In 2003, Eloise and I flew directly from Darwin to Adelaide as part of our mini-tour of Australia to take in some of the places we hadn't had time to see the previous year. When planning the return trip, we had heard a lot about the Great Ocean Road, a stretch of highway which spans much of the coast of Victoria and is considered by many to be the most scenic route in the country. Until that point, I hadn't known much at all about the route, and so was keen to see what it had to offer - the visit to Victoria, along with our planned stop in Tasmania, would also mean that I would finally have visited every state in the country. Although the Great Ocean Road only officially stretches along the Victorian coast between the towns of Geelong and Warrnambool, travellers usually start from either Adelaide or Melbourne as these are the nearest major cities to either end of the route. Adelaide is also the closest city to Kangaroo Island, another of the places we were bursting to see, so we planned to spend a couple of days in the city, stay on Kangaroo Island for a further two and then head off into Victoria and along the Great Ocean Road towards Melbourne. I also had fond memories of my previous trip to Adelaide in 1999, even if I had arrived there when it was virtually deserted due to a public holiday, and so was keen to see the city again when there was some activity going on.

I remember expecting, back in 1999, a bustling metropolis packed with businessmen in suits rushing back and forth between meetings - Adelaide is, after all, the capital of South Australia - and I had been almost planning to move on as soon as I got there. This assumption had changed the minute I arrived, and proved to me that I really should stop jumping to conclusions, especially in Australia where they like to call even the smallest, most likable community a city. I like Adelaide. I like it a lot. Adelaide actually is a reasonably big city in the traditional sense of the word, but if it can be possible for a big city to retain the charm of small town Australia, Adelaide seems to be having a pretty good try - the day to day business seems to be hidden away behind the scenes where it's out of sight and mind, while the streets remain relaxed and, well, Australian. Everywhere I went on that first visit, I saw fountains with people sitting around on deckchairs listening to music playing in nearby bandstands, colourful markets full of equally colourful traders, or street entertainers striding about on stilts. It was also incredibly easy to find my way around as the city was built on the grid system familiar in Australia and North America, making it very hard to get lost. Trams trundled up and down taking people from place to place, the pedestrian malls were cobbled and full of atmosphere, and the Torrens River ran straight through the city with both banks covered in parkland and wide grassy verges where people sat eating picnics and soaking up the sun. In fact, one of the things which sets Adelaide apart from other cities is the sheer amount of green space. And of course, Adelaide is home to the Australian Oval where they routinely practice thrashing us at Cricket.

In other cities around the world, it almost seems as though there's a competition going on to see who can build the biggest skyscraper or the largest office block - and if anything inconvenient such as a tree should get in the way, then they just pull it up and pretend it never existed. In Adelaide, it's obvious from the moment you arrive that the buildings are secondary features and are built around a beautiful city of parks, gardens and rivers - how rare it is to see the environment being considered as part of the future. When I arrived in Adelaide in 1999, my guide book described it as a city of wonders and possibilities, a city of art and festivals, and it became obvious to me why people had been heading there from all over the country over the previous few days for a national cycling event - the city was criss-crossed with cycling and walking trails running through the parklands and along the river, and it was a pleasure to get around by leg power rather than petrol. The reason for Adelaide's apparent wish to stick two fingers up at the accepted way of designing a city harks back to it's inception and design by William Light in 1836 as a River Town of public spaces, wide boulevards and surrounding parkland - a place inspired by the then unusual concept of civil liberties, where people could relax and worship freely withinthe "City of Churches". Unbelievably, this wasn't initially a very popular idea - but thankfully Light went ahead anyway, people came around and not much has changed in Adelaide over the years. Neither is there any sign that anybody feels a need to start expanding all over the surrounding green belt as many cities have done in recent years.

