Adelaide

A little later than scheduled, we arrived in Adelaide to a welcoming party of Kelly, Miller and Asher. They whisked us off to a deli where Kelly had ordered a huge "breakfast box" - fruits, breads etc. We are still working our way through it over a week later.

We checked in to our "charming historical cottage" in Bridgewater in the Adelaide Hills. Handily nearby is the Bridgewater Inn which has an enormous beer garden looking over Cox Creek. Across the road from that is a small shopping centre which has a decent-sized Coles supermarket where we were able to stock up our accommodation with essential food and drink supplies.

The owners of the cottage had left us a generous welcome pack of essentials, including champagne, luxury ice cream and chocolate. Everything seemed perfect but we later noticed that there was a bit of a damp issue downstairs where the utilities, bathroom and bedroom were. We soon resolved this matter by running the dehumidifier daily - as instructed by the owners.

Kelly, Chris and the boys had just moved in to a rental property nearby while their new house is being built. It is just a 10-15 minute walk along/beside a train line used occasionally by freight trains.

Our first full day in S.A. was Friday. It's school summer holidays here so we arranged to take the boys to Stirling while their parents worked. It was just a 10 minute bus journey from our place. We had planned to take the boys to Cacao, a chocolate/coffee shop but it was closed. We did manage to pick up books for Kelly at the library and we had lunch with Miller and Asher in the smart Stirling hotel.

The return journey meant a 15 minute walk from the bus stop to Kelly and Chris' rental, passing this odd looking tree:

Finally, we arrived:

That evening we all drove to Lobethal for a return visit to what used to be one of our favourite places - the Bierhaus. It was mobbed but Chris had booked a table so we were fine. We enjoyed a paddle - and a couple of cask ales in the atmospheric surroundings:

End of (full) day one - Friday 16th January.