Destination: Adelaide

Featured in

  • Published 20070306
  • ISBN: 9780733320569
  • Extent: 280 pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm)

IN THE DAYS when seatbelts were optional and parents smoked in the car without a second thought, Adelaide was a destination. We visited my grandfather. He gave us bags of copper coins and we spent them in department stores. Adelaide had movies and music, trains and a tram. It had traffic lights and Hindley Street and Sportsgirl in the Mall.

I came to university and thought I had arrived. I had black stirrup pants, a paisley shirt, new sunglasses and my own cheque-book. I bought my first carafe of red. On hot days, I went to the Art Gallery. I saw Michael Hutchence, Bono and Annie Lennox. Live at Memorial Drive. Hoodoo Gurus in pubs. But only four years later, degree complete, the department stores weren’t that big and Hindley Street wasn’t that long. Jobs were too hard to find, too easy to lose.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

Fly in, fly far away

MemoirTHE ARGUMENT IN the car starts the way it always does. One brother’s arm is around the other’s shoulders, the two are wrestling, both...

More from this edition

Disturbing undertones

EssayAUSTRALIAN FICTION WRITERS have, until the last few decades, avoided settling in Canberra and writing about the city in their novels and short stories....

The words to say it

EssayTHE FUNERAL WAS held in a rural town in New South Wales on the hottest day that year. I nodded at the priest and...

The antidote of multiculturalism

EssayWinner, 2008 Australasian Association of Philosophers Media PrizeA CRUEL IRONY has marked recent Australian social policy. Reconciliation between indigenous and settler Australians – which...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.