Hey There,

Well, we have finally arrived in Adelaide. We decided in our wisdom to take the Indian Pacific train from Perth to Adelaide to experience an alternative Australian mode of transport. This journey is said to be one of those amazing train journey's so we thought we'd give it a go.

So we left Perth at around 12 noon Wednesday and arrived in Adelaide at 7am Friday!!! But having just spent five days being rushed around on our tour of the SW, we were quite happy to sit around reading, listening to music and watching the desert (all 500km of it) and the outback go by. Well, Rich was only happy when plied with lots of sweets! Still, we stopped at a gold mining town called Kalgoorlie, which was an "interesting" place. We paid to go on the bus around the town (at midnight!) and saw the beautiful old buildings built in the times of the gold rush. Then we headed up to the superpit, which is no less than 3km long and 1.5km wide, with plans to extend in the near future. The trucks in the pit truly do look tiny!! Finally, we were treated to a nosy (from the bus!) at the brothels for which the town is apparently famous. Well, I guess you gotta keep those miners amused somehow! Our next stop was around 14 hours later (!!!) in a place called Cook which has a population of 7 and many amusing signs dotted around. And we'd finally arrived in South Australia, the driest state of the driest country on Earth - ooooh I'm thirsty!

Adelaide is a really nice city. It's much greener and there are so many nice parks and the Botanical Gardens around that it's impossible not to feel chilled out. We have spent a couple of days wandering the city to get a feel of the place and check out the old buildings around town. We also took the "must do" winery trip to the Barossa Valley, which probably would have seemed more beautiful had the sun been shining! Still up at 8am and three wineries visited before lunch! I reckon we did fairly well. We went to the Jacobs Creek winery and then a few smaller places that only sell to restaurants and at the cellar door. So, some of them ship over to the UK, so maybe when we a little less skint, we might try some of them again. The beach here is in a place called Glenelg, but is not a patch on the SW beaches that we have just been treated to. Nice enough for a city beach though. We went to the Rodney Fox Shark Expo. This guy got attacked by a shark in the sixties and has since become an advocate for them and worked on films such as Jaws and numerous documentries. Interesting place, although mostly because the guy there very nearly convinced us that diving in a cage near Great White Sharks would be a great idea. He made it sound so good. I'm only glad that it costs $1500 each, otherwise I reckon we might have been there already!

So that's Adelaide so far. We have hired a car to drive over to Melbourne and complete the loop of Australia. We have 17 days left here and it all feels slightly strange!

Anyway, hope you're all well,

Love

Kate and Rich xxxx