Farewell to South Australia

Our last few days in Gawler were pretty busy.  We had the insurance work done on our caravan and now have a new awning roof and a new door to replace the ones that were damaged in a windstorm at Nabawa WA in September.

We continued with our sightseeing and spent a day visiting the Monarto Zoo, about an hour's drive out of Adelaide near Murray Bridge.  Monarto was to be a satellite city to Adelaide in the 1970s, a multi-function-polis.  The only problem was that no-one wanted to live there!




The zoo is an annexe of the Adelaide Zoo and is an open plains zoo.  There is an active breeding program for many of the animals.  We boarded the bus after lunch for a guided tour through the animal enclosures.

The animals are free to roam within their enclosures and we drove past mongolian horses (none left in the wild anywhere in the world), deer, antelope, bison and giraffes.  We saw an ostrich taking a dust bath (not quick enough with the camera though), hyena, zebra and lions.

Black and white rhinoceros are both endangered.  They are both grey with the white rhinoceros a misnaming of the dutch words for wide-mouthed (weid-mond).  The main difference is in size and in the structure of their mouths with black rhinoceros being smaller with a small, hook shaped mouth; they are close to extinction.  White rhinoceros are much larger with a larger, flatter mouth; endangered.  Their horns are made of keratin, like our hair and fingernails and are similar to horses hoofs.

After we got off the bus back at the visitor centre we walked to the chimpanzee enclosure.  On the way we passed the meerkats where we watched their amusing antics before wandering through Wallaby Gorge with its ring tailed yellow-footed rock wallabies.

Then it was on to the chimpanzee enclosure which is supported by the Jane Goodall Foundation.  Most of the chimpanzees were inside the state of the art, glass walled, air conditioned, internal enclosure.  Only a handful were out in the hot sun.  They're not stupid, it was about 37C and they are free to move in and out at will.

A great day and a great place to visit.

The next day we called into the Jet fighter Museum at Parafield Aerodrome.  Parafield is Adelaide's secondary airport and it caters mainly for private and charter planes and helicopters.

The Jet Fighter Museum is very hands on with many open cockpits for aspiring pilots to sit in.  There's a small amount of memorabilia and a few planes that are airworthy.  Some are used for tourist joy flights.  Some of the planes we saw were a Mirage, a Sea Venom, a drone, a Chipmonk and a Corsair.  We also had a guided tour of the workshop where restoration work is undertaken.