Since I last wrote I have done a few things but nothing major to write about so this is just a little update from me whilst I am farming till my travels begin again.

I have been on the farm for over 2 months now and things are going well. I will admit though that I am starting to get a little bored so have had to entertain myself by thinking of free things to do in and around the area lol.

One Friday night a group of us decided that we would take a trip into town and go to The Central Market. This is one of Adelaide's biggest food markets and is open till quite late in the evening. I didn't really know what to expect however I soon discovered that I could easily spend a small fortune in here if I let myself go on a shopping spree! There are free food tastings in the evenings and we sampled some of the cheese, yogurt and other varying samples throughout the market. Bea and I went into Haighs chocolate shop and basically told the lady that we'd never eaten chocolate before to get some free samples which was naughty of us but it worked a charm! There are so many things I love here from home but cost a small fortune to buy *sad face* but I guess it's a good thing that I don't have any money to spend lol. We did however go back to the food court and spend a whopping $5 on Chinese food for the evening. Great price but not much variety since we'd done this every time we came into town so far.

There are a lot of free things to do in Adelaide if you hunt about for them and one Sunday everyone from the cottage went into town to go and see the Oi You exhibition which is on at the Adelaide Arts Centre. This exhibition shows you urban street art (graffiti art) from around the world and they had a selection of Banksey's works on display. I felt obliged to go and see them since he was English. My mum laughed since I had never bothered to look at them when I was in London. It was a good exhibition and there was a living art wall outside where people could leave their own contributions in chalk. Very good but my knees were chalk encrusted by the time we finished!

One of the things the group here decided to do was go to the Coopers Brewery in Adelaide. Unfortunately by the time we got into town only a few hours before the start of the tour the company called and cancelled it. A bit irritating since we had to take a day off and will need to cover those hours another time. Damnit. Oh well. We then felt obliged to go on a mini pub crawl round town after Bea and I had finished playing on the swings and climbing the trees in Rymill Park like little kids lol. I can't decide if it was the free coffee at the Nespresso shop that was making me feel sick or perhaps hanging off the swings upside down after eating...hmmm lol. The first place we went to was the Belgian Beer Cafe just off of the back of Rundle Mall. It was very nice but at $14 per bottle of beer there was no way we were going to stay in there for very long! I did (like a true Brit) almost just decide to get a pint of Stella but got talked into having something else instead. After one beer I think it was enough for some of us and one person in particular who seemed hammered (not me by the way lol) we moved onto the Austral. We'd seen it many times when we had walked through town but never gone in. It is listed as a hotel as well but from the outside it just looks like a pub. We had a couple of beers in there before catching the bus back to Hanhdorf. It had been a very long day that's for sure.

A couple of weekends ago I decided that I wanted to take a look at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Mainly because there was a Turner exhibition on in there...yet another thing I could have seen back in the UK but never bothered *sigh*. The art gallery itself has some interesting pieces in there although some of them are real head scratchers as to how they constitute as art at all. It kind of reminded me of the time I went into the Tate Modern and walked into this giant box in the dark to the back and to the front again...that was it...not exactly mind blowing. The Turner exhibition though was great and it was a welcome hour spent after all the weird things I'd seen beforehand. (There was one piece of 'art' in the modern section which was a life size naked man hanging off of a hook on a wall by the skin on his back...how wrong is that lol). Anyway...there was a free tour around the Turner exhibition and I got to see some amazing pieces, from what I could gather Turner didn't paint many people. There are people in his pictures but some of his most famous works are of the sea. You were allowed to take photographs but no one was and it made me feel a little odd like people were staring at me or something. Soon wore off when I really wanted a copy of my favourite pieces that's for sure.

This pretty much takes me up to what I did last weekend. I decided that I would like to go and visit the Adelaide Zoo. The Adelaide Zoo has a couple of Giant Pandas and I don't think I have ever seen one (ZSL in London is obviously too cheap to spend that sort of cash unlike Edinburgh who bought 'Gay Pandas') Bea, Kiri and I made it to the zoo and walked round. The map of the zoo has a serious scale problem when it looks like you have to walk miles and you've actually missed something its all so close together. There are the usual animals that you get at a zoo such as Lions, Tigers, Giraffes etc but no Elephants...weird. We took a walk down to the petting zoo, you could buy some food and feed the Goats and the Deer and then wander through and stroke a Kangaroo and some Quokka which were wandering round. It was cool, meant for kids but no one seemed to care that we were in there...well...till it was my idea that Bea and I get inside this little toy Crocodile Hunter car with Steve Irwin in the back and have our picture taken. I think we got a few weird looks then lol. I wanted to stick the $2 in and start her up but something told me that security would catch up with us before it finished lol. We saw the Giant Panda exhibit and to be honest they were cute, but I seriously thought they would be bigger. For something labelled as 'Giant' you'd expect a big creature (not Godzilla size or anything) but bigger lol, Woman's preoccupation with size coming through there I think lol. Anyway, we got to see some other really cute animals too such as the Otters which make a little squeaky noise when you approach. I was disappointed with the Tiger exhibit, mainly because there were 2 of them, both asleep and far away for the naked eye to actually see. The Orangutan enclosure was good, although I sometimes really don't think people get my humour. One of the animals was drinking out of a milk carton in a human like fashion and I laughed and said loudly 'brings Planet of the Apes slightly closer'...a guy taking photos just looked at me with an expression of you better explain on his face that it was a joke...another strike out for British Wit.

I now have about 3 weeks left at the farm before leaving and punting off to Kangaroo Island and hitting the Great Ocean Road to Melbourne and I can't wait to see something new again. Although, I am a stickler for changing my travel plans at short notice and who knows where I will fly to next or when lol. However, definitely more interesting updates to follow.

The picture is us outside the Belgian Beer Cafe.