A visit to South Australia wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Barossa Valley, the famous wine region and home to Jacobs Creek and Penfolds wines. We had an objective to find a bottle of wine for our Christmas dinner. The winner was a bottle of Moscato from Jacobs Creek after much free tastings and dodging the plague of locusts which have hit the region just as we arrived. Shelly has been painted red with the blood of insects a fair bit on her travels but nothing prepared her for having locusts committing suicide on her face! We’ll clean her soon.

Adelaide is quite a modern city with the CBD being surrounded by parklands and the centre being full of grand buildings and churches. Weirdly enough the shops were quiet, compared to what Christmas shopping is like back home. Adelaide is known as the city of churches, and they ain’t lying as almost every corner has a church on it. Quite a strange sight to see was Santa driving around in a mini-moke and wearing shorts. I don’t see it catching on to be honest……big red jacket, full beard, santa hat and a nice tight pair of khaki shorts, mmm festive!

We originally planned to be in Coober Pedy for Xmas but luckily we ended up ahead of schedule and lucked out on a 4 star apartment in the centre of Adelaide, complete with swimming pool, balcony, Sky TV and most importantly our own kitchen. After 9 months on the road, all we craved was to be able to cook our own food so it was great to be able to cook proper food and even a batch of Chocolate Balls (thanks mum for the recipe.)

To be honest it never really felt like Christmas, as being used to snow from back home it felt weird being in 36 degree heat. It was great though to settle down for a few days as after being on the road for the best part of a year, we are ready now to settle down for a while.

We are currently on our last leg of our Australian adventure, via the Great Ocean Road to Melbourne, where hopefully Shelly will gain a new owner to continue her travels. We shall then be flying onto Auckland and hope to get a job for a while and sample a bit of Kiwi life.