Have I accidentally stumbled on Adelaide’s dirty secret?

Adelaide is, of course, known worldwide for its generous hospitality and welcoming ethos. Unlike our countrymen and women in the eastern states, we have very few ultra-right-wing groups and skinhead individuals with tattooed skulls of swastikas living here. Instead, we torture our guests by plying them with world-class wines from all over the state.

Friends I have taken on wine trips have confessed to me that the wineries and wine tasting are probably the most horrendous activities they have ever been subjected to. As a gesture of appeasement and being polite, they tell me, they buy crates and cartons of wine, which they later sacrifice to the gods. Many of them can be heard sacrificing to a god in the early hours of the morning, when they are spotted parking the tiger and talking to their chosen god on the big white telephone.

But I have discovered something hidden, secret and almost-evil about Adelaide, something that shocked me to the core. Well, that’s what I told Rosanna Mangiarelli. She declined the opportunity to pursue the story further. My mother did that to me once.

Once.

No, I’m not talking about the ritual Druid naked boomer dancing and already-dead rat sacrificing at Chookarloo in the Kuitpo Forest. I’m not talking about the Subaru WRX drag racing in the north-east suburbs by young Asian men. I’m not even talking about the sickening, horrendous noisy stirring of sugar in coffee cups at the Hyde Park Bakery (or, indeed, any of the cafes along that section of King William Road). Although I agree that such sickening behaviour is terribly infra dig.

No, what we are discussing here, dear friend, is the ritual abuse that exists and breeds in… Kurralta Park.

I know, I was shocked too! A genteel suburb that is slowly being gentrified, where old houses are being knocked down and redeveloped by the children of the recently-departed with much more modern and tasteful townhouses. Factories and warehouses are being pulled down and expensive and exclusive houses will be built in their place. The whole suburb is going to benefit from a massive valuation bump in the next five years—if you are looking to invest your dollars in property, Marleston and Kurralta Park are going to be Boomtowns.

BUT all that aside, this is where things go pear-shaped. I spend a fair amount of time driving from Agatha’s house to the excellent cafe, Froth & Fodder (they do excellent coffee, excellent juices, an excellent breakfast burger). The journey from Agatha’s to Froth & Fodder is only three minutes of driving—but those three minutes can be deadly! One takes one’s life in one’s hand.

Why?

You no doubt are aware that it is the custom in Adelaide to pull into the kerb to let cars pass when the narrow suburban street has cars parked on both sides. There’s no room for two cars to pass each other at the same time, so one will pull into the kerb and allow the other to continue driving past. Easy, and like the best cultures, performed by everyone, and the passing driver acknowledges your generosity of spirit by giving a friendly wave—’this is how things are done around here’. You as the waiting driver then acknowlege the kind gesture in return, by raising an index finger or raising one’s hand, palm facing the other driver of course.

Well, not in Kurralta Park. The drivers in Kurralta Park obvs didn’t get the Insta irrelevant-photo and memo. They don’t pull over, even when I am clearly in the driving seat; and even more galling, when I pull over and they drive though, they don’t even thank me! No hand wave, no raised index finger, no smile, not looking at me.

My late mother, the Dowager of Athelstone, would roll over in her grave. Except she was cremated and I scattered her ashes on Black Hill, but anyway, you get the point.

Kurralta Park is Adelaide’s dirty secret. They probably use canned salmon to make a salmon mouse. Heathens.