Continuing our travels

We took a little day trip to Glenelg, which really is a southern suburb of Adelaide only about 30 minutes drive from us. What a spectacular place - just beautiful. It' right on the beach...a little resort town full of neat restaurants and shops. It's a busy place with lots going on - buskers, camel rides on the beach(??), an amusement park for the kids.

The highlight of Glenelg though was the Rodney Fox Shark Museum - filled with pictures and memorabilia of his 40-year relationship with great whites. If you don't know who he is, the short story is that he's the once abalone diver who was attacked by a great white (I'm sure you've seen the famous pictures of his wound) who now dedicates his life to protecting them. He has been featured in National Geographic is is known all over the world - read about him at http://www.rodneyfox.com.au/. Just in case you're interested, go to that site and see some of the pictures in the Gallery that were taken during his Port Lincoln shark diving expeditions (I mentioned these in the last posting). Anyways, back to Glenelg...we arrive at the front desk to pay our admission to the museum and I am asked by a very nice lady (who realized that we were foreigners) what brought us there. I told that I knew the story of Rodney Fox and had seen many of his documentaries and admired his work. She said something like..."well you can tell him yourself" and he steps out from behind the counter. Turns out she is is wife and we had a lovely chat - it was a real honor to meet him.

On to the next adventure - we had our first encounter with an Australian beastie of the creepy crawlie sort. I was up late by myself and was just locking the doors. All the lights were out, except for the TV and as I walked through the kitchen (in my bare feet), I caught something out of the corner of my eye on the floor. I thought is was a lizard, realized it wasn't and thought that maybe it was a small snake. At that point, I had the good sense to back up and turn on a light. Turns out the bugs here are BIG, really freakin' BIG. It was a fine specimen of the Giant Australian Centipede and before you click on this link, keep in mind that this thing was about 5" long and the body (not including the legs) as thick as my index finger http://images.zacharoo.com/animals/centipede/centipede.html. Anyways, me being me, I captured it under a plastic container for the night so that I could show everyone else my find in the morning. Dug was not nearly as enthusiastic about it as the girls were, but the girls and I had a Free Willy moment and let it go in the garden. I have also learned a very valuable lesson - to shut the doors before it gets dark and wear slippers.