G'day weird Sis.

Among the claims to fame of Austin, Texas, is that it is the sister city of Adelaide, South Australia.

The music city and the festival city are chosen siblings going back to our Jubilee 150 celebrations. This relationship always piqued my curiosity about Austin.

We roll into town and effortlessly to the door of our Radisson Plaza hotel where, to my delight, we are assigned a gorgeous mini suite with a view across the famous bat

bridge and down the river. It is a good impression of Austin straight away and, looking at the river and its river trail, it does remind me a just a bit of Adelaide and the Torrens. Just a bit.

The first thing I learn and am to hear over and over again is that Austin is proudly weird. It is weird city. It wants to be weird. To stay weird. Keep Austin weird is reiterated as a city motto. I love the idea.

The Austin magazine in our hotel room touts the Museum of the Weird as a symbol of this, a must-see. Look, Bruce. Let’s. Bruce is not keen.

But, since we want an exploratory walk around the city and since 6th Street, upon which it is located, is also touted as a must-see, live-wire part of the city, he agrees and we set off. It is hot. The air is heavy. It is not a brisk-walking day. We are hungry for lunch.

The streets of Austin are quiet. Few pedestrians. A few beggars. But the drivers are impatient. We note that people are very obedient to the walk signs at traffic lights which, by the way, are big white hands.

The food front is a worry.

There are no cafes to be seen along the way. It seems to be just business buildings. Sixth Street presents us with seedy bars most of which are closed. We quickly realise that Sixth Street is a night spot and we are seeing it in the hungover grime of the day. The nightclub and bar scene dies an ugly death in the daylight. Only the homeless are hanging out here, just walking about. They seem quite busy in an odd, purposeless way.

Finally we spot the open door to a dark and cavernous Mexican restaurant and step in. A very large

girl welcomes us and asks if we would prefer downstairs or on the balcony. Oh, balcony please. We mount steep industrial stairs to a broad balcony made leafy and lovely by the treetops around it. Just two other tables of people.We could look down on the life of Sixth Street. Not much happening. A few young

hipster men with manbags going places. Those lovely sheeny black grackle birds hop in and out of the balcony. They have little meetings under the chairs.

The waitress recommends stuffed avocados as she brings our iced tea and complimentary corn chips with two absolutely fabulous, spicy salsas. The avocados are strange - raw but in a cooked breaded shell. There is a spoonful of chicken mash in the centre. I’m not writing home about them.

We’re now just a few doors from the

Museum of the Weird. The really weird thing about it is that it is open when everything else is shut.

Bruce does not want to go in. It’s a Ripley’s rip-off thing, he grumbles. Wrong. It is Austin weird.

Finally I charm him through the door wherein a good spirited, amply-formed, pierced woman in a shop selling souvenirs of weird and hokey things gives us a hearty welcome and explanation of the weird things in the weird museum. I have to charm Bruce quite a bit more but finally, I get him through the door to

the museum itself. Well, it was decidedly weird: Big Foot footprints, stuffed two-headed animals, mummies, a mermaid, shrunken heads.

We are instructed to watch a video about the Minnesota Ice Man which would prepare us for the experience of meeting the Minnesota Ice man.

The story goes that this hairy hominid was bought off eBay by Steve Busti who remembered seeing it in the back of a truck when he was a lad. It had been on the road for years as a carnival freak show attraction and it remained a mystery as to just what or who this frozen creature may be. Now it sits in a special padlocked room at the Museum of the Weird which was built around this major attraction.

One has to wait for the guide to come and escort one to this spooky marvel and photography is strictly prohibited. So there, in the darkened cool room sits a giant coffin wherein this hairy early man lies inside a huge block of ice. He certainly looks like a prehistoric hominid, scraggle-toothed with a huge hand laid across his hirsute body. But he is also a bit hard to see clearly and it would be impossible to say if he was made of flesh or something else. Skeptical Bruce is not fascinated.

The museum is in a tiny tall building and the guide leads one up more stairs saying that Johnny Depp stayed in the apartment upstairs and that the owner still lives onsite. There is another room up there containing a giant King Kong. One is invited to pose with him. And the the guide completes the weird experience by giving a performance. He does some magic tricks. He is a sweet man. I struggle to find cash to tip him.

