Now with Beer Garden for our smoking patrons.
Story and pics here: http://city-messenger.whereilive.com.au ... d-and-odd/
Tour city’s good, bad and odd
18 FEB 09 @ 12:53PM BY ADAM TODD
SO YOU think you know the city?
The leaf stem that’s giving David Jones the finger? The Rundle Mall window that’s been cut in half? Or the Coat of Arms around the wrong way?
All are visible from the city’s streets and people probably walk past them a thousand times without noticing.
These and dozens of other Adelaide oddities will form a bizarre tour of the city at the Fringe Festival.
Called The Walking Tour of the Good, the Bad and the Bloody Odd, comedian Hannah Gadsby will lead people around the city, revealing the stories behind some of Adelaide’s most peculiar sights.
and the stories behind them.
“This is a slightly more tongue-in-cheek activity, poking fun at some of the weird things in Adelaide that you might not notice until somebody brings them to your attention and then you can’t not notice,” she said.
“It’s about encouraging people to keep their eyes open as they walk around the city.”
Burge said the leaf stem on North Tce was a particularly prominent, but often missed, example.
“It’s on the building to the west of the David Jones building, and on the top left-hand corner has a leaf structure with an extended middle finger.
“The story behind that is apparently when David Jones was expanding (in the 1990s) they were knocking down a number of highly-valued buildings and the people next door were so incensed that they installed this leaf, commenting on the bronze leaves that are part of the David Jones facade.”
Another interesting one is the Coat of Arms above the Grenfell St entrance to the Adelaide Arcade. The emu and kangaroo are the wrong way around.
When the arcade was built in 1885, Australia was not yet a nation and did not have an official Coat of Arms.
The story goes the arcade’s owner wanted a Coat of Arms to decorate the entrance and picked the winning design from a public competition, under the assumption it would be adopted.
It largely was, but the official Coat of Arms, adopted in 1908, placed the emu on the right and the kangaroo on the left.
Further down Rundle Mall, there is an odd looking window on the first floor above a shopfront at the western end.
“I think it’s a Polites building and it’s just half a window,” Ms Burge said.
“It just looks really strange.”
Not all of the locations are visually unusual, some just have an interesting story.
“The Marine Harbours Board building is a particularly lovely building on Victoria Square, just north of Grote St,” Ms Burge said.
“It was put on rollers and moved 34m north to allow what was the SGIC building to be built.
“The idea of putting it on rollers so that thumping ugly big SGIC building could be built just seems so bizarre and you just question why certain decisions have been made.”
* There are two one-hour tours, departing from Queen’s Theatre, on the corner of Gilles Arcade and Playhouse Lane, on March 8, at 2pm and 3pm. Limited places, call 8100 2003 to register.
