD, as it is known, exists exactly as intended, and is still surrounded by the lush public space that Light envisaged.

On this particular Wednesday morning, I skirted around the stadium, whose high brick walls and brilliant white roof glowed in the morning sun, and ventured into the large green space, criss-crossed by paths and the occasional road, gazing happily at the eucalypts which seem to dominate the South Australian flora. Seeing these trees reminded me faintly that I was yet to see any of the infamous Australian wildlife I had so eagerly anticipated; at this moment, I wished for a taipan to be lying in the sun, a saltwater crocodile to bask on the riverbank, and some assortment of bulbous and generously-fanged spiders to hang from oversized webs in the tree branches. What I in fact saw was a pair of pigeons; a large black and white bird which is known locally as a magpie, and which is not, in fact, a corvid; and a fat Australian man sweating his way along the path.

Adelaide’s layout is one of its principle assets, and being included within the heart of the town itself was a privilege onto which I hung in the face of my exorbitant rent. In fifteen minutes, I could walk to any part of the town I might wish to visit, in sixty seconds I could be at a major railway station and on my way further afield, and no matter where I was in the CBD, I would never be more than ten minutes from the large park which surrounded it. The space, and quiet, and general pleasantness in which I now found myself made me muse on what a city could be; a glorious and well thought-out tribute to public enjoyment was not a design concept I had previously encountered in British towns, and I smiled at the thought of picnics there in the summer.

Later that day, as I sat waiting for a lecture in a small classroom in the University, a classmate asked me the inevitable question, “Why did you choose Adelaide?” I always found this a difficult question to answer, for two reasons; firstly, the real reason I chose Adelaide was that it had offered Southampton 30 student places, and so I would not have to compete to go there, an answer which I felt might faintly dissatisfy a local interviewer; and secondly, because I didn’t really have the faintest idea why I had come on an exchange in the first place. Essentially, I was sat in my room in Southampton a few months previously, dribbling gently onto some homework, when I received a mass-email advertising a meeting about exchange trips. Being a seasoned procrastinator, I postponed my salivation for an hour and went along, out of a faint curiosity. Initially, I had wanted to go to France (I know some French and thought such immersion would provide just the sort of suicidal challenge to make my return to Southampton seem like a jackpot), but that exchange, I was told, after a few enquiries some weeks later, would not be possible, so I hummed for a few seconds over a list of nations, and decided I might explore Terra Australis. I sent an email, jotted my address on an interest form, and found myself making late-night calls to the other hemisphere to arrange academic modules, as much for something different to do as because of any belief that I might actually go. A few more weeks went by, and I was purchasing flights online. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, I was southward-bound.

Nonetheless, I had to answer; why did I choose Adelaide? ‘Adelaide is a very pleasant city’, I began earnestly to my enquiring colleague. ‘It’s got parks, and the fringe festival, and…’ and would vaguely trail off here. I was very glad that I chose Adelaide, but I knew what he wanted to know; why didn’t I go to the big city; Sydney perhaps, or Melbourne? These were the cities I was supposed to consider when I thought of Australia, indeed, these were the cities that Australians considered when they thought of Australia, so how did I end up in such a backwater as Adelaide? For so Adelaide is considered here; despite its sure ranking as a cultural centre, with year-round festivals and a bright, modern appearance, it has a high average age, and is generally thought of as the quiet, unexciting, conservative, plodding end of the Australian nation.

My answer is always a little unsatisfying.

“Well,” I said, as always when asked this, “I got an email. It said, ‘Do you want to go on an exchange? Come to this meeting’ and so on. I thought, ‘Yeah, I’d like to go to France.’ So I ended up in Adelaide.”

So I suppose that if I have a point to make here, it is that exchanges are a wonderful way of doing something totally unexpected, and totally wonderful, for very little reason at all. Consequently, I can hardly recommend the experience highly enough.