The Sky Ablaze

Driving to the shops on our second evening in Karratha, I began to understand why people permanently set up home in this remote outpost. We had taken the Balmoral Road, skirting the edge of the town. To our left, stretching far out to the horizon, was nothing but red, flat ground covered intermittently with scrubby vegetation, under a huge, cloudless sky. That in itself was quite spectacular – the very emptiness of it all, the feeling of being somewhere so far away from any major city that most people I know will never set foot here. That sense of isolation is at once frightening and incredibly uplifting – I felt lucky to be even a small, insignificant dot in this landscape. What really made this ordinary drive to the shops so magnificent though, was that the great ball of fire in the sky was beginning its daily descent. Now I have seen the sun set hundreds, probably thousands of times before, in dozens of different countries. Some have promised to be wonderful but have been disappointing, hidden by rain or a grey, cloud-filled sky. Some have been quite spectacular – Bali, Mauritius and Costa Rica have provided some of the most arresting sunsets. However, I can honestly say that the sunsets in the Pilbara are the most stunning that I have ever seen. On this night, my first sunset in Karratha, I sat watching in awe at the spectacle unfolding before my eyes, craning my neck to catch as much of it as I could before we turned towards the centre of the town. As the brilliant burnt orange sun lowered, the cloudless sky gradually filled with layer upon layer of colour. Reds, oranges, pinks, purples and blues stretched across the vast empty sky - with no tall building, mountain or artificial light impeding the view, the scale of the sunset took it from quite spectacular to unbelievably beautiful. This is what living in the Pilbara is all about – it may not be a modern metropolis heaving with upmarket shops, restaurants, bars, theatres and museums, but it makes up for all that by providing the best that Mother Nature can offer.

Red Dust

It’s incredible how quickly civilisation peters out as you fly west from Perth. Shortly after take-off we had a magnificent view of the skyscrapers of the city centre, the green of the parkland by the river, the vast expanse of bush mixed with perfectly mown grass that makes King’s Park so unique, and the Swan river itself snaking its way through the suburbs and down to the seaside town of Fremantle. Heading west, the suburbs grow smaller, the roads fewer, until only a few tiny communities scatter over the land below. Within ten minutes there was nothing but empty land stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction. For the duration of the two hour flight, the scenery did not alter. It was a visual reminder that we really were about to be living in the middle of nowhere.

The only clue that we were nearing our destination was that the ground was getting closer. I peered out of the tiny cabin window, expecting to spot buildings, roads, anything, but there was no sign of life visible down on that roasting hot, barren, unforgiving terrain. We were practically on top of the town before we spotted it. The plane flew out across the warm waters of the Indian Ocean and steeply banked to turn back over the mangroves of the tidal flats until at last, just before the plane touched down, we glimpsed Karratha. When viewed from the air, it really hits you just how remote this town is. A cluster of streets seemingly dropped into the middle of the outback. It was a vista both startlingly striking and frightening for someone embarking on a year’s internment there. This was it. We were about to spend a year of our lives in this tiny piece of civilisation in the inhospitable desert temperatures of the Pilbara.

To some, I’m sure that the idea of being in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by admittedly stunning scenery, is heaven but, being a city girl, this was a truly frightening thought. No more getting dressed up and sipping cocktails with the girls in swanky bars, no more fine dining in top-class restaurants, no more day-long shopping trips. Gulping, I closed my eyes for a brief few seconds and took a deep breath. I had to put all that out of my mind and concentrate on the positives of this experience. This year would be all about getting back to basics and exploring what Mother Nature has given us free of charge. The vast stretches of empty beaches, crystal clear waters of the Indian Ocean, uninhabited islands of the Dampier Archipelago, breathtaking gorges, waterfalls and wildflowers of Karijini National Park, and the simple pleasure of watching the sun set over the red, dusty land, changing its colours by the minute and setting the sky alight with pinks, purples, oranges, blues and golds.

