THE ESSENCE of OZ

I’ve been going to australia almost every year for the past 15, but I didn’t discover Adelaide until 1994, when I was invited to speak at Writers’ Week, part of the biennial Adelaide Festival. Since then my visits to Australia have taken on a new pattern. As soon as I finish with business, I head for Adelaide for a bonza (good) time.

Once there, I dine, shop and immerse myself in Australian art, culture and history. Its climate is perfectly Mediterranean--dry warm days and cool nights--and it’s just a short drive to spectacular beaches and impressive aboriginal sites from this corner of the continent Aussies call “Oz.”

Unlike the rest of Australia, whose first settlers were a ragtag parade of deported English convicts, Adelaide was planned. British colonists were carefully screened before they were let in. No riffraff allowed. In the 1830s, founder Col. William Light specified that solid Victorian brick houses and massive stone public buildings should line carefully laid-out streets, and all should be surrounded by manicured parks and botanical gardens.

The city still evokes the colonel’s small-town English gentility. But looks are deceiving. Adelaide, the coastal capital of the state of South Australia, is home to a million people whose diverse ethnic backgrounds, cuisines and entertainments have transformed the once-staid city known for its large number of churches.

Serious changes began in the late 1960s, with the administration of progressive state Premier Don Dunstan. During his years in office (1967-’68 and 1970-’79), Dunstan promoted arts, culture and civil rights. Artists and intellectuals flocked to the city and helped create a renaissance.

Adelaide became known as “The Festival City” and, to the surprise of the rest of Australia, began leading the way in everything from music and dance to architecture and city planning. When the country’s culinary revolution began here in the 1980s, fast-moving Sydney and pokey old Melbourne had to move aside. Adelaide became a hot tourist destination.

Col. Light’s intention, that Adelaide become a city dedicated to “leisure and pleasure,” has emphatically been realized.

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ON THAT FIRST TRIP TO ADELAIDE TWO YEARS AGO, I DECIDED I needed a crash course on aboriginal culture. With Australian friends helping me select the high points, we started at the South Australian Museum, in the center of town.

During the early years of South Australia’s settlement, European teachers, missionaries and explorers fanned out to colonize the vast central area known as the Northern Territory. Many of the finest art and artifacts that they borrowed, bought or stole from the aboriginals were funneled to Adelaide. The museum now houses the world’s largest and finest collection of aboriginal works, everything from religious fetishes to musical instruments. It’s the most dazzling introduction to a culture that I’ve ever seen.

There I learned about “The Dreamtime,” as the aboriginals’ ancestral history is called, and “The Dreaming,” the stories of an oral history spanning more than 40,000 years. These folk tales tell how the continent’s landscape acquired its present form and how everything from people to plants was created. The Dreaming is the largest source of imagery in aboriginal art and almost every artifact has been designed with it in mind.

As part of my three-day whirlwind tour, we spent that first afternoon with guide Robert Moore, visiting ancient aboriginal sites in the bordering Adelaide Hills.

Much of The Dreaming has been lost since European settlers ar-

rived, Moore said. “It’s like piecing a historical jigsaw back together, because all we have left is the art.” Pointing to a drawing on the walls of a hillside cave, he said, “When all we have left is a cave drawing, we have to ask the elders to remember their stories and interpret The Dreaming to fit it.”

Some of the sites we visited were so recently discovered that they weren’t listed on the register of historic places. Moore, a specialist in aboriginal culture, and other scientists and historians have spent the past 15 years finding and verifying sites. On several occasions, Moore brought aboriginal elders to see for the first time what had been their ancestral land. “The hairs stood up on their necks as they felt the intensity of the place,” he said.

Later, Moore pointed to a rock lying next to a billabong, or watering hole. What we all thought was an ordinary stone, scientists think is a 40,000-year-old hand ax. Wasn’t he afraid someone would steal it? No, he said, he had been pointing it out to tourists for 15 years and no one has touched it. “It’s just too sacred,” he said.