Eloise and I were staying at a hostel in the city centre called Backpack Oz. This was a traditionally exuberant place, affording every amenity for the budget traveller, and even had it's name painted in large friendly rounded letters across the front of the building as though graffitied by a past guest. The front door opened onto the largest open plan living space I think I've ever seen at a backpackers, consisting of couches all around the walls, a television area, pool table, dining tables and a fully stocked bar in the corner surrounded by bar stools in case anyone should want to get rat-arsed after a hard days sight-seeing. A doorway led off from the main living area into a kitchen which seemed perhaps a little small in comparison to the amount of people staying, and consisted of a wooden table in the middle around which all food preparation was done, a couple of glass doored fridges similar to ones you'd see in a supermarket, and a single kitchen cabinet.

On one of the days we stayed, the staff actually laid on a barbeque and everyone lined up outside the kitchen door to collect a plate - this was a nice touch, and something I haven't seen elsewhere. Normally, hostels just provide the basics and mealtimes consist of everyone crowding into the kitchen with food they've purchased from the supermarket and fighting each other off for an inch of worktop space on which to prepare it.

Reception, which was reached through a door next to the bar, seemed like more of a shop and tourist information centre than a reception. The walls were lined with rack upon rack of literature on places to go and things to see, and the first thing we did on arrival was scout out the cheapest option for getting to Kangaroo Island, even before we'd taken our backpacks up to the room. Backpack Oz provides a wide range of accommodation, from standard dorm rooms to doubles and singles - to get to our room, we had to go through a door at the back of the living area and up a grand wooden staircase which gave away the fact that the building used to be a lavish hotel before being transformed for a modern generation of travellers on a budget. Upstairs, a maze of corridors led us eventually, after some exploring and going in the wrong direction as is often the case in these old hotels, to our small but cosy double room at the back of the building, where getting the key to turn in the lock proved to be something of a challenge. Inside, the wide-ranging features included, um, the bed and an IKEA style box shelf stuck to the wall in one corner to place things on. I didn't like to try to place anything heavy on it, to be honest, just in case it fell apart. A window looked out onto a gap of about twelve inches between our wall and the wall of a parallel corridor, letting in a tiny amount of light which filtered down from above. Directly opposite our window, within touching distance, was the window of an identical room. I actually had to point out to Eloise while she was halfway through getting undressed for bed, that she might want to close the curtains on the basis that there was a guy sitting in the next room minding his own business while she was quietly doing a striptease for him.

Whenever you visit an Australian city it's always worth checking out the local Botanic Gardens - all the cities seem to have them, they usually cover hundreds of acres of land, and the pride that seems to be taken in maintaining an area of beauty away from the city centre probably deserves an award. Adelaide's Botanic Gardens cover 120 acres, are almost next door to Adelaide Zoo, and contain a large lake by which you can sit and soak up the atmosphere even if you're not in the mood to wander. Every Australian city seems to create it's Botanic Gardens with a different purpose in mind, and the ones in Adelaide appear to be very much about relaxation - whereas the gardens in Brisbane, for example, were covered in woodland and animal habitats, Adelaide seems to be more about plants and flowers and wide open grassy spaces covered in horticultural displays. Rather than feeling as though you are actually walking through a woodland and experiencing a real return to nature, you move between conservatories showcasing different plant and flower species or wander through small gardens of carefully arranged flowers. Near the entrance, there is a semi-wooded area with a large duck pond, which makes Adelaide Botanic Gardens one of the nicest places to visit for a relaxing day at the park, but personally I prefer the less organised and more natural feel of Brisbane where you can wander on a boardwalk along the reed beds by the river, watching things darting about in the water while surrounded by dense woodland.

The main attraction of Adelaide's Botanic Gardens is the International Rose Garden - an area surrounding the Bicentennial Conservatory and showcasing nearly five thousand different types of rose. Pathways meander through the area, which is divided into sections according to type, purpose and colour - one moment you can find yourself surrounded by sweet smelling red roses, the next you're looking at The Children's Rose or the Sir Cliff Richard Rose, or something equally bizarre. It seems that they have a Rose for every occasion here, and in the adjacent National Rose Trial Garden, the idea is to create a place where new varieties can be tested to see if they can stand the climate of Australia. I don't care how tough you think you are, you really do get swept away by the colour and the smell - at some point, the benches scattered around the garden draw you to them and you have to sit down, open a bottle of water and just surround yourself with colour and smell for half an hour before moving on.