Disembarking from the plane onto the tarmac, a warm wind whipped at our faces, the heat dry and much preferable to the sticky, humid heat of Thailand. The temperature was pleasantly bearable, akin to a typical summer’s day in Spain or Greece. We were later informed that the temperature had dropped considerably in the past week – the winter months were fast approaching, bringing cooler temperatures averaging around thirty degrees centigrade. I was dreading the summer months between November to March, which would bring forty plus degrees centigrade temperatures and devastating cyclones.

Walking into the tiny terminal, I was struck by how many men there were standing about and, almost unanimously, drinking. Being a town built purely to house workers on the various oil and gas and mining projects, there is a very high percentage of single men in Karratha. Many are contractors, flying in and out, often on four week shifts. They come here to work and earn better money than they could anywhere else, labouring for long days. As soon as they’re on leave they want to relax, and by relax I mean drink. That may seem like judgemental stereotyping but consider this: six months ago Quantas stopped serving spirits on the flights to and from Karratha as the miners spent the two-hour journey trying to down as many whiskies as they could.

We were picked up in a company pick-up truck, or ‘yute’ as they call them Down Under. There was no boot, just an empty but rather dusty tray so The Husband hauled our (very) heavy cases up into it and helped to fasten the cover over them. We really were in the country now. The short drive from the airport to the town took us through flat scrubland, the iron ore which has brought this part of the world such economic riches giving it the rusty red colour typical of the entire region. I scanned the horizon for kangaroos despite knowing I was unlikely to spot one as, being nocturnal creatures, they rarely venture out in the daytime. As I was soon to discover, I would be far more likely to spot a dead kangaroo at the side of the road. When darkness falls they are fond of bounding out of nowhere, straight into the path on oncoming traffic. I have seen a fair number of dead roos but am still yet to see a live one. In our first week, one dearly departed kangaroo seemed to have been frozen mid-hop and lay with its legs in the air, eyes wide open. In fact, it looked so much like a stuffed kangaroo I was given as a child that it was hard to think of it as real. It lay at the turnoff to a friend’s accommodation and he used it as a handy landmark to finding his camp – if he drove past the kangaroo, he knew he’d gone too far. It mysteriously vanished one night – we’re not sure whether it was taken by a dingo or a hungry miner.

Karratha starts and ends abruptly. You go from nothing at all to the edge of a sprawling town with no warning whatsoever. It seemed bigger than the three or four streets I imagined the town would consist of. The streets are wide and all the houses detached. We passed a large green oval where a couple of kids were throwing a frisbee around. Despite the remote location, as we pulled up in front of our home for the next year I was starting to feel happier about it all. For now at least.

Perthect

Perth is a wonderful city, however we didn’t realise that until the following day for two reasons. 1) It was Easter Monday, a public holiday, and the city was therefore empty. Everyone was at the beach, and why not? It was a glorious day and Perth has a plethora of beautiful beaches a short drive or train ride away – I know where I’d have been if I lived here. 2)We had a ten year old Lonely Planet with the worst walking tour I have ever followed. When The Husband and I were wee nippers, young enough to think that staying in hostels and having a mere two change of outfits for three months was fun, we travelled around South America and, wherever we were in a large enough town or city to have one, we did the Lonely Planet (or the Bible, as we grew to fondly call this essential travel companion) walking tour. Other than the fact that I love to play tour guide and read out the directions and the accompanying commentary, we did them because they were a great way to take in the main sites of the city in a short period of time and helped to find one’s bearings in an unfamiliar place. This one, however, seemed to have been designed to take the tourist to the dullest, most out-of-the-way areas of the city. It largely focused on the business centre which is hardly exciting at the best of times but on a public holiday was completely dead. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see tumbleweeds roll down the empty road. We did end up buying the most recent Lonely Planet the day we flew to Karratha and the walking tour in that edition looked to be far more interesting, taking in the best parts of the city – definitely something to do on our next visit.

