Pandas, cyclists leave Adelaide | Council’s new Adelaide 500 hangup
This week, InSider checks in on South Australia’s brain drain and realises we’re not the only ones stuck in Adelaide 500 traffic.
Wang Wang and Fu Ni wave goodbye
Well. The inevitable has happened. Our sexually unresponsive giant pandas remained celibate, and just this morning, they were finally shipped back to China.
They’ve been in Adelaide for 15 years – we don’t know how long that is in panda years, but InSider can imagine an abstinent 15 years must feel like an eternity – and failed to mate and parent Adelaide’s very own panda.
Perhaps they were embarrassed. Perhaps it was too much pressure. Perhaps Fu Ni had enough of men in general (like a lot of the world at the moment).
Despite the disappointing send-off, Adelaide Zoo director Dr Phil Ainsley said the pandas have “made such an impact during their time here”.
“It has been an emotional week for so many of our zoo family; from the keepers who have worked so closely with Wang Wang and Fu Ni to our volunteers, staff and panda lovers from the public,” he said.
“[Wang Wang and Fu Ni] really were the pioneers for their species in the Southern Hemisphere.”
Wang Wang and Fu Ni were facing each other during the flight. Photo: via Zoos SA.The duo had to be trained to use their “specially designed” individual crates before their long plane trip home.
We’re not too sure why they had to keep Wang Wang and Fu Ni separated for the flight, it’s not like they’d be joining the Mile High Club if cooped together.
However, not all hope is lost, as pandas Yi Lan and Xing Qiu are set to touch-down in Adelaide by the end of the year.
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Let’s hope these two new pandas can, finally, hit it off.
A lonely Wang Wang, grateful he doesn’t have to deal with Fu Ni for the 14-hour flight. Photo: via Zoos SA.Brain drain becomes muscle drain
The pandas aren’t the only ones leaving Adelaide.
Policymakers from both sides of government have long contemplated how to stop South Australia’s skilled professionals moving to greener pastures interstate.
Net interstate migration, more commonly known as the “brain drain”, has almost always been a negative statistic for SA. Notwithstanding a brief reversal during COVID, it turns out more people are interested in leaving Adelaide than coming.
This now includes Australia’s Olympic sprint cycling team.
InSider has learned that AusCyling’s sprint program is moving out of its digs at the Adelaide Super-Drome in Gepps Cross to Brisbane for the 2032 Olympics. A recently installed $12 million wind tunnel wasn’t enough to keep them around, apparently.
A state government spokesperson confirmed the news to InSider and assured us that “it is normal that sports reassess where the most appropriate base for training and development is”.
“South Australia remains the home for AusCycling’s high-performance endurance and para-cycling programs,” the spokesperson said.
“A small portion of AusCycling athletes and support staff relating specifically to the sprint program are relocating to Brisbane to align with the needs of that program.”
Fair enough, but with Brisbane 2032 coming into focus, InSider suspects this won’t be the last sporting relocation we hear about over the next few years.
Vroom Vroom I guess
Ah, the Adelaide 500.
For the non-motorheads among us, this time of year is marked by the patience we must exercise dealing with increased peak hour traffic thanks to road closures and diverted rage-filled commuters.
It seems we’re not the only ones that should have accounted for longer travel times though.
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Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith told the Adelaide City Council chamber that traffic is the likely culprit for the several empty seats when the council meeting kicked off on Tuesday night.
The newly appointed Deputy Lord Mayor David Elliott was on time, and as council’s self-proclaimed cycle guy (every office has one these days, right?) we would expect nothing less than the PSA on his Instagram encouraging followers to opt for the bike lanes.
Sigh, we should have listened.
While the council have been vocal critics of the Adelaide 500, its dirt speedways and extended time to assemble the track in the parklands, the Lord Mayor put differences aside to show her support for Hutt Street Traders at their Pit Stop Party last night.
She told her Instagram followers she’d be rolling up in style, cosmopolitan in hand, with Sex and the City theme music playing on her video invitation.
While you’re on J-Lo’s Instagram (a favourite pastime of ours) did you know this week marks two years since she was “recycled” (her words, not ours) as Lord Mayor?
She was first elected as Lord Mayor from 1997–2000, before being elected to SA Parliament as Member for Adelaide in 2002. Two decades later she made her comeback to town hall, and if her Instagram and TikTok accounts are anything to go by, she loves to serve 💅.
InfoWars goes legit
The growing concentration of media ownership is no joke.
But this is pretty funny.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ dubious InfoWars media platform has been acquired by satirical news outlet The Onion at a court-ordered auction.
In a post on Bluesky, The Onion CEO Ben Collins said the acquisition was made with the help of the Sandy Hook families; sweet revenge for those who sent Jones into bankruptcy earlier this year so he could pay damages he owed the families of the 2012 school shooting.
Jones was ordered to pay US$1.5 billion in multiple defamation cases after he claimed the Sandy Hook attack – which included the murders of 20 young children and six staff members – was “staged”.
Collins also said online that “part of the reason we did bought [sic] InfoWars is because people on Bluesky told us it would be funny”.
“Those people were right…this is the funniest thing that has ever happened.”
