"City of Churches or the Wine capit ..." a Adelaide Travel Page by SPW

Adelaide has always been tagged City of Churches, and there are plenty of them, or perhaps The Festival City after its popular Arts Festival and World Music festival (Womad) but now there are grapevines everywhere. They grow on median strips, over pub verandahs, in backyards and of course in all the nearby wine making centres: the Barossa and Claire valleys, McLaren Vale, Limestone Coast and Coonawarra.
Having visited Adelaide several times over the years, it has been amazing to see how it has grown, though it still retains the atmosphere of a large contry town. My daughter, who now lives there, remarked that people in the street smile and seem less hurried and more relaxed than people in Melbourne, and the population seems less ethnically diverse.
My memories of the Advertiser Building being the only "high rise" building, at about 11 storeys have to be replaced by this more modern cityscape. The view is from Colonel Light's statue in North Adelaide. Light was appointed in 1836 as the first Surveyor General of the new colony and was responsible for the site of its capital, and for the layout of the city with its highly prized 'green belt', a ring of both formal and informal parkland which surrounds the city.

The view from Light's statue encompasses the historic Adelaide Oval with its modern light towers. This has been the home of first class cricket in Adelaide, with gates honouring the late Victor Richardson a brilliant all round sportsman from the early 20th Century (representing Australia in 3 sports), but probably better known in recent years as the grandfather of the Chappell brothers, all three of whom represented Australia. The prowess of Ian and Greg Chappell 's long careers may not be as well remembered as their brother Trevor's infamous bowling of an underarm ball against New Zealand, widely criticised for being an unsporting gesture.