On that first day we returned to our hotel room slightly downhearted and I hit the gin. A shower and a G&T later, I felt much better and we met up with a few friends also destined for Karratha and walked over to Northbridge for dinner with them. Northbridge is the entertainment hub of Perth, where many of its restaurants, bars and clubs can be found and we dined al fresco, under the stars, and people-watched to our hearts’ content. The meal wasn’t cheap – nothing in Australia seems to be – but the portions were hefty, the food was delicious and the wine went down exceedingly well. After dinner, those of us not suffering from extreme sleep deprivation and jet lag went for a drink at a pub across from our hotel which turned out to be run by a Brit, something not unusual in WA, the state that more Brits than anywhere else in Australia call home. It reminded me of the strange alley in the central shopping district called London Court, where the facade of all the building were mock-Tudor in style and all the shops were prefaced with ‘Ye olde’. Was it built to make the many Brits emigrating here feel at home? As most of us were not born in the Medieval period, I found this most strange.

The following morning, The Husband went off to head office on official work business and I was left to explore the city on my own. This was when I stumbled upon all the parts of central Perth that make it such a lovely city. I discovered the Swan river, which was completely left out of the walking tour but is one of Perth’s gems. I wandered down the path by the river, watching black swans gracefully glide along beside me, and passed the ferry piers taking passengers down to the seaside town of Fremantle and across the river to the zoo. The Bell Tower stood tall and imposing, a relatively recently built copper and glass structure housing the fourteenth century St-Martin’s-in-the-Field’s royal bells, given to WA by the British government in 1988 as part of the national bicentennial celebrations. I crossed the road and meandered through some of the many riverside parks, before doubling back on myself and coming to the beautiful Supreme Court building and the lawns, bushes and trees surrounding it. Perth is full of lush parks, providing a haven for city-dwellers and office workers, but it wasn’t until I met up with The Husband later on that I was to encounter the daddy of them all, King’s Park. This huge park is a short walk from the CBD and lies on a hill, overlooking the city centre, the suburbs, and the river snaking its way down to the coast. It’s a massive four square kilometres and is largely covered in natural bush, criss-crossed with trails for walking or running. We didn’t get that far but did enjoy the outstanding views from the many look-outs, the vast expanses of immaculately mowed, lush green lawn, and the numerous war memorials. We were particularly moved by the trees lining the long avenue near the front of the park, each one planted in remembrance of a fallen soldier.

Contemplating our very short time in Perth whilst supping Hoegaarden in the Belgian Beer Cafe that night, I reflected that I was going to miss this city. Not just because it was a city, any city, which to me right then represented our last night of civilisation, but because Perth had genuinely grown on me. The weather is wonderful, the people friendly, the atmosphere relaxed, and I hadn’t even visited any of its famous beaches. I was looking forward to returning before I had even left. OK, that was partly because I was nervous about living in a small town in the middle of nowhere but I did feel a strange sort of affinity with Perth and I look back on my time there fondly. I found it difficult to sleep that night, probably due to the nervous energy coursing through my body. The next day we were to fly to our new lives in Karratha, 1500km north of Perth. This eternal city girl was about to say goodbye to shopping, meals out and dressing up as she embarked on a year’s odyssey in the bush. Help!

The Bar in the Sky

Armed with a litre bottle of gin, two bottles of wine and a couple of already overweight cases, we were delighted to discover at check-in that Australian domestic flights do not enforce the carry-on baggage liquids rule. We were therefore able to avoid paying extortionate excess baggage fees and the risk of opening our cases in Perth to discover that our two expensive bottles of wine had broken, spilling their contents all over our clothes so that we not only had to walk around with red splattered apparel but smelt like alcoholics. Of course, that also meant that as well as a laptop case and a large (very heavy) bag each, we also had to lug around the bottles of booze but, in my opinion, that was definitely a price worth paying.

