Illuminate Adelaide
Adelaide Botanic Gardens
6th July 2022
(Reviewed by John Glennie)
My partner and I were fortunate to review the Light Cycles at the beautiful Botanic Gardens in Adelaide.
Neither of us had been to this event before so were quite keen to see how this transformation of one of the city’s icons would turn out. It is a one-way only self-guided tour which takes about an hour and commences from the Ginkgo gates just behind the Botanic High School on Frome Road. After taking forever to find a car park we ended up arriving right on time to enter.
The paths are subtly illuminated with overhead lights then key areas of the gardens present a specific feature of lighting with appropriate background music. Observe, then move onto the next area, and so on. I must admit that both of us (and some others, overhearing comments throughout the tour) were a little “under-whelmed” by the featured areas. Yes, nice lighting and music, but just seemed to be lacking.
My partner said “perhaps they are saving the best for last” – and she was right. The final two features were more like what we expected with some spectacular laser light shows in time with the music. We noted that both of these enticed people to stop and watch, whereas for all the other features the majority of people just strolled through rarely stopping. (The top photo is from the final display).
We heard someone saying this was better than last year, so we were quite pleased we hadn’t been before and both thought we would want to hear spectacular reports before going to future events. If they could do similar stuff with laser lighting as for the last two features – then yes, would definitely go again.
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