Eloise and I paused at various places as we wandered between the sections of the rose garden, sitting and relaxing and taking it all in, and didn't even really care that we were subjected to a couple of light showers during our time in the park. To be honest, any slight wind only serves to cover everywhere with smells from the roses, and droplets of water hanging from the flowers can only make them even more interesting to look at and photogragh.

Open air shopping Malls in Australia all seem to be the same and most towns and cities have several. A pedestrianised street runs along a few blocks in the middle of the town and is lined with shops, cafes and restaurants. As there are no cars allowed, there's no need to cross the street or wait for the lights to change so you can spend a carefree afternoon just browsing, drinking or hanging out to watch other people browsing, drinking and hanging out. More and more malls in Australia are adding wireless internet access, which means that it's also becoming increasingly common to see people sitting about on benches using their laptop and surfing the web, quite often for free.

Rundle Mall in Adelaide is a large multi-storey undercover shopping centre with a pedestrianised precinct outside, and is by far the largest I've seen for a while - in fact, it is considered by some to be the largest shopping precinct in Australia. Outside on the street, just in case you've got so caught up in the shopping and forgotten just how surreal Australia can be, visitors are welcomed by the sight of two giant stainless steel balls (The Mall's Balls) piled one on top of the other for no adequately explored reason.

Inside, the place is huge - the entire ground floor is a food court selling every type of food imaginable, and above it are six floors containing every type of shop under the sun from supermarkets to sex shops. Next door is a smaller food court in which Eloise and I spent virtually every day sitting and eating donuts and banana smoothies - something which vendors in Britain seem unable to make. Smoothies in Australia are generally made out of real fruit, and you can watch them stuff bananas into a blender and create the drink in front of you - in Britain, on the other hand, there seems to be a tendency to use banana flavour ice cream, which isn't quite the same thing. Australian Malls are also a great place to shop for unusual items, as they have far more of those charming "doohickey" shops than we have back home - you know, the sort of places where you go in and wander between acres of shelves containing things you wouldn't normally expect to find, such as handmade musical instruments from darkest Africa or bird callers which will only summon the lesser spotted nark-nark bird of which there are only two left in the world. The trouble with this sort of shop is that you can spend all day wandering around and come out having spent all your money on things you not only don't need but that you hadn't even previously known existed - the fact that they often give a large chunk of your cash back to the tribespeople in Africa who actually made the items you bought only serves to make you nod to each other and talk in hushed tones about how much respect you have for the people running the shop, before going back and buying more stuff you don't need.

Back in Brisbane, Eloise bought a beautiful wooden musical instrument which looked remarkably like a small Sitar but had an extra "a" on the end and was spelt with a C instead of an S, probably for copyright reasons. Eloise, being by far the most talented person I've ever known in any form of artistic pursuit, was somehow able to take this Citara back to our hotel and instantly start playing the most beautiful melodies on it as though she'd been practicing all her life. Myself, I struggled to get any note out of it that didn't sound flat. A similar thing occurred when we bought a didgeridoo on our first visit to Australia in 2002. The man who sold it to us tried very hard to explain the concept of circular breathing to us, a method by which you can play the didgeridoo constantly without appearing to take a breath by breathing through your nose as you play with your mouth - but this seemed to both of us to be something approaching impossible. Nevertheless, within the time it took me to go down the hall and get a drink from the hotel vending machine, Eloise was getting those familiar droning low notes out of the thing and starting to sound like she'd been playing the didgeridoo for years. Myself, all I was managing to get out of it several weeks later was a strangely disturbing farting sound.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.