Almanac Running: Running North Terrace
I’m jogging west along Adelaide’s most distinguished boulevard on this dazzling Sunday morning. Much of this street I’ve never explored.
The footpath is wide and tree-lined, and the streets are hushed, empty. The warm weather’s more akin to October and not late May so I flip between viewing this as serene and approaching apocalypse. Claire had an Auslan interpreting job at the Lion Arts Factory — a burlesque dance competition — so we decamped to the Intercontinental (Hotel not a nuclear-armed ballistic missile).
Next door, the Adelaide Convention Centre sprawls— so vast, Boeing could assemble planes in it. I enjoy it best at big events like the Cellar Door Festival when over splashes of red wine and among the Merlot-ed masses, Claire and I whisper in snug, secretive ways.
I pass the medical precinct — towering, assured, glittering — on which I’ve never set foot. Formerly overlooking the railyards, it was the road to nowhere. Like much of our privileged world, its function has transitioned from industrial to knowledge, a Victorian badlands to a district of profound applied intellect.
A duo of male joggers materialises. Relaxed with each other, they’re chatting comfortably. We exchange a chirpy round of, ‘Morning.’
I cross the terrace at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. It’s among the most expensive buildings on the planet. With relief rather than pride, I nod at this thought. Nuclear plants, much of Singapore, and those futuristic Gulf state mirages, all sit higher up the list. Even the American football stadium at Inglewood, in LA, cost more (five billion) and yet much of it is (fake) grass. How could this be?
The Newmarket Hotel stands silent, a ghost ship. Its legacy is to the nomenclature of glassware with the butcher, named for the small beer preferred by abattoir workers at lunchtimes. Where can we now find these 200ml tumblers? Maybe in lonely country pubs. Are these victims of the American (read: global) trend for upsizing?
Peering in at a cluster of UniSA buildings, it’s another mysterious pocket of North Terrace, an architectural Siberia. The intriguingly named Elton Mayo building (a pianist and salad dressing hybrid) has an almost mocking confidence. One day, I should stroll in. He was a celebrated psychologist.
Striding along now. The Oaks Horizon. We had a couple of stays there with my boys to explore the city. I wanted them to experience Adelaide’s cultural riches and investigated the Botanic Gardens, Museum, and Art Gallery. We also played mini golf at Holey Moley near Hindmarsh Square. Education complete at the Pancake Kitchen.
Red and blue flashing lights and my heart quickens. What? Why? A paused police car menaces a white SUV just by the Stamford Plaza. I amble through during that tense interlude when the car-of-interest stops and the pair of police alight — adjusting their belts, straightening their navy caps — and I imagine the driver’s halting, ‘Morning, Officer. Is there a problem?’ What has gone badly at breakfast on this Sunday?
A convenience store window offers a super deal: two unlikely allies finally together — Farmers Union Iced Coffee and a ham and cheese croissant. I’m proud that South Australia is one place where Coke is outsold — Glasgow and its carbonated Irn-Bru being another. Bravo, iced coffee! Take that Paris! Take that Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré! Take that Atlanta!
No traffic. Flouting the crossing light’s red man, I scurry over King William Road. I see solitary pedestrians, the homeless interrupted by dawn into forlorn, shuffling movement and I’m grateful for my fortune. Turning around at the former Botanic Hotel, there’s evocations of my untroubled university life. The building’s majestic, its raucousness now becalmed.
With the sun on my face, the future technopolis of Lot 14 swims into view. It’s only hoardings and a barren block but could erupt suddenly, all dazzling glass and steel. Taking in the University of Adelaide and Bonython Hall’s honeyed façade, I’m reminded, not unjustly, of Bath and Oxford.
This is a handsome boulevard.
Kintore Avenue dips down to the River Torrens and hosts the State Library. I spent hours there at uni — the reading room’s newspapers (Ooh, there’s the Wagga News) and borrowing Steely Dan cassettes to play in my HQ Holden. The ease of shaping my days with leisure and study.
Adelaide remains tranquil and I again spy the pair of male joggers. They’re still nattering and unbothered by exertion. It could be a pre-coffee pretense.
The casino emerges. Australian cities have increasingly thorny relationships with these, and glamour has largely given way to wretchedness. Seeking dinner last night, Claire and I foolishly walked through one of its eateries. Glaring lights. Cafeteria tables. All the allure of a Soviet hospital. We declined.
Adelaide Casino’s a boorish, puffed-up pokies barn. You could get in wearing double-plugger thongs. Nearly. It annexed the splendid Railway Station. But I remember being disgorged from the Gawler train in the 1980’s, heading to the one-day cricket and this rushes back to me, riotously. Eskies, flags, Adidas Romes. AB, whistling kegs, zinc.
I jog on, buoyant, smiling at my younger self and his friends.
Outside the Intercontinental’s an idling fire truck with Technical Rescue emblazoned on its side. Ignoring these blue and red lights, the hotel elevator then ejects me on the seventeenth floor.
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About Mickey Randall
Now whip it into shape/ Shape it up, get straight/ Go forward, move ahead/ Try to detect it, it's not too late/ To whip it, whip it good
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I may have borrowed those very same cassettes; my technical rescue involved an hexagonal HB pencil. The Library currently has an exhibition re the history of Holden, I wasn’t aware of the contribution made to the WWII effort.
