Day 78/81: 5th to 8th of September. Best Laid plans. Brighton (Adelaide).

With Mildura booked in to meet Alex and Tess on the 9th and 10th, we had 4 nights to fill in and we decided to spend them in Adelaide without much of an agenda. A sort of winding down from the trip. Not much travel, nothing we have to do and just enjoy our beach front location. This went mostly to plan.

Now I have been highly critical of South Australia and Adelaide in the past, and rightly so. However, good old Rundle Mall is a lot bigger than I remember, it seemed busier than Bourke Street and a number of different shops to happily browse through. It had a good feeling and some life about it, and while Linda visited a friend, I checked out the casino which is quite a nice set up, and was out of the rain.

Other adventures included a brief walk through Glenelg (seen better days), a visit to Port Adelaide (for a knitting shop of all things), and a visit to a great record store in Semaphore. More record stores in Norlane, and as we were around the corner, a quick visit to Penfolds at Magill to see what they had done to the place since I was last there. The old offices used to be at the front with an awesome view of the vineyards, which they did wake up to and have basically redone the front with a beautiful and suitably expensive cellar door.

Being camped on the beach, we were treated again to a couple of cracker sunsets from our caravan kitchen. The first couple of nights were quite relaxed as per the plan. However, while the sheep paddock was a good bookend in Spear Creek and Parkes, the rain we had in our first nights in the van came back to bookend the last two nights in the van. Late afternoon on the last night, it really came down hard, and we ended up in the gravitational pull of the local Westfield to stay dry for an hour and a half. When we finally braved going back to the van, we cooked dinner in the camp kitchen and stayed in there for a couple hours and a couple of beers. Getting to bed was a real water sport. A 5am visit to the toilet in what I thought was a break in the weather, meant I ended up wetting my pants on return.

It was a reflective night as the next couple of nights in Mildura will be with Alex and Tess, at Tess’s parents place. We did lots of looking back on the trip, some of the highs and lows of the last 2.5 months of being in the van. Some things we will miss, but, as we pack up and hook up in the morning, the heavens open again to remind us that the weather is a major driver of the experience, and in saying that – I couldn’t wait to leave Adelaide.