Hi guys, well we can't believe that we fly to New Zealand tomorrow.  We've been in Australia for 2 and a half months now and it's just flown by.  Here's our last journal entry from OZ

We arrived in Adelaide on 29/04/07 after a 9 hour overnight bus journey.  We didn't get any sleep the whole way as the driver was falling asleep at the wheel and we had to keep any eye on him - very scary!

Adelaide is a smaller city than Sydney and Melbourne but still has all the usual shopping malls, cinemas, chinatown, markets and food courts.  The main attraction in Adelaide is the food and drink.  There are some beautiful restaurants and cafes here but unfortunately, we can only afford to cook our own pasta back at the hostel!  The drink part comes from the fact that Adelaide is near the most famous wine making area in Australia - the Barossa Valley.

One of our days here was spent on a wine tour of the wineries around the Barossa Valley.  Luckily the trip was not busy (there were only 6 of us on the tour) so at each winery we got the full attention of the wine makers who explained the wine making process and most importantly had time to try every wine in the range!  We first stopped for a coffee at the big Rocking Horse.  Just to explain there are lots of "big" things around Australia not sure why, but they like to build big things!  Then we drove to the Barossa valley through some lovely scenery.  As it's autumn over here the trees are all turning golden and red and everything looks really beautiful.  Next we stopped for a huge lunch which was included in the tour.  Then onto our first winery, Chateau Dorrien, which was a family run place which did not export outside Australia.  Here we tasted red and white wines, port, honey mead and some chocolate liquers.  Next we went to the Richmond Grove winery for a guided tour where we learnt about the wine making process and then tasted their full range of red and white wines.  On the way to the Jacobs creek winery we visited Herbigs Tree where a german family lived when they came to Australia.  At the Jacobs creek we tasted their red, white and sparkling wines as well as their port which is delicious if you can find it back home.  After all this we were feeling pretty tipsy as were the rest of the people on our trip! but we had one more winery to visit so we soldiered on!  The last winery was Chateau Yaldara which also had food and opal jewellery for sale, we only got a quick look at this as we were too busy tasting their wines and ports!  In total we tasted 35 wines, ports and liquers and had a really fun day.  This was probably the best trip we've done so far!!

As we move onto New Zealand next, we thought we'd make the most of soaking up the last of the Aussie culture, so we've visited the South Australia museum, the Migration museum and Tandanya which is the National Aboriginal Cultural Centre. 

The weather has been pretty cold (well cold for us - about 19 degrees) and there has been lots of rain while we've been in Adelaide.  Our tans have completly gone now : ( but the locals are very excited about the rain as Adelaide is in the driest state on the driest continent in the world and they're into the sixth year of a drought.

Our hostel is in a really lovely old building and has a really nice communal area to chill out in.  As we've had 8 days here we've been able to spend a couple of them at the hostel planning our trip around New Zealand and chatting to other people about their travels which has been really nice.

We'll update the journal again from New Zealand.