Do you reckon the Museum’s scruffy stuffed lion swishes his tail 24/7 or do they switch him off overnight?
Adelaide has a lot to recommend it, Mickey. I am always drawn to the northern part of the city.
Your casino observations are spot on. I recall the excitement and glamour of attending the Adelaide Casino in the 1980’s, not long after it opened. One had to ‘dress up’ to get through the door!! Five years later I swear there was a bloke out front with a hook, trying to drag in reluctant passers-by.
Nice work. Love the descriptions. The old 5UV used to be on North terrace – a place where many an enjoyable hour was spent.
Mickey – as a long time runner I related to, and enjoyed your story very much. Lovely part of Adelaide too, for a reflective and memorable jog.
Thanks, Swish. I had Aja out almost continuously. Have a fortnight off soon so can investigate the museum lion and report. Apropos of nothing, am heading down to Noarlunga for the footy. Looking forward to my debut SANFL sitting in the car and spectating experience!
Smokie – the bloke with the hook quit! Or took a job as a minor character in a Les Norton book.
5UV has been rebranded as Radio Adelaide and has some decent programming. The Range features local music and interviews; goes well on the drive home. I’m not sure if the studio’s still there, Barry but Radio Adelaide broadcasts on Greenhill Road, close to where SA-FM began!
Thanks, Allan. It’s a great way to be a tourist, either somewhere new or in a place you should know well!
Great read Mickey. But you forgot to mention the bacon, the eggs, the toast, the pancakes, the sausages, the cheese, the crackers and the yoghurt you also enjoyed post boulevard run! Although not the hot noodle however! X
Lullaby, murmur, tranquility. All among the most beautiful words in English. To this list add, ‘buffet breakfast included.’ Thanks, Someone.
Enjoyed this snapshot of Adelaide Mickey.
How good were the days of heading off to the one-day cricket with great excitement.
Long may Coke be outsold in Adelaide.
Adelaide one-dayers began at 10 and the gates opened at 8. By about 8.07 the first kegs at the scoreboard bar were empty and the whistling as the stems were released was always met with great cheers. We sat on the small hill in the south-eastern corner. We’d get up around 6, drive to Gawler and catch the train to Adelaide around 7. Before the first ball, there’d been much travel, chat, excitement and anticipation. The teams would be announced about 9.45. Hookesy left out again!
Thanks, Luke.
Enjoyable read Mickey. Didn’t drop into the Gov’s for a cuppa?
The casino is an abomination. Tragic use of a wonderful old building.
People who can multi-task by running and talking at the same time can be annoying.
The earlier days of one-dayers and Tests – no incessant ear-spltting ground announcements and crapulous music snippets that now pervade our senses between overs or at a break in play. Just the murmur of spectators and the odd barracker. McGilvray’s voice echoing quietly from transistors around the ground. And on graduating to the stands, the hum of the huge ceiling fans on forty degree days.
Footnote: Doors now seem to be closed at the Ambassador Hotel or whatever it was lately named on King William Street.
Saw the headline for your piece a few days before reading it, Mickey. Started mentally wandering up and down the North Terrace of my mind in the 1960’s and 70’s. Long summer holidays down from the bush wandering the sophisticated streets of the metropolis, armed with a bus fare and Nan’s fritz and tomato sauce sandwiches. None of your metwurst muck back then.
First stop was the Newspaper Lending Library opposite the War Memorial (snap!). I wasted days in there imagining life in London, New York, Sydney or Wagga. The world was my ink fingered oyster. I was particularly drawn to the London Illustrated News and Britain of the Swinging Sixties. Drawn back often (“like a dog it’s vomit”) to the 1966 Aberfan issue with a whole Welsh town suddenly buried under a coal dust avalanche. The pictures of the Pompeii of the pits held a morbid fascination. A prelude to global warming’s fate for us all?
The Stamford Plaza is now where The Beatles held court to 300,000 from the balcony of the South Australian Hotel. Crowds flooded the Terrace and the Parliament House and Railway Station forecourts opposite. Premier Tom Playford feared a rerun of the Storming of the Bastille or perhaps anticipated the January 6 2021 “Liberation Day rescue” of the US Congress.
Just further south News Limited’s finest (Rupert had just moved on to limiting news and thought on Fleet Street) graced the front bar of the Strathmore Hotel as soon as the country edition was given it’s elevenses. My first job in the early 70’s enabled me to rub shoulders with the Kevin Sattler’s and Alan Shiell’s of the world over a lunchtime schooner – imagining that one day I too would grace the back pages of a legendary sporting publication like The News or (eventually) The Almanac.
“Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories; They’re all that’s left you”
(Bookends – Paul Simon)
Peter Crossing – strolling past Adelaide oval later that day during the Crows and Eagles match, I noted the fans, the Big Ass fans spinning slowly. A worry for late May. I think the Ambassador Hotel became the King William and we popped in about a year ago when the paint was barely dry. Oh well, this is an accelerating trend.
PB – thanks for your rich recount and for confirming where the location of the South Australian Hotel (a bit young to recall). I reckon that’s the first description of the Beatles’ visit that doesn’t mention ‘Big’ Bob Francis!
Thanks very much!