At 9:05 am every day, the Adelaide Explorer leaves from Bee Hive Corner.
At 9:20 am, just about every day, the Adelaide Explorer turns down my street and startles me into action. I race to the front door for the passing parade and, boxer shorted, stand smile and wave!
No one ever waves back. Not ever. Are the highlights so high, the commentary so compelling, that no notice is afforded the stark waving mad?
At 9:05 am, just the other day, the Adelaide Explorer left from Bee Hive Corner. I was aboard. I wore considerably more than short boxer shorts.
The Adelaide Explorer has been touring around town for about twenty years, or so said our driver, who had been at it for four. My fellow passengers had a few years under their own generous belts. Women at the window, men by the aisle, they were the gentle folk of a genteel generation. They sat well amongst the varnished wood panels and tiny light fittings and comfortably on cushions, multicoloured for mishaps (and extra absorbent to boot).
Our driver opened up into the mike. His priorities laid where bus drivers’ do.
“The roads are much wider in Adelaide than in other Australian cities. That’s the first thing people notice here,” he said to make sure of the fact.
Our driver went on to point out that Victoria Square boasts a statue of not only a Queen, but also a Kingston. Charles Cameron Kingston, a man who loved women so much he gave all women the vote. I learned Colonel Light rests beneath his namesake of a Square, and near Whitmore Square stands our nation’s first mosque. I was fascinated. I felt a fool. How little of one’s city could a citizen know? Though, I would have to say I was already aware of the “wide variety of recreation” said to go on in the south parklands.
It was time for my street. Time for my house! I looked out to the left. Everyone else looked right. They were admiring pretty houses, some of Adelaide’s oldest. Houses I had never noticed myself.
We trundled through Hutt Street and on to East Terrace where our driver, at last, discovered the pedal.
“Everyone lean right and we’ll roll the thing on this corner!” he said staying true to the rubber laid by the roaring V8s. There were nervous laughs from the group gravitas.
We puttered on past the Botanic Gardens. It overgrew to envelope us and embrace all around. I felt I was in a plaything of the parklands. Picked up, pandered and pitched over the Torrens.
To North Adelaide, where we were treated to tucked away streets and discreet restaurant tips. We toured Saint Peter’s Cathedral, the finest church in our city of churches, and past horses agisted in eucalypt woodland. A pause at Light’s Vision to give praise, never blame.
“Tour on” said our driver “to seaside Glenelg.”
After seeing some sobering sights working our way through the suburbs, we enjoyed a long and prominent Jetty Road drag. The ocean! And ice cream! Children splating from slides! It was good weather for waving. And the wavers were out! A waving mother, a father and their waving children. A dozen in deckchairs waved up from the ocean.
A final dubious detour past the sewerage works, another national first, took us up past the airport and back to home base. Back to Bee Hive Corner.
The Adelaide Explorer. Hop on and hop off. A ticket lasts for two consecutive days. It makes for a round trip to remember and for only two dollars, you can score an Adelaide Explorer of your very own. A magnet, attractive, for your fridge and your gaze. It costs quite a bit more to ride the real thing, but if you see it go past, remember, it costs nothing to stop and give it a wave.