Made it!

On Saturday, we bid fare-thee-well to the busy, traffic-lined streets of Sydney and hopped aboard the legendary Indian Pacific railway to plough through the outback to relaxed, recumbant, Adelaide. After our horrid trek acorss the city that was plagued with misfortune (the one day of the year Sydney metro decides to not run any trains whatsoever coinciding with the one day of the year we try to lug all our bags plus our bikes to Central station, which - incidentally - has a lot of stairs), we were looking forward to 24 hours of sitting down. So, as the Gold Kangaroo passengers were practicially carried onto the train and welcomed with crisp white linen tablecloths and Bing Crosby playing the piano in the corner, we stuffed our bags with picnic food and settled into a seat for a 24 hour trek across Oz with a loud, plebby lad with a rats-tail trying to cop a smoke in the toilets.

The seats were actually comfortable and the journey very pleasant. It's easy to while away the hours looking at the scenery - we were treated with some spectacular views of the Blue Mountains, before trundling (and I mean trundling - the Indian Pacific is hardly known for its wealth of speed) through the remenants of the bush, into the outback. We managed to get some sleep, surprisingly; I was armed with earplugs, and Howie had already managed to sweet-talk the two girls in front of us into lending him a pillow. So, snuggly and cosy it wasn't, but fine it was and we slept until about 6.30am when we pulled into Broken Hill.

Right in the middle of the outback, Broken Hill is an old mining town and there's not much to it. However, the wise proprieters of a little cafe right by the train station open on a Sunday specifically to cater for the Indian Pacific crowd, so at 7am in the middle of the NSW outback after very little sleep, we sat down to a coffee, hot choc, croissant, egg and bacon roll and a fabulous blueberry muffin. No traffic, just the gentle dozing of our fellow passengers as they too blinked against the sun and shovelled delicious toast and scrmbled eggs into their mouths.

Back on the train, we made the final push to Adelaide, where we arrived at aboout 3pm. We were treated to some of the most scenic countryside on the way - it's almost harvest here and the hills and fields of South Australia are completely ripe with corn and wheat. We also passed a few vineyards and spied some wild emus (all the 'roos must have been asleep because there was hide, nor hare of the them). After picking up our luggage, we locked the bikes at the station and 'borrowed' a trolley to get our luggage to the city. We got about 100 metres before they clocked us so we ended up in a taxi to the city. What become of the trolley, we know not. We checked into a hostel - My Place - because the lovely gentleman whose house we were supposed to view texted us about an hour before we arrived and told us he'd already let out the room. As one can imagine, the air surrounding Howie was a little blue, but nevertheless, we had the trusty Lonely Planet to get us out of any scrape we encountered.

We had a nice, clean room, and headed out to explore. Adelaide is, it must be said, very pretty and very relaxed. Very little traffic, very little hassle. In fact, it's the antithesis of Sydney, which is mad and large. Adelaide is not mad, and small. We dined in Chinatown at a place called Fortune Duck, at which we had the best sweet and sour pork either of us have ever had. Ever. And between us, we've had a lot of sweet and sour pork. At that point, at 8pm, it was still 29 degrees, which says a lot about the weather here, ie. it's roasting and glorious. After that, it was a walk to the train station in the dark to get the bikes (didn't want them to sleep out there alone, poor things) and then beddy-byes time. I believe we were asleep by 10pm.

Today we've signed up to the library, which demonstrates where our priorities lie, really. We've got a couple of house viewings at the beach (hoorah!) this afternoon, so hopefully we'll have whiff of a permanent abode in no time.

The verdict so far: Adelaide is great. We like it. But there is yet to emerge a decent hot choc. Watch this space.