Day 2 Monday 5th Febuary

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03:00
Now... 3am is not that bad.... we ended up sloping off to bed after our meal.. getting back to the hotel room by 8.30pm. Lag then hit me like a truck and I couldn't keep my eyes open. I tried to stay awake... but it was no good, the time difference got the better of me.

However, a quick txt from Haiko alerted me to the fact that the Man U Spurs game is on... so I switch on Foxtel (Australia's version of SkySports.... owned by Mr Murdoch) to have a look.

04:00
Spurs are losing 3:0.

04:10
4:0 Giggs on 77minutes.. Martin Jol not very happy. Haiko informs me that the Huddersfield vs Saints (Super League) game is on in 2hrs... which I think is also on Foxtel... so we may be watching that as well.

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07:00
Emails.... got any questions or feedback... send them to me at anthony_strelitz@hotmail.com

Mr Steve Marshall, from Melbourne has:

Mate - Lovin the 'Oz-blog'. Will bookmark it and check back regularly.

Glad you both arrived safe and sound. Its positively cold in Melbourne today
compared with Adelaide. I've gone for thongs and boardies but its only
34deg!! You both keep warm won't you with your top of 41 today!!! Gotta love
Australia!!!

Great pic of you at the river - You pastie white pom you!!! ;-)  - I
laughed!!!

First impressions sound positive my friend! Early days, so I'll wait eagerly
to hear how you both go over the next couple of weeks.

Will give you a laters. I'm off for a run . . . . . .

/steve-O

Thanks Steve... I'll be working on mostly burning myself today in the highs of 38 today.

Anyway... here is the view from the hotel this early morning:

Weekday breakfast tv -programs like gmtv and bbc breakfast reflect alot about our nation... I'm watching the 7am news on channel 7's Sunrise program. The news hitting the headlines:
Bushfires in NSW, Western Australi and Victoria
60% of aussies are clinically obese
A Small plane ditches into the sea off NSW.. the pilot is killed (in the impact of the crash that is.. not for trashing the plane into the sea).
Pontings century in the ODI cricket lead oz back into the game against nz,
Melbourne beat Adelaide 2-1 in the A Series Soccer,
And theres lots of superbowl previews in the sports news

Lets not forget the weather; monssons in the north, hot in Victoria and South Australia, Adelaide... 36 today, 26 tomorrow.
1 persons died in the bushfires in Western Australia near Perth, and there has been bad flooding in the north, swelling rivers and sweeping homes away.
They think the bush fires may hav been deliberatly lit. They think it could be arson... The mind boggles.
and a bloke was kicked out of the msg for starting a mexican wave. www.savethemexicanwave.com
Cricket australia banned the mexican wave saying its a blight on the game. Mainly its the people who throw things up in the air which has pee'd a few people off... Cricket australia said anyone dong the wave wud be evicted from the mcg. However.. If any of u watched the cricket.. U'd have seen 40,000 people doing a mexican wave ...
Other puzzling news... A senator over here has written a new 'national anthem'... Saying that oz needs a new song to be sung in the schools. The words are supposed to sum up australian values.... Aparently... Aussies are very patriotic away from home... And i think we may all have experienced this at some point.... But at home its aparently not the case. Story here

The lyrics to Under Southern Stars are:

Home to first Australians,
Joined from near and far,
Shining light for freedom,
Under Southern Stars.

Nation made of many,
Bound in hope as one,
Building for the future,
Under Southern Sun.

Free and Friendly Nation,
Born of our own hand,
Peace our greatest virtue,
Mighty Southern Land.

Valiant into Battle,
Courage to the end,
Standing firm for freedom,
Loyal southern friend.

Nature's earthly heaven,
Glory for our eyes,
Ours alone those treasures,
Under Southern Skies.

Shining light for Freedom

Under Southern Stars.

Other sports news... Eng vs nz at the Gabba (Cricket ground in Brisbane) on tues.... Nz being tipped to win.

Oh and Huddersfield lose to St Helens 10-18... can't wait to watch the replay on Foxtel.

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O8:00
14 homes lost overnight to the bush fires in perth... 6 bush fires now contained
Snowy mountains have been closed in nsw so they can back burn, which i think is when a thin line of controlled fires are set to clear a burnt ring around the bush fires.

08:15
Yeah i know..... Want that one....
Little Britain stars Lucas & Walliams are on sunrise, promoting their tour.
first 3 sydney shows sold out in 20mins.
Lee is finally up. She has picked up the Adelaide guide and found something out about the street our hotel is on;
quote Lonely Planet: Hindley Street; grunge and sleeze collides with student enegy amid adult bookshops and strip joints.....

How did the guide know i was coming?

And as far as adverts on the tv go over here... where do u go if u want palms.... palms direct of course.

I've also been flicking through the local Yellow and White pages directories (shown below)... a little light reading for the morning...

Anyway... as we are now both awake its probably time to get up and get some breakfast.

