Friday with Family and Friends

Picked up about 9:30am by our chauffeur (my brother Isaac) we ventured north to my home town of Elizabeth. It is a place I haven't seen in over 4 years.
We head off and Isaac in his customary roll, gave a running commentary of the sights.
First stop, the Adelaide Crows shop to get a crows tee-shirt then onward we go.

The new southern freeway Isaac showed us is enormous and should be completed by 2015. The traffic here is certainly not as heavy as in Auckland. This is mainly due to the traffic lights being coordinated to the amount of traffic on the road.

The grounds are dry and the shades of brown take over the scenery the further north we go. It is in stark contrast to Glenelgs lush green areas. The temperature is a mild 22c and i wind the window down as we pass by the salt lands. We are coming into Salisbury and it is here we decide to visit my mums and dads grave site. It has been a while since any of us have visited but I find the head stone soon enough. A few minutes silence and we bid our farewells and head off to the see the house I grew up in.

I am so happy that I can share these moments will KB. Her presence helps me to cope with the emotional side of coming home.

We pass by the General Motors Holden plant that I worked at from 1984-1990. Along the Philip Highway we pass the Elizabeth Town Centre another place I worked. We travelled along the Main North Road, this road connects Adelaide to Gawler and beyond. If you continue on from Gawler you can reach those famous areas like the Barossa Valley, the Clare Valley or Flinders Ranges. So many places and sights to be seen and that is just by heading north!

It was then we turned off on to Womma road and pass by the notorious Womma Railway Station. It is at this part of the journey we reach the suburbs formerly know as Elizabeth West and Elizabeth Fields but now known as Daveron Park. A lot of places in the area were named after aboriginal words. Womma road or Kalara reserve as examples. The areas are now full of low income family's whose values are a far stretch from when people first started developing the area in my time there.
There was a sense of community back then. It was slightly disappointing to see gardens over grown, car wrecks on front gardens and houses in disrepair. It was like driving through a war zone. I must state that my comments are personal and based on seeing a couple of streets I grew up in. Streets that I where I remember the beautiful gardens, the people who lived there and the friends that I made.
I am quite confident that there are pockets of neighbourhoods that take pride in their homes and suburbs. 42 Edgecombe Road Elizabeth Fields sometime in 1963 (I think) was where my journey in Australia started.
It was trip up Blight street I found almost heartbreaking and forged the comments above!

From Blight street we made our way through Daveron Park to Smithfield via Coventry road up Anderson Walk passed the Smithfield Hotel (another haunt of mine) through to the suburbs of Elizabeth Downs, Craigmore, Elizabeth Park checking out all the houses I lived in till we finally reach our destination "The Downs Hotel" now known as The Midway Tavern.

To be continued ....................... HERE

Take care and stay happy.
Whitesnake n KB

To be continued HERE

Whitesnakes do it better ............... when ya keep on touring!