St. Andrews Uniting Church can be found on Jetty Rd. at picturesque Glenelg. Every time I walk past this church I am spell bound by its simple beauty.

For a very concise history of this beautiful church, you could no better than going to the St. Andrew’s By The Sea site which is extremely easy to navigate and has a whole heap of relevant information including services. As of yet their ‘gallery’ link does not seem to be working so you will have to make do with my photos for now.

Every country has it’s pioneers but usually when one thinks of pioneers the first thing that comes to mind is great feats of heroism in times of tribulation and hardship, forging ahead into the unknown finding new territory to settle. The fact is that being a true pioneer does not necessarily include heroism although it may well mean battling very hard times, working the land and making it your own.

South Australia has many pioneers and while many may not consider Johann Herbig as one I tend to disagree. It all began on the 3rd of October 1855 when Johann Friedrich Herbig arrived in South Australia on the Wilhelmine from Germany. Although poor he manage to lease about 80 acres of land on a time payment schedule and not having enough money to build a house he lived in a old gum tree that was found on his property. This hollow red gum tree is located at Springton South Australia and is about 60 km’s from Adelaide. It’s about 300-500 years old, has a diameter of 7 metres and a height of 24 metres.

He lived in the tree for about five years. He met his bride to be, Anna Caroline Rattey on the 1st of December 1876 and married her in 1858 and they lived in the tree together. A year later the first of their sixteen children, Johann, was born in their tree house. It wasn’t until their second son was born a year later and the tree became too small for the growing family, a hut was built.

He died on the 18th October 1886 aged 58 due to an unfortunate accident. The tree has been occupied on several occasions by others and today the Herbig Family Tree represents a graphic link to early European settlement of the area.

Many people when talking about family trees think of it in terms of genealogy, but here in South Australia we have a tree that was inhabited by a family for roughly five years. This would make it one of the few actual living tree house

The tree is located 63 km north-east of Adelaide in Springton which was originally known as Black Springs. It is a small township at the south-eastern extremity of the Barossa Valley. It is definitely worth a look at if you are in the area.

The Cross Of Sacrifice is a monument that stands 11.6 meters tall commemorating those who lost their lives in the Great War 1914-1920. It is part of the Woman’s War Memorial that is situated at Pennington Gardens. In the background you can see the spires of St Peter’s Cathedral Adelaide. At the other end of Memory garden sits a Stone Of Remembrance.

I took a photo of the plaque at the base of the monument which apparently replaced the original on Anzac Day 1965.

Last night I went to view the Northern Lights display in Adelaide, and I am here to say that it was nothing short of spectacular. They say that up to 15,000 people a night go to check out the display of 70 different projections of light that is projected on the facades of the State Library, SA Museum, Art Gallery, Elder Hall, Mitchell Building and Bonython Hall. My only gripe was that the displays changed every five minutes and I found it a little tedious.

The Northern Lights were created using digital software and giant French-made PIGI system projectors that each weighed more than 200kg. I reckon I was extremely fortunate as I caught the last display.

I noticed that although there were a lot of people taking photos with there camera phones or digital cameras, very few actually used tripods and I am afraid all those who didn’t use a tripod will be disappointed with their photos. These are some that I took. Clicking on any photo will enlarge the photo.

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