After nearly missing the flight thanks to an overly helpful assistant in the optical shop who insisted on describing in minute detail the benefits of every pair of sunglasses they displayed before we were allowed to make our choice, we finally plonked ourselves down in the tall-person-heaven emergency exit seats. We were then told by an air steward, who must be the only person under the age of eighty to use brylcreem, that the fate of the entire plane rested in our hands in the event that we start plummeting to possible death, which really put us at ease. Luckily though, the flight attendants came round with drinks soon after take-off and a mini bottle of wine was passed into my grateful hands. I do love Australia. On our eight hour flight from Kuala Lumpur to Adelaide, I was presented with a dribble of pretty awful wine in a plastic cup and then was never asked again. On this three hour flight I was given an entire mini-bottle of excellent vino and then asked if I wanted another when they came round to take away our food. I hesitated for, oh, perhaps a second before replying that I did. Well, it would have been rude not to. All I can say is, I’m glad that everyone on board did not end up relying on me to provide a safe passage off the plane.

We were driven from the airport into the centre of Perth by a very chatty taxi driver. That is to say that he was chatty with The Husband but, as I don’t know anything about cars, he managed to ignore me for the entire thirty minute journey as that seemed to be the only topic of conversation he was interested in. That was fine though as it gave me a chance to take in the scene passing by the window. Unfortunately, as with most city airports, it was quite a way out, and we mainly drove through dull and dreary industrial areas, bypassing the centre altogether and arriving at the hotel from the outskirts, so I didn’t really get a feel for the city at all.

As soon as we pulled up outside the hotel we realised that this was no Amari. Unlike our arrival at the five star Amari Orchid on our first day in Pattaya, there was no bell boy waiting to open my door and swiftly take our cases away. There was no beautiful, smiling woman greeting us before leading us to the swanky lobby, settling us on a plush sofa and presenting us with welcome drinks and cool flannels. No, we had to haul our suitcases up the steps ourselves and wait in the narrow lobby to check-in behind a queue of others, before heaving our four items of luggage into the tiny lift. The room was clean and adequate but was hardly luxurious. The ridiculous thing is that this hotel probably cost the same as the Amari. I don’t think we’re in Thailand anymore, Toto.

Easter, Aussie-style

In the UK, Easter Sunday is traditionally a day spent with family, attending church if you’re religious, organising an Easter egg hunt for the kids, sitting round the table feasting on a nice bit of lamb and roasties, sipping red wine, gorging on chocolate and perhaps going for a walk through green fields full of sprightly newborn lambs, then feeling guilty that you’ve just eaten a particularly delicious one. Easter Sunday in Australia is not so different – those so inclined trot off to church, children hunt around the garden for little chocolate eggs, families get together and stuff themselves with food, the adults have a few to drink, and then everyone leaves the table for a bit of exercise. The difference is, the meal is often a BBQ, the weather’s usually warm and sunny encouraging al fresco dining, and the exercise is some sort of energetic team game. And that is exactly how we spent our first Easter Down Under.

The heathens that we are, we favoured a lie-in over church, before driving over with aunt, uncle and three cousins to a gathering that included two further lots of aunts and uncles and eight more cousins. That put us at a grand total of nineteen, plus a dog, which is a lot of mouths to feed. The Aussie favourite, the barbecue, was therefore wheeled out and we feasted on sausages, lamb, corn on the cob and a cacophony of side dishes. This was all washed down with sparkling, rosé and red wines and beers for the boys who wanted to be real Aussie men.

I was roped into playing something called corbis ball (that might not be quite what it was called but I’m still finding the accent hard to decipher upon occasion), which is like dodgeball but without the teams – it’s every man for himself out there. As I was wearing my new 7 For All Mankind jeans I wasn’t about to kneel on the grass and risk grass stains so a towel was kindly provided for me by one of the (sniggering) aunts – apparently that’s not a very Aussie thing to do. I retired after a couple of games to sit in the sunshine and drink wine (in my opinion, an eminently more sensible thing to do) whilst watching the strenuous activity from a safe distance. The Husband kept our end up by playing till the end and scored a few points with the men of the family in doing so.

We went home several hours later tired but happy. The following day we would be leaving for Perth, which meant saying goodbye to the family but hello to the start of our new adventure. WA here we come!

