I won't try and drag it out any longer. The chances are that you've already read Claire's diary and you know. The hostel we stayed in used to be a jail. We actually slept in one of the old jail cells. It was sort of fun, but just a bit cold. The guy looking after the hostel was a bit grumpy when we arrived but he became a little more friendly after his Dr. Who fix.

We were planning to watch C.S.I. before going to bed and were ready at 8.30 but the gardenning programme seemed to be running late. We waited and waited and at 9pm we were rewarded but puzzled. Then I consulted the clock settings in my PDA and discovered that Adelaide (and presumably the state of South Australia) was actually in a slightly different time zone, 30 minutes behind Sydney and Melbourne. Doh! That would explain it. It would also explain why the hostel guy was a little grumpy. We had turned up early.

We spent most of the following day just driving. We were still over 400km from Adelaide and we drove pretty much constantly. We did stop occasionally when we saw something worth looking at. One of our stops was at the Pink Lake. Viewed at the right angle it is actually pink.

While we still had the car, we did a mini tour of Adelaide. We had a quick peek at some of the nice areas with wide, tree lined roads and attractive buildings. We also stopped at "Light's Vision", a hill on which the chap who designed the layout of Adelaide stood.

We spent the evening cooking spaghetti and feeling very tired. And we missed out on free apple pie and custard courtesy of the hostel.

We had a pretty relaxed day the following day but to be honest, we were both feeling under the weather and not up to doing much anyway. We started by taking the hire car back and then learning a bit about opal mining in Australia. We then headed to the South Australian Museum to look at an opalised plesiosaur skeleton. The museum also had a considerable collection of mineral and rock samples. Claire was drooling over them for quite some time.

After lunch we spent some time in an internet café before wandering down to Adelaide's cricket stadium. Apparently the Adelaide Oval is supposed to be one of the nicest test cricket grounds in the world. Not having seen all of the others, I'm not qualified to pass judgement but it was quite nice. Being winter in Australia at the moment, cricket is off the menu and the ground should be closed. We still managed to find a way to sneak into the Don Bradman stand though.

Unfortunately, that's it for Adelaide. Not a very long stop but then we were late leaving New Zealand and we had to pick up some time somewhere. Our next stop is Brisbane, it should be a little warmer there... I hope. I miss the summer.