Train days

08/12/11-12/12/11

Not a lot to be said for my day joining the train, I’m so use to the procedure now that it’s like catching an aeroplane and having to sit through the familiar safety briefing time after time – read/eat/sleep

I arrived the next day at midday in Adelaide (that rhymes!). Unlike last time when I arrived to find the supermarkets were closed this time there were no problems in picking up food.

The one place I didn’t get to visit the last time was the Adelaide Hills so on Saturday I decided to jump on a bus and go explore this area. I first took the bus all the way to Handoff, an old German settlement. It still retains an atmosphere of its old colonial roots although this is mainly only kept alive for the tourist trade. After I headed back in the direction of the city to trek up to the top of Mount Lofty to check out the views of the surroundings, picking an area without an established walking track I had to use the main road for half the trek. That evening the hostel I was staying at was celebrating its one year anniversary so we were treated to a hog roast that evening – all 240kg of it!

For my last full day in Adelaide I mainly relaxed and visited the main sights for the last time grabbing some photos of stuff I missed the last time I was here.

Time to travel back in the right direction to resume my travels around Australia; I had my last train journey using my rail pass. It was a long 10 hours back to Melbourne, the third time I had had to do this journey. When I arrived I had a short walk to my hostel located in the north of the city centre, it is one of the biggest in OZ with over 800 people staying in it at one time. My main task was to send a birthday text home back to my sister – the first birthday of hers that I had missed.