From air to land and sea - Adelaide, Australia
Adelaide, Australia
So, my first week in the land down under. It's been good fun.
I was greeted at the airport by a familiar face from home, my brother Dan, along with Nick and Jo who I will be staying with during my time in Adelaide. After a 23 hour flight with an hour stop over in between, which literally meant I had just the right amount of time to get from where we landed to where the next plane would be taking off from, I was feeling surprisingly ok. Once we got back to Nick and Jo's I was jumped at by the very friendly and licky Murphy, we are now great friends, and a nice welcome hug from Christine, Dan's girlfriend and supplied with wine.
Week 1
What better way to really get into the spirit of things than go and see some truly Australian nature at Gorge Wildlife park. I got to feed every animal that would take it, including a very sweet monkey, some greedy birds and nothing better than the wallabies and kangaroos! Amazing! But, the animal that made my day was the cuddly koala I got to hold. Such lovely animals.
Nick decided it would be a good idea to give a small monkey an empty carton of ice coffee (all the rage over here for all you coffee drinkers) and the monkey went from cute and inquisitive to devil monkey. You could see the hunger in his eyes as he tried to get the carton threw the bars and bared its teeth at us when we tried to take it back...not something you want to be doing without bars in between you and that crazy monkey
We ended the day with a trip to Pene's (my dad's cousin) to see the parents I last saw the other side in UK 2 weeks before hand, and a night out in Adelaide. We had some pre-drinks, then when and played some shocking pool, before hitting a club called Apple. Good vibe, but the DJ did not know what he was doing. We then stopped off at a bar that had a bucking bronco and of course we all had a go. I think I did pretty well but my god, my legs were not liking me for the next few days after that.
The weekend at Yatina; a pub all on it's own in the outback (kinda). It's an old pub that has been in Tim's family for years and they throw a good do there a few times a year.
We drank, played better pool, sat round the fire, freezed in tents, went to the magnetic hill, had some interesting conversations with various family members, watched and danced to the band and ate a damn good roasted lamb and pig that had been cooking for hours on a stick. Delicious!
We visited the markets by the Harbor to see what they had to offer and Dan bought a little "putt putt boat". Nick, Jo, Dan and I also got matching airbrush tattoos of a Chinese Symbol that apparently meant "alcohol'. Nick and Dan thought this was very fitting with the way we were going. Hehe.
We went to the beautiful and empty Moana beach entering, in style of course, across the sand and stones and boulders in the 4x4. We paddled in the sea and enjoyed the view, watched Dan and Nick attempt to get the little boat working, no success. We then went on to explore the mouth of a river where Nick showed us how to catch a crab. We finished the day off with some good old fashioned betting on the dogs, in which I had no luck.
On the last full day with Dan and Christine we went over Pene's to relax in the 32 degree heat with nothing other than a good barbie. Yum!
The next two days were sad ones for me as I had to say goodbye first to Dan and Christine, and then the following evening my parents left to go back to England.
We did spend a nice day at Glenelg, which is a lovely place by the bay. The temperature was lovely so we took a nice sunny stroll along the coast with ice cream to finish. We went for dinner and then it was on to see them off at the airport.