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Published: March 12th 2007
Once the Ghan finally arrived back in Adelaide and we'd finished complaining that it was 2 and a bit hours late, we checked back into My Place where we'd stayed last week and tried to figure out how we'd spend the next couple of days. Unfortunately, we spent so long doing this that we pretty much wasted the afternoon, which gave us even less time to see/do/eat.
Having eventually decided that we'd hit the beach the next day, we decided to head for a quick happy hour beer before getting some food. Even this plan fell apart though, as we got chatting to some friendly locals and before we knew it it was gone midnight and we'd still not actually had anything to eat! By this time though it seemed like a lost cause, and as we eventually headed back to the hostel we suspected that it ws just as well the beach was the only thing on the itinerary for tomorrow!
Sure enough, we woke up on Saturday with slightly parched throats and a slight sensitivity to noise and headed off back to Glenelg beach. Adelaide city centre was packed this weekend as the Clipsall 500 was on,
Garden of Unearthly Delights
The Garden Shed, where we saw our showwhich is a big Ford Vs Holden (AKA Vauxhall/Opel/GM) street race where half the roads are closed, so the beach was a great place to be! We spent the day by the water as well as getting some good food and replacing some worn out/lost clothes (Luke managed to leave 1 of his 2 pairs of boardies in Alice, d'oh). We got the tram (with it's deceptively uncomfortable seats - upholstered wood!) back to the city to grab some food from the supermarket only to find everything in town already shut at 17:30! Big city appearance, small town values! Luckily our most excellent travel companions at Uluru, Bill and Ted, had recommended a pizza place around the corner from My Place that was an absolute bargain (12 inch pizza for less than 3 pounds!), so we headed there promising to eat healthily the next day instead!
On Sunday we headed off to Hahndorf, the oldest surviving German settlement in Australia, which was just one of the great little extras on offer at our hostel. The town is really nice, although something of a tourist trap! Any quainter and they'd have to rename it 'Germania Land' and move it to
Andrew McClelland's Mix Tape
Sing this to 'Daydream Believer'. If you want to, that is. Disneyworld or something. But we had a great afternoon tasting hand made chocolate, checking out the art gallery and (yet again) indulging in a bit of wine tasting. Well, it would be rude not to!
In the evening we then headed to the Garden of Unearthly Delights, which is a part of the Adelaide Fringe (second biggest after only Edinburgh). The Garden is a mini outdoor festival of comedy every night, and we went to see a show called Andrew McClelland's Mix Tape, performed, funnily enough, by Andrew McClelland. The show was pretty good - it made us laugh at least and was a great substitute to the AFL game that we wanted to see but never managed.
For our last day, we headed back to the city for some more culture. This time we went to the Tandanya Gallery, which showcases Aboriginal art. We'd hoped to see the daily free didgeridu performance or Torres Straight Islander Dance, but Monday is the one day where nothing is performed. D'oh again. It was still well worth a visit though - the paintings were amazing and we watched a really interesting movie about living in the Top End (around Darwin)
Hahndorf
Like a litle piece of Germany in the Adleiade Hills! too. We finished the day with a boring trip to the supermarket to get some food for our fourth and final train journey (hooray) the next day, which would take us to Sydney. By this time, we're now sick of trains - no matter how mighty or legendary they are (and they still don't run on time)! We did have a couple of hours in Broken Hill, another outback town although one that's still running fairly well. And we got to see it at a reasonable time of day too!
We wanted to finish this entry with a link to the Ghan and Indian Pacific songs but we can't find them anywhere. That's right folks, these trains have songs about them, and with no hint of irony about them either. If you're bored at work, see if you can find them somewhere and let us know the link - they're quite unintentionally hilarious!
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