What a difference a week makes.

We finished the great ocean road in magnificent style, going past the stunning twelve apostles and various limestone formations that are battered by the rough southern sea. Then started the day long slog up into adelaide! the area is really dry at the moment, and the landscape seemed to never alter as we wound our way up towards the more fertile vinyards of the area. After a hasty stopover, we eventually got into adelaide on a sunny saturday morning! We were desperate for a hostel bed after all the sleeping in tents, however that week was adelaide fringe week, so everything was booked up for that night. We therefore spent the day at a campsite, walking into the picturesque seaside suburb of glenelg in the then blistering heat!

Whats pretty cool about this south australia coast, or rather pretty scary, is the number of shark atacks reported just where we were! Basically the water here is colder, so these great whites and threshers come in a LOT closer to the beach...! Having found all this out at a fab exhibition about these darned sea munchers, walking along the crowded beach where kids were jumping off the pier into the blue waters really felt like a scene from jaws...no swimming for us, not at all!

We spent the next few days wandering around adelaide. At first we werent amazingly keen on the place - it has a pretty small-town feel, and lacks the tropical"ness" that sydney sortve had. However, like all these places, it seems to be that the longer you spend there the more you get to know it and like it. We visited my cousin and family which was fab, and generally did sightseeing and all the things you can do in a city as opposed to the dried up countryside beyond the borders!

The plan was to move on from adelaide up to alice springs, and circle on round to Cairns etc etc, however we came across some car problems which were looking pretty pricey when we got the car routinely serviced. With this nudge from fate, we decided to do what i think we had wanted to do for a while - return to sydney, recoup oursleves, get the car fixed and then think about selling it on. Cant deny that we were a tad bummed out by it all though, but in the end its all worked out pretty well. It took us 2 days, or 15hrs of driving to get back across the outback to Sydney - our only company on the raod for a while was a couple of emus, we've never seen roads or land this empty!! But we made it back in opne piece, and it really felt lkie coming home as we chugged along the hume highway back to chester hill!! so now wer doing a bit of vegging, waiting for a phone call from someone who wants our car! any offers.....!!