Hi All,

We crossed the border into South Australia on Friday afternoon, after we surrendered our fruit and veg at the quarantine line. It's an odd concept that you can't take fruit across a state-line within a country, but we opted to obey the rules as knowing our luck we'd be spot checked and fined! Plus driving a bright orange van with 'spaceships' written all over it highlights the fact that we're foreign!

We drove through lush pine plantations to Mount Gambier town. It's a beautiful little town set on the slopes of an extinct volcano. The buildings in the town centre were impressive, old colonial style hotels and houses with pretty veranda's and decorative wrought-iron fencing. We popped to the supermarket to grab some food then headed for the top of the volcano. There's a huge lake in the volcano crater and every November the water turns bright blue for the summer (Nov-March). Luckily for us, the water has started turning bright blue early this year, so we got to see it, no wonder its called Blue Lake! It was a pretty awesome sight. We ventured around the crater top where there's several little craters, these all had normal green-blue water but it made a good comparison. We had a lovely time and thought we'd get an early evening at Mount Gambier but couldn't find anywhere to stay so we ended up driving out of town and finding somewhere. We found a pretty little site at Millicent where we settled for dinner. Pete was on the menu at the Mosi restaurant, they had a huge feast. Then a spider crawled into the van so we ended up turfing the contents of the van out to hunt for it, with little luck! We finally gave in and went to sleep!

On Friday we had a long drive to Adelaide ahead so we hit the road fairly early. We stopped a few times along the way; a town called Southport which was a very sleepy town, at a town called Robe to post some clothes home and grab lunch, along the highway when Hol encountered her first ever wasp sting.... As she leaned back in her car seat, there was a a wasp just chillin' right in the middle of her seat who didn't take to being squashed very well. Pete wondered what was going on and quickly pulled over in the middle of nowhere to remove the barb left behind. After recovering we hit the road again towards the nearest town (about 50km). When we arrived Hol was feeling much better so we carried on towards Murray Bridge, a town to the east of Adelaide where the river Murray (largest river in Oz) was bridged. It again was a pretty town, lots of old style buildings. We stopped for a drink and a view from the lookout then set off again to find somewhere to stay. We ended up in a town called Strathlyn where we found a nice campsite, cooked dinner and got an early night.

On Saturday we got up and hit the road. It wasn't long before the car temperature gauge shot through the roof again - we knew the drill so we pulled over, popped the bonnet and called Spaceships to tell them. We both thought it was a fairly minor overheat as we were going up a hill, but this time there was water flooding out of the engine coolant tank onto thee floor.... then with no warning the engine tank exploded into two halves, covering Pete in scalding water. Luckily he was quick on his toes and managed to get out of the way pretty fast, but he's got some pretty serious scalds on his torso :( To cut a long story short, the breakdown guy said it was common for these vehicles to overheat at they're imported from Japan and can't cope with the Australian heat, plus they don't have spare parts for them here either. We asked the hire company to put us in a hotel as we're getting pretty narked with breaking down, and they kindly obliged as there was only 3 days left of our hire. They also gave us some money back for all the time we were broken down which was nice of them! We spent the rest of the day being towed to Spaceships to return Space-Patrol and moving into our new plush apartment, 'The Mantra'. It was a beautiful little pad, with a lounge, kitchen, bathroom and huge bedroom so we did well in breakdown number 3!

On Sunday we took advantage of having a flat and we had a really lazy day. We got up late and grabbed a subway. It was 36°C so we couldn't stay outside for too long but we went for a walk along the river Torres for most of the afternoon then headed back to the flat and lounged around for the rest of the day.

On Monday we had a chilled out start to the day as we were waiting to find out if spaceships had booked us in for the third night which they couldn't do at the time of booking us in. When we finally got the call to say they had, we hopped on a tram to Glenelg beach. It was another scorching day inland but it was lovely and cool at the sea front! We had an ice cream and went for a walk along the pier. We had a general browse around town then in the afternoon we headed home, Hol cooked a camper-van-leftovers-meal and we chilled out in front of the TV for the evening!

On Tuesday we had to move house (sob sob) as we'd planned on staying in Adelaide for one day after the campervan and there was no way we were going to pay £100 to stay in our flat another night! So, in true backpacker style - we packed up, and trudged through the city to our hostel! It was the day of the Melbourne cup (horse race) so we thought it was only polite to partake in a bet - both of us clueless we found a friendly lady in the shop who explained how to bet and we picked some horses with nice names! We spent the afternoon watching the race (it really does stop the nation here) and to our surprise, Pete's horse came second so he won $20! Not bad considering we only put a tiny amount on them! Hol's horse came second from last (yeah! I know how to pick a fast one!) and that was most of the day over as we had a 6am airport trip to make. We grabbed dinner and got an early night.

We didn't get to see a lot of what we'd hoped to in Adelaide (Mount Lofty, Adelaide Hills, Fleurialy Peninsula) because we were car-less, but we did get a few days to chill out and get back on our feet. :)

Catch you in Sydney!

Hol and Pete

xXx