I must say I'm sad to leave Tasmania - as you'll have gathered from these posts I got quite attached to the place and the people. It feels quite special to be living almost at the bottom of the inhabitted world, and to leave an overgrown country town to come and live in a city of almost 4 million people isn't exactly easy, but we've made a determined decision to enjoy Melborne for what it is.
But you're probably more interested in our holiday! We packed up the house, sent our belongings into storage, packed up the car with all our camping gear and drove to the ferry terminal at Devonport for the overnight voyage to Melbourne. After a weekend flat-hunting we found a good place in the suburb of Elwood, and were able to get out of the city to enjoy ourselves. Hurrah!
The first destination was Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. It's roughly 800km (500 miles) west of Melbourne - a long day's drive, but we spread it over an afternoon and a morning. We stopped for the night at Mount Arapiles, Australia's rock-climbing Mecca. You can see why:
As soon as we were out of Melbourne Ella had commented on the way the landscape was so clearly "mainland". There's something about the flatness that reveals the difference in the geological age of the land - it's strange that a lack of obvious features can do this.
But the further west we travelled the more things changed and on the second day we were heading through unusual (for me) verdant pastoral land that looked almost like English Country House Parkland ... but with ancient Eucalypts instead of Oaks. And then we were driving down tree-lined roads reminiscent of northern France, but rather than Poplars there were Eucalypts again.
Suddenly we arrived at Adelaide, home to three-quarters of South Australia's population. Still this planned city feels rather intimate, we were able to find a lunch-time parking space extremely easily and marvel at the locals ignoring red traffic lights - how very continental!
We spent the night with a friend I'd met through the Triumph scene drinking his tasty homebrew, which set us up with good hangovers for our drive north towards Alice Springs the next day...