To have a good look at Austin, we sign up for an Austin Detours tour of the city. Our guide Steve’s night job is as a stand-up comedian. Like most comedians, he is not a funny fellow. He is very earnest and bursting with his patter of day job city information. He takes us inside the Capitol Building. I didn’t know I wanted to go into it until I got there. But, wow. It is simply glorious in its tremendous scale and superb workmanship. Superb painted atrium, formal

portraits of governors all around the great circular walls. Great high doors to all the rooms of the politicians who work in the place. It has a massive underground expansion, gob-smackingly massive! It is a work of incredible engineering skill which is ironic considering that the architect who won the original contract to build the edifice was untrained in both architecture and construction. How did he get the job, one wonders. It makes a good story. His heart was in his mouth throughout the building because he was so nervous of his lack of experience. Because he knew nothing and was afraid it may fall down, he made it absurdly thick.

Outside the gorgeous Capitol Steve points out the Ten Commandments statue. Controversial. It

was not allowed in various official places because of the separation of church and state, but some rich Christian polly showed them who’s boss by buying it and putting it ostentatiously outside the capitol.

We look at some of the quirky residential areas of keep-Austin-weird as well as the university and the music area of this music city.

We also visited a graffiti park wherein the graffiti artists have adorned a vast, tiered derelict site turning it into a vivid gallery of whimsy, madness, cute factor, glamour and political ire.

I'm amused at the Donald Trump iconography.

Steve also takes us to the postcard mural of the city. It is a shopside adornment, a photo of which has become the most popular postcard image of the city. Also, beside it, the Love From Austin has taken off.

We admire and dutifully pose for Steve to take official photographs of us.

Next, we are taken to a food truck to be given little cakes on sticks but the food truck is unattended so we don’t get these Austin treats. We do go to amazing Rainey Street which is all bars converted from down-at-heel houses, very wild and crazy and fun.

It is funny how tired a tour can make one. I suppose it is overload of

information. We have decided they are really good value to give one a potted and efficient familiarisation of a new city, but we are exhausted when we get back to the tourist centre; and still have to hoof it back to our hotel through the hot streets where there are few pedestrians - except for the homeless and beggars, one of whom plays a cardboard washboard and sports a dog with sunglasses. Of course.

Our hotel pool is a drawcard in the mornings. It is very quiet then so I get in some aqua and we are nourished by time in the sun. I run into a fellow journalist called Frances, a writer for Politico who has worked the Washington political

scene. We hit common ground on the political front and stand in the water raving about the election prognosis for ages. We part promising to keep in contact but, of course, we never will.

The bridge over the river outside our hotel turns out to be the top tourist spot in town. It is where the bats hang out. Austin has a population of millions of bats and they are the pride of the city. Truly.

They tell one of how the bats eradicated the mosquito population and how bat towers have been built for them and how much other places covet their bats and try to encourage similar populations. People congregate along the bridge before sunset and also in boats under the bridge to see the bats take off on their night hunting flights. The come out as huge, whirring black clouds. A spectacle. Not that we see them. But everyone, just everyone, tells us about them and there are bat statues and t-shirts and motifs all over the town. Yep, weird city is completely batty.

I discover that the local Zach Theatre company is presenting the Australian musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Well, of course one has to see it. Americans doing an Aussie show. In our Sister City. Just try and keep me away.

We park near the theatre and then in our theatre gladrags, we dine in a folksy el-cheapo Mexican joint. The waitress’ T-shirt says “God knows when you don’t tip.” Bruce loves this place. I am a bit unnerved about how very downmarket it is. Definitely not a happy camper when my gumbo is luke-warm and, although it is delicious, as I look at the staff and the grime, I envision nightmares of hygiene in the kitchen and, indeed, I later have a very bad night of indigestion.

The theatre itself is very new and bedecked in the names of its assorted philanthropists. Joe Bloggs’ foyer, Lolly Gobbs’ bar, etc.

The lights no sooner go down than the show has to stop because of a mechanical fault with the curtain. Catastrophic. How embarrassing. Actors scuttling. Stage hands pushing and shoving the obstinate set divider. Announcement. There will be a 15 minute tech delay. It turns into 30 or so. We are on the

aisle in a row of people who can’t stop getting up and going in and out. In and out. Out and in. We finally move into the seats in front of ours to get a rest from standing for them. The grasp of theatre etiquette is a bit odd here.

But the show is a triumph. The cast does it in Aussie accents. Not perfect but pretty bloody good. A lot of the jokes go over the head of

the Americans. Dingo’s got my baby etc. But the audience loves it and stands in wild ovation at the end. We join them. Fabulous show.

Austin is a quaint and interesting city. It is definitely a bit alternative. It has chosen an identify for itself as the music city and the weird place. It works hard at asserting these qualities and they work well for it.

The city is a bit dead during the day with lots of tech industry workers heads-down in offices. We never did find a flourishing retail or commercial centre in it. However, like its famous bats, the people come out at night.

Our sister city is a boozy nocturnal creature.