17-10-11 to 20-10-11- Adelaide

17-10-11 - Adelaide

Touch down, finally after an 8 hour flight and neither of us getting any sleep we touched down in Australia…. Unfortunately we were still around 800 miles from our destination. We quickly fought through Sydney airport, grabbed our bags which seemed to take forever to come out and transferred to the other terminal to catch our 2 hour flight to Adelaide. So we waved goodbye to Sydney for the first time after an amazing 2 hours visit, we saw so much stuff, the airport corridors, the airport bag drop conveyors, the airport staff, the airport shops, the airport café's, the airport transfer coach……hang on a minute I really hope we see some better sights on our next visit.

So we finally touched down again in Australia for the second time two hours later. We got through the terminal again, found our bags and then headed over to get our Hertz hire car. After half an hour of filling out forms and making small talk about Concord to the sale assistant, who had apparently seen all the concords in England apart from the one in Cambridge. We finally succeeded in getting an upgrade and a map. We got a Toyota Camry Altise or a Big Red shiny Car for the women reading. We headed out to it and it was perfect, was an automatic and had cruise control, so great for the long drive we would be doing.

We drove out of the car park (ignoring the advice me mum had sent me the day before; "Don't forget they drive on the opposite side of the road to England") and headed out towards the coastal road in the general direction of Terry's and Cheryl's. We found it without to much difficulty and pulled onto the drive where a friendly chap was standing waving and smiling at us (forgot to ask how long you had been standing there for Terry?). Terry showed us around their lovely house and offered us a drink which we both leapt at the opportunity to have tap water, it seems like a lifetime since I last had water from the tap. We then headed out to grab some lunch. On the way we stopped at Cheryl's school and popped in to say a quick hello. After a lovely fresh Salad (i.e. no Asian food poisoning) we headed back to the house and Terry popped out for a bit while we freshened ourselves up (he had obviously realised by this point we stank from the overnight flight).

A little bit later we heard a friendly shout Hello and popped into the hallway to see Suze. I can't believe how many years its been since she came to the UK, it seems like it was just yesterday. Shortly later Terry, Cheryl, Jordan and the kids arrived back and we sat down to a tasty Lasagne mmmmmm, I'm sure you must have known that was me favourite Cheryl. Jenny arrived after dinner and the rest of the evening was nice and relaxing chatting and catching up.


18-10-11 - Adelaide
We finally arose around 11ish and after freshening up Terry took us to the local shopping centre to find some camping gear for the road trip. Terry was very sensible and left us shopping while he went off to do some bits. When we got back we had a lovely steak for dinner with Terry, Cheryl and Jenny, before we headed out to see Jenny and Jordan play a viscous game of Net Ball. I didn't realise it was such a violent sport, people getting slapped and all sorts. It was a good game to watch and we will ignore the result, although it was very close.

19-10-11 - Adelaide
Today we pulled ourselves out of bed got freshened up then went out with Terry to the vineyards. We visited around 8 different ones including Jacobs Creek and had a few tasters in each, very nice reds and a couple of ok-ish whites. We stopped off at a place for lunch, which had a lovely little lake with turtles swimming about in. We sat next to it and had 3 different platters to share, they were delicious with; different pate's, cheese, apple, raisons, olives, bread, chutney, etc etc. Terry then took us to a dried fruit shop where we got a few tasty treats. In the evening we went out for a meal with Terry, Cheryl and Jenny. It was a fantastic place where we got to try Kangaroo meat (which was very tasty) and they had a help yourself salad and vegetable buffet, needless to say we both were stuffed afterwards.

20-10-11 - Adelaide
Today we had a lie in then headed into Adelaide Town centre to pick up a tent and the last of the bits needed for our road trip. We had a flying walk around town to give us a quick peak, we will have to explore it in more detail when we return at Christmas. That evening we headed out to Suze's new place, which was amazing, it is massive a really nicely done up. Jordan made us feel very upset when he told us how cheap houses are in Oz. It was a lovely evening as lots of the family popped round so it was lovely chatting to everyone. Unfortunately we had to head back a bit early as one of the kind neighbours had rang Terry to tell him that I had left the car lights on, ooops guess tomorrow we might not be leaving so early after all. We headed back and the car started up first time so hopefully we wont have any problems while driving through the desert which has nothing for miles and miles. We said our goodbyes to Terry and Cheryl and went of to bed ready for our road trip to begin the following day.