Adelaide, Australia

You may find the above title rather bland. You may come to realise from the entry that it is not coincidental.

Since my arrival in Adelaide on Tuesday morning and diary entry of the same time, I have come to the rather unfortunate conclusion that this is not a city in which I would like to live. I find myself frequently making comparisons with Perth, a city of almost the same age and size. The similarities make the differences more startling and confusing.

In terms of city layout and architecture, you would find Adelaide a nice place to be, especially the central square mile or two which are encircled by parkland. There are numerous old buildings, pleasant parks and squares. What is bizarre, though, is the population. Everyone under 30 who drives a car or walks along the pavement seems to be completely insane.

They are incapable of driving along the street without squealing their tyres, revving their engines to the limit or almost running over hapless pedestrian tourists such as myself. At night they continue in their "hooning" ways, except sometimes on foot by yelling at their compatriots as if they were the other side of the city rather than 3 feet away.

As you may have deduced, I was not impressed with the city initially: further to the population, the development seems to have left large areas of the centre looking run-down, in many places resembling Reading...

Thankfully, I have been able to escape the centre on two occasions, both of which were a pleasant surprise and contrast. I have been sharing a room with, among other people, a chap named Paul who is travelling longer-term than I, and is currently job-hunting. Thanks to his driving license and being older than I am, he was able to hire a car in which we went around the farmland, wineries and hills to the north, north-east and east of the city respectively. In the Barossa Valley (where all the wineries are located) we found the Wolf Blass vines (as seen on TV, here at least) and a little stream called Jacob's Creek! This is of course the location for the wineries of perhaps one of the world's most popular wines. According to the visitor centre, over 1 million glasses of the stuff are drunk around the world every day.

The Adelaide Hills can be seen from the city centre and are only half an hour away by car. In parts they resemble Derbyshire or North Wales, but also hills in Germany (where many of the settlers are from) or France. All in all, they are a nice change from the city.

On Thursday Paul and I again left the city, this time on the Glenelg tram, the only remaining line from what was once a large network. We both mused that it reminded us of another tram, and coincidentally we had both been on the Soller tram in Majorca, which is very similar. The beach seems to be the main point of escape for the Adelaiders (?) and, despite being the first point of landing in South Australia, the architecture is more modern, being of an Art Deco style. I took the opportunity of swimming in my second ocean of the trip, the Southern Ocean, which was very warm considering the next land it touches is Antarctica...

Today (Friday) is my last day in Adelaide, and I can't say I'm sorry to be leaving, unfortunately. The check-out time from the hostel (which is regarded by some as the best in Australia) is 10am, but my flight to Brisbane doesn't leave till 19:30 so I have rather a lot of time to kill. I visited the Botanical Gardens, which were OK - but I could only spend an hour there. I visited the Museum, which was OK - but I could only spend an hour there too. I wandered the streets for over an hour looking for an internet café to write this entry in, and then decided to come back to the hostel and do it from here.

As I said, my next stop is Brisbane, where I am for the weekend. Confusingly, only some Australian states have Daylight Savings Time, and Adelaide is in a half-hour time zone. This means that flying east to Queensland, I actually put my watch back half an hour! Crazy Aussies...