Wino Heaven

I like my wine. I like it very much. Red, white, rosé, sparkling – I’m not fussy, I love them all. The pop of the cork, the glug of the liquid as it is first poured from bottle to glass, the rich aroma that fills the nostril as it is swirled about in the glass, the first taste of it on the tongue, the warm feeling as it hits the stomach. It follows then that I couldn’t spend a few days in South Australia without visiting one its world-class winery regions. We rejected the more famous Barossa Valley (which is home to the likes of internationally known favourites Jacob’s Creek, Penfold’s and Wolf Blass) in favour of the closer and just as excellent McLaren Vale. Due to its drier climate, it is not as green as other wine regions of the world but the wines are as fine as any. First on the list was the small, family-run Kay Brothers, which has the distinction of being the oldest family owned winery in McLaren Vale. It also holds some personal family history thanks to a story that refuses to die more than twenty six years later. If you know any of my family or were present at my wedding (where my father was kind enough to embarrass everyone present with the story) then you will already know what transpired in the early 1980s under the vaulted roof of Kay Brothers winery. If not, let’s just say that it involved a baby, a particularly explosive bottom, a dog and an aunt with a tissue and a mission.

Kay Brothers hasn’t changed much in decades and has been around for one hundred and twenty years so it must be doing something right. I’d say it did everything right. The fact that it wasn’t as commercialised or well known as some of the others in the area meant that we weren’t being jostled at the counter, trying, along with several other customers, to get the attention of one of the staff like we were in a busy city bar. We never had to ask to try the next wine and we were told about each one without a sense of hurry. From the warm welcome we received to the friendly service throughout the tasting, we felt instantly at home on those cool tiles with the smell of oak in the air, sipping wine after wine. And there, of course, is where they really come into their own. I didn’t taste a wine I didn’t like. Even the dessert wines – Moscato and Viognier - which, ordinarily, I’m not a massive fan of, were delicious; rich and smooth, sliding across the tongue and slipping easily down the throat. The fortified wines, too, were fantastic, so fantastic in fact that we purchased a bottle of the Very Old Tawny Port to take home. By the end of the tasting I had that small buzz that comes from drinking wine on a relatively empty stomach - breakfast all of a sudden felt a long time ago – but, with the entire day ahead of us, I was ready to move on to the next winery and try more!

The following winery was set in beautiful grounds, the building itself surrounded by country gardens full of bright flowers and tall, leafy trees providing an abundance of shade for those sitting out and enjoying a spot of lunch. Coriole was far busier than Kay and we had to fight for the attention of the harassed looking staff but, after a few tastings, we were so relaxed that we didn’t really mind. We opted not to work our way down the entire list this time but picked and chose ones we knew we loved or hadn’t heard of and wanted to try. By the time we walked back out into the sunshine, we knew we needed to get something to eat. Eyeing the crowds eating lunch in the garden, we decided to push onto another winery and find something there.
Shottesbrooke was far quieter and sold platters of scrummy tapas type nibbles so we nabbed a table in the sunshine, ordered a couple of sharing platters and bought a bottle of crisp, dry Sauvignon Blanc to drink with our food (because clearly we hadn’t drunk enough wine yet). In a courtyard scattered with huge pots of plants and right by a little garden, the setting was divine, the food was delicious and the wine a perfect accompaniment to it all. I felt deeply relaxed, warm and happy.

Next stop was the very Aussie-named Wirra Wirra, home of the nationally renowned Church Block, which is a blend that seemed to me like the maker just couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted – Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz Merlot. It works though – smooth, soft and eminently drinkable! We also tasted an average but appropriately named sparkling called The Cousins which Ruth and I delighted in, taking picture after picture of us, the bottle, us drinking, us and the bottle. It was definitely time for us to stop drinking fairly soon. As we left, we couldn’t fail to notice a giant bottle of wine made entirely out of corks and were informed that if we guessed correctly the number of corks that made up the bottle, we could win a year’s supply of Church Block. We weren’t going to pass that offer up so The Husband put his logical engineer’s brain to work and figured out some way of calculating it accurately. That sort of thing is past my underdeveloped maths brain normally, but after all that wine it went completely over me so I left him to it.

