Here's an update for you.Adelaide 30/11/07 - 12/12/07Me and Rich have been in Adelaide now since the 30th November and are leaving tomorrow morning (12/12/07) bright and early (6.05am).Adelaide has been an awesome place to visit and the accommodation we have stayed in is really nice (for a hostel), it's also the place where we saw our first spider, and it was a big one!! He is called a Brown Huntsman, bites but doesn't kill and it only really feels like a bee sting…apparently. Our first thought was that we would stay here in Adelaide for only a couple of days; it's now nearly been two weeks!! The weather has been good on most days but we've had a few colder days (23ºC) and it also rained and thundered and we had lightening on one day as well. We have now seen most of the things here. Adelaide is a very old styled city; its buildings are a mixture of Wild West era and modern, both complementing each other. Everywhere is easy to walk to, even the other side of town, which is a good thing really as trying to understand the public transport system is an absolute nightmare. We managed the train and the tram, but have yet to work out the buses. They don't seem to sell the tickets at the stations and every time you go on the transport you have to swipe your ticket?!! (You can buy the tickets in shops - weird huh??!!) We have been to the Botanic Gardens were we saw the biggest lily-pad ever, and the National Wine Centre (which was crap) we were supposed to get a free taste of the wine but we didn't as that bit was closed!! Dammit!! We have made a visit to the South Australia Museum; they have a lot of stuffed animals including a stuffed elephant. They also have an Insect Centre which has lots of live creepy crawlies, including the red back spider, this spider is very common in Australia it is also the spider which can kill people. Apparently the lady said that they are only common in places where they don't get bothered i.e. sheds and garages etc. It made me very scared! One of the best places we visited was Adelaide Zoo, They have so many animals and they look after them so well. We saw Lions, Tigers, Gorilla's, giraffe, Meer-cats, Hippos (check out the photos) etc, and a few Australian animals like the Kangaroos, Wallabies, Koala and the Tasmanian devil, oh, and a lot of birds. Not forgetting my favourite, the otters. The zoo is a big place and you could end up getting rather lost. Adelaide also has an amazing market aswell, which sells everything you could possibly want or need, and its open 5 days a week. Also would just like to mention that while we have been in Adelaide the wild parrots that fly around have been mocking me, they seem to fly and follow us wherever we go and then when we go to take a picture the hid behind tree branches and leaves which is why when you see the pictures you will notice that we have some rubbish photos of the parrots in the trees. However one parrot was nice enough to let us take an ok picture of it (this is the couple more clearer pictures of the parrot), this is also the day we took photo's of the black swans and the four wild pelicans which we got rather close to - they are massive when the stand up-right. Oh and Rich took pictures of Adelaide Oval (cricket ground).We went to Port Adelaide by train one Saturday, this is a really weird place…it was a complete ghost town. It felt like you just walked onto an abandoned Wild West film set. While we were there we went to the Maritime Museum which was fun (for Rich) and took pictures of the lighthouse. (The pictures with no people in and rusty cars and old buildings are Port Adelaide). None of the shops were open they shut at 11am (on a Saturday). Another day we headed on down by tram to the beach town of Glenelg. This place was a lot busier than Port Adelaide. It had a lovely sandy beach and bright blue sea, and when we went for a walk down the road to see the Marina we found a bull seal sunbathing itself on the side. It was massive but so cute and didn't care about anything going on around him. While in Glenelg we went to the Rodney Fox Shark Experience, he is very famous here as he basically got bit in two by a Great White Shark…and survived. They show images of him before he was sewn up and after images, it was disgusting. They had lots of Great White Shark jaws hanging around the room some of them huge, the biggest one used to belong to a 23ft long Great White!!! Rodney now campaigns to save shark, and has helped make a lot of deep water films including Jaws! A the end of the day we watched the sun go down behind the sea which was really pretty and probably the best sunset we're going to see so we took lots of pictures.That pretty much sums up the whole time in Adelaide. But if you're wondering why I haven't mentioned about Kangaroo Island (the whole reason for starting in Adelaide) well…that's because it's a bad story, and I don't like to talk about it!!

We were booked to go to Kangaroo Island on the Saturday 8th, I was really excited as it's the only place I know I'vewanted to go to from before Rich and I booked the whole travelling thing (i.e. about a year I've been waiting to go). On the Thursday it rained, and with the rain came lightening, which apparently started bush fires. On Friday morning in the paper it said that the fires were mainly on…Kangaroo Island. Next thing we know we're getting a phone call from the tour agents we booked to go with saying they were sorry but they had to cancel the trip, obviously. This made me very sad and very annoyed. Unfortunately, the fires are still going on, and are spreading towards tourist areas - which means places like Seal Bay (this is were all the seals give birth), they are also burning the homes of a lot of animals including Koalas and Wombats. The amount of damage that the fires do is awful and definitely hits home being closer to what is happening.