On my second day, I took a “bush walk” through the city’s Botanic Garden with Kevin O’Laughlin, whose name belies his aboriginal origins. The traditional lands of O’Laughlin’s group lay just east of Adelaide. He described the more than 600 separate groups (aboriginals do not like the word “tribe”) who inhabited Australia and how they used The Dreaming stories to educate the young. He told me some of them--of how kangaroos run in circles and bees return to hives. All relate to nearby landscapes or to surviving in the bush, Australia’s vast interior wilderness.

Much of The Dreaming knowledge is privileged information, however. While he explained how one group extracted ocher-colored dyes from the red gum eucalyptus, O’Laughlin would not demonstrate the process because, he said, he is not an “initiated man” of that group.

He could, however, demonstrate how to get sugar from banksia, a bottle-brush shaped fruit, and how mulga seeds were good for “damper,” a kind of bread baked over an open fire. After a brisk morning following O’Laughlin as he pointed out examples of bush tucker (that’s Oz talk for food) in the gardens, I was hungry, so my friends and I set off for the Red Ochre, one of several restaurants in Adelaide specializing in native ingredients.

We sampled almost everything on the menu: baskets of damper, fresh asparagus with sauteed sea blight (a plant native to the local coast), pasta with warrigal (sort of like spinach), emu (but only after convincing myself it was OK to eat the national bird), grilled kangaroo filets in a spicy sauce, and quandongs, tiny bush peaches that taste like tart nectarines.

My next stop that afternoon was the Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Institute, which concentrates on contemporary art by aboriginal artists. The modestly priced museum-quality paintings and artifacts in the center’s gift shop were irresistible. I think I bought one of everything made by Balarinji Designs, from umbrellas to earrings. This design collection combines traditional aboriginal art with stunning contemporary graphics.

All that shopping made me thirsty, but my friends insisted that a cafe was off limits until I completed at least part of the city’s walking tour. The local tourist commission has produced an audiotape covering the entire city. I saw a brief film and picked up a cassette and player at Ayers House, the grandest of all the city’s Victorian mansions and now a museum of 19th century Australian art and domesticity.

The audio tour takes one along the North Terrace area of town and around the corner to trendy Rundle Street, lined with restaurants, sidewalk cafes and coffee bars. Adelaideans like to compare Rundle Street to New Orleans because of its lacy wrought-iron balconies, but its corrugated iron roofs and orange brick walls seem typically Australian to me.

On later trips, I discovered Scoozi and Eros, which I like as much for their food as their names, but we stopped at the Universal Wine Bar that first time. It carries at least 200 of South Australia’s world-famous wines by the bottle. We ordered oysters, sat at a balcony table and watched the local glitterati air-kiss and table-hop.

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THE LARGEST OF THE “FESTIVAL CITY’S” numerous celebrations (which feature everything from roses to vintage cars to pipe-and-drum bands) is the biennial Adelaide Festival, which will be held next in February-March--autumn Down Under--of 1998. Writers and performers from all over the world perform folk music and opera, dance and cutting-edge drama in concert halls, arenas, warehouses, sheds and lofts as diverse as the works themselves.

Australians and a growing international audience plan their vacations around Adelaide’s festivals. This fall (their spring), my husband and I are attending the annual Barossa Festival of Music in the renowned wine-growing Barossa Valley, about an hour’s drive north of Adelaide. Here, classical musicians perform in impressive outdoor settings, historic buildings and in the wineries, where audiences cluster among kegs and barrels in vaulted brick spaces.

The Barossa Valley is just one of many attractions close to Adelaide. It’s only an hour’s drive south to the wineries and craft shops of McLaren Vale or a 45-minute ride on the antique wicker-and-wooden tram to the coastal suburb of Glenelg, or a half-hour hop on a tiny excursion plane south to Kangaroo Island (next stop: Antarctica). The island separated from the mainland so many eons ago that it shelters plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth.

One popular day trip is to the nearby village of Hahndorf, founded by German immigrants in the last century. The shops seem to be plucked straight from Bavaria. The local cuckoo clock museum and brick-oven bakery are strictly Black Forest. And, despite being in an area where it seldom rains, the roofs have a steep Alpine pitch.