After our attempt to ensure a booze-filled year, we headed for our last port of call, a winery I knew very well after drinking bottle after bottle of it back in the UK – Rosemount. We got there shortly before its 5pm closing time so there weren’t many people left, leaving us to sip our wine in peace. We tried a couple of white wines specially made for the Australian climate as they were designed to be drunk with ice - perfect for a summer BBQ. They were a bit sweet for me though and I much preferred the drier, lighter Pinot Grigio. So much so that we bought a bottle, along with a bottle of red long since drunk so I’m afraid I can’t remember the type. What Rosemount is very clever at is its marketing, which is probably the main reason it has done particularly well internationally. Its bottles are so beautiful, they call out for you to pick them off the shelves. The Pinot Grigio, for example, is very lightly tinted blue, with an attractively designed gold edged, duck-egg blue, diamond shaped label, giving it a regal feel. The bottle, too, is unusually shaped, with a typical cylindrical top, tapering down to a square bottom. The whole effect is to give it a decadent air. In fact, I like it so much I’ve kept the bottle to stick a candle in it and use it on the table at dinner parties!

When the staff at Rosemount kicked us out, we knew it was time to go home so, feeling pleasantly warm and tingly, we made our way back. First item on the agenda upon returning? Why, a G&T of course!

The Reluctant Flasher

Day two in Australia and we awoke to yet more sunshine and a blue sky scattered with powder-puff clouds. We packed up the car with rugs, water and a picnic and, with three cousins and an aunty, embarked on a bit of a road trip. Driving through the suburbs of Adelaide, it is hard not to notice the number of parks dotted around the city. You never have to walk too far to reach a spacious green area in which to picnic, throw a Frisbee around or walk the dog. How nice to be able to pop out on your lunch break and sprawl out on a rug under the shade of a gum tree. Unfortunately, Adelaide is experiencing what can only be described as a drought, so grass throughout the city is looking rather limp, tired and brown. Water restrictions that were only supposed to last a few months are still in place more than a year later and look set to remain for some time yet. Still, the parks provide wide open spaces in the centre of the city for anyone to enjoy at any time which, being a city girl myself, I know is priceless.

First stop on our road trip was the lookout at the summit of the aptly named Mount Lofty which, at 710 metres above sea level, is the highest peak of the Mount Lofty Ranges. From there we could see all the way to the ocean. The entire city sprawled below us, the buildings of the tiny CBD reaching up to the sky and the suburbs snaking out in all directions. It was here that I first began to wish I hadn’t worn a floaty skirt - the wind would whip up every now and again, causing me to flash at least one unsuspecting family and forcing me to grab each side and pull down the rogue pieces of cotton with my fists.

We drove on, quickly entering the bush, coming across a small community, farm or cattle ranch every now and again but largely enjoying the vast stretches of empty countryside. Our destination was the coastal township of Victor Harbour. The parks and ovals next to the beach were packed with families enjoying the sunny weather on Good Friday. We took our rug and esky and parked ourselves on the beach, facing Granite Island, just over the causeway. Lunch was unloaded and we feasted on foods we could only dream of (or pay a fortune for) in Thailand - dips, pates, cheeses, baguettes and salad. Deciding that a seaside trip required an ice cream, we packed up our lunch things, retreated from the windswept beach and headed for a shop selling huge ice cream cones. Happily licking away, we walked across the bridge towards Granite Island, a small island not far from the mainland which is home to a colony of fairy penguins, all of whom had obviously considered it far too windy to emerge from their nests. My wayward skirt caused me to flash several other unsuspecting tourists as I tried in vain to pin it down to my legs, a manoeuvre which also made it fairly difficult to walk. My struggle to make it round the island with my dignity intact was worth it for the staggering views across the water towards the mainland and of the ocean glinting in the sunlight. Standing on the western side of the island, it was weird to think that nothing lay between us and Antarctica. Once again I marvelled at just how far from most of the rest of the world Australia is.

