Going It Alone

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A while back, at the hostel, I met someone who was travelling around Australia following a similar route to me on a bus pass. Rather than being time limited, like the one I had to get down from Darwin, this allowed you to take as long as you liked, with as many stops as you liked on a specified route. It was also dirt-cheap (considering the distances involved) and make things even better, there was a $120 discount for holders of Student Union cards, and mine was still valid even though I'd long since finished at Brighton!

Mike and I had very different ideas as to what we wanted to do in Australia, so we decided that we would split up and go our separate ways. We would, obviously, meet up again for the flight to Auckland and then travel through New Zealand and the North America together. The route I chose to follow went back through the centre to Darwin, across to Kakadu National Park, then across to Cairns and finally down the east coast all the way back to Melbourne again. I would have liked to have gone to Perth but it was such a huge diversion that I didn't think it was worth it. That was probably my loss, but the place is hundreds of miles from anywhere!

So pass in hand, I set off back to Adelaide to see everything that I missed when I was here last time, including the nearby Barossa Valley. Like last time, I spent a very cultural few days in Adelaide checking out an Art Gallery and the South Australian Cultural Centre, which is basically a low budget Sydney Opera House. On the less cultural side I also went on Adelaide's only remaining tram route to the beach suburb, although I was feeling too full of culture to spend any time simply lying on a beach.

I was in Adelaide just before the Adelaide Grand Prix was due to be run. Like Monaco, this is run through the streets, rather than on a custom made track. The transformation was substantial and as I was walking through the race area it was hard to imagine that you were actually in city streets. It all looked very different to how it did last time I was here.

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Photos

Adelaide Fountain
The Adelaide Fountain in the Central Business District