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Thursday 10th 4pm.

Having left 1 state capital on Monday here I am in another, Adelaide. Besides being a big place Australia has a concentration around cities. 20 million people, of whom 4m are in Sydney, 4m in Melbourne, 3m in Brisbane, 2m in Perth and 1m here in Adelaide.

Once again its flipping hot here - but happily quite a dry heat. Temp today has risen to 41C so I've been doing my best to avoid the sun and put on oodles of cream. Tomorrow the temp drops to 26C - but no cloud has done this - its just a change in the atmospherics.

Got here early Tuesday morning having had no sleep on the overnight flights. After finding my hotel and getting sorted went for a wander around the centre of the city. Adelaide is designed with a central city area which is about 1 mile square and has a 500km strip around it - of grass and a river. So it doesn't feel to claustrophobic. Wednesday I got up and visited a number of museums - migration museum, art museum and then sat around in the Botanic Gardens watching the wildlife and the people drift by. Very lazy and very lovely.

Met up with Lincoln last night for a drink and a view of life as an ex-pat in Adelaide. He seems to be enjoying it and happily still has many of his english mannerisms - he reminds me more each day of Mr H!!.

Today I finished sorting out my hire car - I'm renting one from Friday - and have been out getting some camping stuff sorted. I'm off to the cricket tonight - SA have a local 20/20 gae against Victoria.

Tomorrow I'm off up to the Barossa Valley wine region for a few days and then will head down the coast over the next week - aiming to get to Melbourne (or thereabouts) by next weekend.

Now that I'm on my own for a few weeks I thought I would take my time as I get a break from sitting on the tour bus merry go round.

Happy January