We drove home via Goolwa, a small community nestled around the beach of the same name that I remember from childhood trips to Adelaide – its waves make it perfect for boogie boarding and many a happy day was spent tumbling around in the surf and playing games on the beach. The waters of the Southern Ocean were too cold in autumn for swimming so we stopped off at aunty Claire’s newly completed holiday home and had a good old cuppa before making our way back home for a slap-up meal and lots of lovely South Australian wine – merely a warm-up for tomorrow’s activities.

G'day Australia!

G’day! Expat wife is finally Down Under and connected to the world again via the wonders of the Internet. It has been almost three weeks since we left the Land of Smiles but it seems more like three months. We’ve taken four flights, explored two cities, met a lot of people, including a whole brood of family members, and we’re now living a completely different life to that in Thailand. Let’s go back to the beginning and gradually make our way up to our present location, the remote town of Karratha.

The first stop, via Kuala Lumpur, was Adelaide, home to most of my dad’s side of the family. The Husband hadn’t met any of the Aussie contingent present during our visit, but bore up under the pressure pretty well seemed to pass the test with flying colours. I hadn’t seen any of them (and there are a lot – dad has three sisters and a brother and each of them is married with at least three children) in over nine years and met three of my cousins for the first time as they had all come into existence since my last visit. It was a wonderful way to start our new adventure in Australia and we were buoyed by the feeling that we weren’t quite so far from all our family.

So The Husband’s first experience of Australia was Adelaide, a fine city with which to be introduced to this vast and varied country. It’s a city much overlooked by tourists, which probably adds to its appeal. In Sydney or Melbourne you can be surrounded by people with guide books and cameras, talking a multitude of languages. In Adelaide, almost everyone’s a local so you don’t feel like you’re just one of thousands on the tourist trail. Having arrived early in the morning following a flight involving very little sleep, we knew we needed to keep active in order to prevent jet lag from setting in so, a couple of coffees later, we went out with three of the cousins to wander around the city.

After recovering from the realisation that the cousin who was eleven the last time I saw him was taller than me, could legally drink and was permitted to be in charge of a motorised vehicle, I relaxed and started to take in the sights. The weather was glorious – warm but not too hot, with bright blue skies and not a raincloud in sight – and served to show Adelaide in all its glory. The sun glinted off the few skyscrapers and gave the old sandstone buildings of the law courts, the state library, South Australian Museum, Art Gallery of South Australia and university buildings, a warm glow. The beautiful day inspired us to go walk to Central Market to pick up some bread, cheese and sausages for a picnic lunch in the Botanical Gardens. The undercover market teems with independently owned stalls selling everything from fruit and veg, freshly baked bread and speciality cheeses, to dim sum, coffee and flowers and, left to my own devices, I could have meandered up and down the aisles for hours. However, with four hungry boys in tow there was no time for dilly dallying - we picked up our baguettes, ciabatta rolls, Brie, Cheddar, Ambrosia and spicy sausages and quickly headed out to picnic on the grass under a powder blue, cloudless sky.

That night, we saw something quite remarkable. After an Italian meal in a bustling restaurant, we headed down to North Terrace, a section of road in the centre of the city that is home to some of Adelaide’s finest old buildings. We had seen them earlier in the day but not like this – the buildings were lit up with a dazzling array of colours in a variety of patterns, some were distinctly William Morris-esque, others of an Aboriginal design, whilst others took the spectator into the realms of fantasy. Dubbed the Northern Lights, the light installation is the largest of its type ever displayed in Australia and was truly spectacular. I’d never seen anything like it in my life. We topped off the night by ambling down to the riverside to see aforementioned drinking, driving (not concurrently, one hopes!), tall cousin play the guitar and sing as part of a band performing at a medical students do. Standing under the stars, listening to music waft over us on the cool air, we both decided that we liked Adelaide very much indeed.