1 June 2013 – Adelaide River (horse races)

We spent an hour driving south today to Adelaide River.  Upon arriving at the Adelaide River Inn, we quickly checked in to the caravan park at the rear and went for a wander to see what we could find.  Across the road was a very small market operating with only a few stalls operating.  I think it took us less than 5 minutes to view all the markets.  We headed back to the Inn in search of our “mate” Charlie.  You might all remember the big buffalo that gets tamed in the movie Crocodile Dundee, well he took a visit to the taxidermist who stuffed him and stood him here in this pub.  His horns are of monstrous length!  They sold some cute little toilet covers here too, probably good for all you folk back in Sydney enjoying that cold weather.  The lid covers are cute woolly crocodile heads.  Back at the van we hit the good size swimming pool as the temp was again in the 30’s.  The girls were having some fun with Josh, whereby they were standing on his shoulders under the water and then he lurched up out of the water and the girls (well actually only Zoe) would then jump up off his shoulders and try to touch the shade cloth roofing that hung above.  It only took a few attempts and Zoe finally tipped the ‘roof’.  Sami on the other hand was only worried about jumping off his shoulders and doing a forward flip into the water…  still a bit of fun.  Mum and I watched on while paddling our feet and enjoying the laugh.  Shortly after we got our good shorts and shirts on and walked down the road in the soaring heat for about 1km to get the race track.  There were a heap of cars driving in towards the races and there were people everywhere.  The beauty of these races is that you can camp right alongside the racetrack – hence the people everywhere.  It looked like some had been set up for days and they were there to stay for quite a while.  We weaved through the people in search of a few chairs to sit on and were really fortunate to find half a table with some lovely local Darwin-arians with their son.  Josh was on fire as he usually is – right there on the losing side of course.  But that is part of the fun for the day.  The girls both had about 3 large slushees in about 3-4 hours while we were there keeping them well hydrated and on-the-go for the entire time.  Mix that with the usual carnival food of hot chips, chicken wings, etc. and we got our sugar and fat content for the day.  We ended up leaving just before the last race ran as the heat was nearly overbearing and we wanted to beat some of the crowd out.  On our walk back to the van, we passed a large contingent of police conducting the breath-testing just outside the gate and no doubt they would’ve caught a few.  We beat the heat back at the van by jumping back in the cool clear water of the pool and this time I got a few goes jumping from Josh’s shoulders.  To begin with, I couldn’t quite get my balance for the jump at the end but had a lot of laughs trying.  I did finally get the timing right and touch that roof but Josh’s shoulders had copped a beating so once I’d achieved my goal, he forfeited defeat of continuing to haul me out of the water.  It was thankfully another quiet night in the air-conditioned van tonight.  As we couldn’t get any tv reception, the five of us sat around and watched “Australia” – I love that movie!