28th Stop: Adelaide, South Australia

Temperature – 35 degrees C

We arrive in Adelaide in the early evening, and are both looking forward to seeing our favourite bassist Lisa Flea, in her new designer home. Adelaide is a city of about 1.2 million people, situated on the south coast of Australia. It is the only state capital not to have been settled by convicts, which is one possible explanation for the relatively (and we do mean relatively!) refined sound of the Adelaide Australian accent. When we arrive, the sun is hot and the air is still, so after acquainting ourselves with Lisa’s house, we head to the beach for a relaxing evening.

What a strange feeling it was to see Lisa in the southern hemisphere!

Lisa takes us on a tour of local sights. This is Lisa's old school.

Henley Beach is the place for locals, so that's where we go! It's a Tuesday night but Adelaideans still head here after work to cool off in the ocean.

Chloe and Lisa are distracted by their gelati. The woman in the background is distracted by... Her son's behind

Lisa and Chloe dip their toes in the Southern Ocean. It's not that cold, considering Antarctica is on the other side.

Another fantastic sunset. The beach is west-facing and the sky is pristine.

Thank you Lisa! We leave Adelaide with a goodie-bag of local delights, including beer brewed in the Adelaide CBD and chocolate made just as close. We ate the Mint Slice biscuits already...

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The Journey to South Australia

If you know us, then you probably know that although we have managed to get from London to Australia without flying so far, we are on the ‘wrong’ side of Australia! In Perth we aim to get a train across the country, which would take 3 nights, but to our dismay the next one is sold out! We want to visit Adelaide before getting to Sydney so we take a chance on a car relocation. We luckily find a company that has a campervan located in Perth who actually needs it to be located in Sydney – within 6 days! We grab our bags, leave the horrible hostel that we didn’t manage to sleep at in Perth and for just a dollar a day we pick up the keys to our ‘new home’ ‘ for the next 6 days. The journey to Sydney is from the West coast to the East – around a mindblowing 4,100 kilometres in total. First however, we head to Adelaide in South Australia – some 2,700 kilometres away…

Our campervan is a retrofitted Toyota - complete with cooker, bed, water tanks, power sockets, kitchen sink, dining area and a 'shower' (a hose pipe!).

The landscape is instanly mesmerising - forests, deserts, rivers, lakes, mountains and cliffs - all in layers of constantly-changing colour.

Sudden dust storms brew in the fields alongside. We cross our fingers and hope for a journey without bushfires or flooding.

We stop for lunch in Cunderdin (aka 'Cundy') - a town 160 kilometres East of Perth with a population of less than 700 people. Why here?... Because it is where we meet one of our friends who we met in Bangkok - Jayne!

Jayne kindly picks us a bunch of grapes from her garden for our long journey!

One of the many beautiful salt lakes we pass by.

We cross the famous Nullabor Plain, which has Australia's longest stretch of straight road - 146.6 kilometres! If you know your Latin then you may have recognised 'Nullabor' as 'No Tree', which didn't turn out to be strictly true, but a fascinating place all the same.

We stop to see a section of The Great Australian Bight - an open bay generally thought of as being towards the Southern Ocean, but also classified as being on the South Eastern part of the Indian Ocean.

We spend the night before reaching Adelaide in a campsite near Ceduna - which turns out to be one of the best places in the world to see stars!

Many towns along the way have rather obscure claims to fame. We are halfway along our coast-to-coast drive as we pass Kimba - a town known for having a large model of a native cockatoo known as a 'galah'. We can confirm that the original bird is exceptionally more beautiful.