Adelaide, capital of South Australia - city number 4 on our round Australia expedition and, coincidentally, Australia's 4th largest city. Today's stop was special because we shared it with relations. Our nephew and his lovely wife and children collected us from the port and drove us around their fair city, its beaches and surrounding hills. More perfect weather set a beautiful backdrop for the day. I don't know what we enjoyed most - the long, lazy stretches of beach, the heavily wooded hills (now lush, but still carrying the awful memories of Ash Wednesday and destructive bush fires), the attractive, quaint villages and wineries, the magnificent churches and stone buildings or just being lucky enough to have some beautiful people who took the time to show it all to us.

Adelaide was founded in 1836 by free settlers, predominantly religious dissenters, and hence the numerous churches throughout the city and surrounds. My great-great-grandfather came from Switzerland and landed in Port Adelaide in 1876. Fortunately for me he didn't take his final vows as a Catholic priest after arriving or I wouldn't be here today, 128 years later sailing into Port Adelaide on the Diamond Princess.

I cannot begin to imagine how he must have felt arriving alone in such a new and foreign country after sailing for months on a clipper through wild winds and seas, but I am ever grateful that he did for the life I have today. Sailing out of Adelaide and across the waters of the Great Australian Bight gave us a taste of rough seas, but I am sure our great ship's stabilizers made it more comfortable for us than the sailors of old.