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.