The Barossa Valley is reached via the Adelaide Gorge, a spectacular canyon that opens onto a blaze of vineyards gracing sparsely settled hills. In the valley’s center is the sleepy village of Tanunda. It won’t be that way for long. It already has a restaurant, the 1918 (named for the year the house was built), which is well worth a pilgrimage. Soon the town’s world-class golf course will be joined by four or five self-contained resort villages. An international airport has been proposed.

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ADELAIDE HAS LOTS OF SHOPPING POSSIBILITIES, INCLUDING SOME of the country’s largest malls, which stand somewhat incongruously next to charming craft shops and boutiques. The best selection of opals (South Australia is the world’s opal center) are in the local jewelry shops, where artists turn stones from the famed underground city of Coober Pedy into sophisticated designs. The Jam Factory houses a changing collection of artisans who create jewelry, sculpture and furniture in everything from exotic native woods to stones.

Whatever I do in Adelaide, I leave enough time for a “pie floater,” my all-time favorite street food. You can buy “pies” at the many carts that began dotting the city in 1915, but I prefer the one next to downtown’s Casino, where gambling goes on nightly. This particular cart’s pastry-covered lump of ground meat dumped into a tin bowl of steaming, gray pea soup is a cut above the others. Local sweet catsup is provided should you want to douse the concoction. Don’t make that face: It’s delicious.

Next trip, I’ll take my pie into one of the pubs and wash it down with one of the terrific local beers that Adelaide doesn’t export. No doubt one of my bar mates will ask me to guess which Adelaide has the most of: pubs or churches. (I know the answer--they are about even--but I’ll pretend I don’t.)

Much of this tolerance and appreciation of the good life dates back to Col. Light, who was chastised for both. He said he would let posterity decide whether he should be “praised or blamed” for founding a city “dedicated to leisure and pleasure.”

Posterity has decided. I go back every chance I get.

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Guidebook

Road to Oz

Telephone numbers and prices: The country code for Australia is 61. The city code for Adelaide is 8. All prices are approximate and are computed at a rate of 1.18 Australian dollars to the U.S. dollar. Hotel rates are for a double room for one night. Restaurant prices are for dinner for two, food only.

Getting there: United, American, Qantas and Air New Zealand offer nonstop flights to Sydney daily from Los Angeles. Connecting service (about two hours) to Adelaide is available on Qantas or Ansett Airlines.

Where to stay: Adelaide: Adelaide International Hilton, 233 Victoria Square, telephone 8217-2000, fax 8217-2001, or (800) HILTONS for reservations. Overlooks Victoria Square in the heart of the city. Rates: $190-$285. Stamford Plaza Adelaide, 150 North Terrace, tel. 8461-1111, fax 8461-0319. Also centrally located, just across from the State Legislature. Rates: $144-$165. Barossa Valley: The Landhaus, Bethany Road, Tanunda, S.A., tel. 563-2191. Single guest room with an outstanding restaurant. Rate: $125. Traut Heim, 42 Langmell Road, Tanunda, S.A., tel. 359-0994. A 1914 stone bed and breakfast with four double rooms. Rate: $85, includes self-serve breakfast.

Where to eat: Adelaide International Hilton has a cafe and two restaurants. The Grange features wonderful Asian-fusion cuisine; $90-$120. Red Ochre Grill, 127 Gouger St., tel. 8212-7266; $70. The Universal Wine Bar, 285 Rundle St., tel. 8232-5000; $65. Nediz Tu, 170 Hutt St., tel. 8223-2618. Exotic Australian-continental dishes; $40. Scoozi, 272 Rundle St., tel. 8232-4733; $15-$25. 1918 Bistro and Grill (Barossa Valley), 94 Murray St., tel. 563-0405; $45.

Museums and cultural institutions: South Australian Museum, North Terrace, tel. 8207-7400. Daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; free. Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Institute, 253 Gernfell St., tel. 8223-2467. Daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; $4.25 adult, $2.50 child, $8.50 family. Ayers House, 288 N. Terrace, tel. 8223-1234. Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; weekends and holidays, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.; $4.25, adult, $2.55 child, $8.50 family.

For more information: The South Australia Tourist Commission, 1600 Dove St., Suite 215, Newport Beach, Calif. 92660; (888) GDAY-MATE (432-9628).