Sitting in a United lounge in San Francisco, awaiting a 16-hour nonstop to Melbourne, but thinking ahead to arrival in Adelaide and the museums and repositories we will visit there. In the long run we have a catalog of topics we hope to pursue along the line from Adelaide through Central Australia north to Darwin, but in this particular junket, we have a particular interest in the German-speaking (Prussian) settlers of the Barossa and the Hermannsburg Mission to the Arrernte they established in the central desert, at Ntaria. Among the institutions we will visit in Adelaide:
- The State Library of South Australia – a fabulous edifice, with the authoritative collection of titles in the history of South Australia
- The South Australian Museum, with its famed assemblage of aboriginal material culture
- The Migration Museum, for its treatment of immigrant cultures
- The Lutheran Archives, which has extensive holdings on the mission
- State Records of South Australia, pertinent holdings not fully determined, but there are items of interest, such as the earliest claims to waste lands
All of which is exciting, but first we have to get there, and check into the Playford Hotel Adelaide. Seems a long way away, because it is.