9.30am
Breakfast time.. And a scan of the local newspaper, the advertiser:
Tourists avoiding exotic dangers; over 150 tourists die each year when visiting oz... But its natural causes and car accidents rather than sharks, snakes and crocs... With drowning in at third. Heat stroke, diving/snorkelling and hiking make up the lower numbers of fatalities.
10:00am
My initial first impressions about adelaide, as i knew, would soon be put right as soon as monday morning came along. Lee and i were initially a bit surprised that on sunday.. Adelaide resembled a ghost town. Maybe it was because it was hot and everone was at the beach... Maybe because there were festivals on friday and saturday evening.. And we had arrived while everyone else was geting over their hangovers... I don't know. However, monday morning is here and the CBD is busy and 'bustling'. Its also hot again...
What is geting reinforced RE Adelaide is the 'weirdo' factor. Maybe i'm being hyper sensitive becuse i'm in a new place... But i'm finding adelaide to have a high content of weirdo's. Maybe it was a weirdo festival at the weekend... 'Weirdstock' or something.....
From stepping out of our hotel we were near enough immediatly asked if we could spare a couple of dollars from a young lad who bore a resemblance to the fat beardy bloke from the 'magic numbers' pop group. We declined.... And lee and i could be forgiven that this could be dismissed due to the hotels location on hindley st... (see above).
The weirdo's encounter continued when we had breakfast on the beginings of rundall mall.. The main shopping precinct... A man walking down the street shouting about terrorists and the iraq war.... again.. We were only 40 yards from the top of hindley st...
the weirdo watch continues...

Above: Aussie flag in Victoria Square

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13:00
Decided to book a couple of excursions today. We've booked a 2hr wine cellar tour at penfolds. We've also booked 2 days on kangaroo island (more info on that later). We wanted to have surfing lessons but they are fully booked, and we are undecided wether we want to go kayaking..... A skydive is not going to happen... Think we'll try something else we can do... A different experience... Mainly as Lee doesn't want to do it, and i think its only fair that the time we spend doing stuff should benefit both of us.
it took two hours for us to get everything booked, the agent being very patient.. And a tad annoying as she had the typical australian annoyance; this is where every sentance ends on her voice going up at the end.. Resulting in everything she says sounding like a question. Very annoying.
Anyway, we went back to the hotel, dumped the large number of maps, brochure's etc.. And applied more suncream. Then we decided to venture to glenelg, a suburb of adelaide on the coast. We've read alot about glenelg, as there is much to see and do there. So its worth a look. This venture heralded another important step... Useing public transport. There is a tram that travels from victoria square down to glenelg, taking a 10km south west route through the city and suburbs.
VIDEO OF TRAM RIDE

Below the Glenelg tram

Tickets were purchased from a newsagent stall on the street. There are different tickets you can buy.. We bought an allday ticket each and cost $14.40 for both of us (around 6.50ukp). The allday ticket allows you to go wherever you want on the metro, buses or trams.
the trip gave us a good view of 'the burbs', which were relatively low level, and very green. Lots of the houses seemed to have tin/corragated iron roofs... Which struck me as a bit bizarre. quite a few of the houses also had solar panels fitted into the roofs....

Glenelg:

Glenelg is pretty much Santa Monica without the trendy shops and holywood houses. It does boast the Rodney Fox Shark Experience... which... after a short walk down the Jetty and some lunch (fish and chips) we visited. Long Story short.... Man enters spear fishing competition... man bitten by Great White Shark... Man survives the attack but has over 400 stitches..... Man grows to respect the shark and protect them....
Most people would know of Rodney indirectly... as he helped Peter Benchley when he wrote his famous piece of horror literature... Jaws:

The museum was full of shark information and a replica of one of the pre-historic sharks The Megaladon... which was basically a massive great white...

Some great white jaws below

Other jaws of sharks below:

Great white jaws...below

Other jaws of more sharks below

The Museum also had all the local press cuttings from the past few years on on anything to do with Sharks... heres a couple of cuttings:

After the museum we went for a short walk down the main street.... looking in at a couple of estate agents... a 2 bedroom home.. much like ours ..only 1 storey and totally detached would cost around $270 a week... which is around £110-> £120 a week.

The heat has been unbearable again... so we feeling a bit weary we headed back to the tram and went back to the hotel to cool off.

17:30

Emails revisited:

Steve Marshall wrote:

Mate - I went to the opening night of LB last week at Vodafone Arena. It was
'kin hilarious. V crass and very close to the mark for being scrapped I
reckon but it appealed to our humour.

They are doing loads of radio and tv pro-mo's at the mo! Check out
www.foxfm.com.au and listen to the podcast (under the CELEB INTERVIEWS
section) from when they did a radio interview last week in Melbourne. Very
matter or fact and classic english humour. Class!!!

Still lovin the blog . . . have sent the link to a few people to read!

Cheers pal... glad your enjoying the blog. I will download the podcast and give it a go.... think the Aussie public love the 'close to the bone humour' that Walliams and Lucas create..

22:30
lessons never learned
We did the dangerous thing and had a 'little nap' when we got back to our hotel room (around 5.30pm) telling ourselves we'd 'put our heads downs' for 'just an hour'. Now the signs were on the wall from the start... Both of us were flagging badly. What actually happened was that when my alarm went off i turned it off and simply turned right over to sleep again. We had planned only an hour, and Lee, who woke up around 8pm eventually gave up trying to wake me up after 9pm. I have to admit I only remember lee trying to wake me up once. I eventually got up and we ventured out for the tough task of getting a bite to eat... Of course nothing was really open... After some walking around for half an hour in search for an eatery which was open, our 'sleazy and grimy' road was a bit of a saviour. Once we'd walked past a few (ahem) 'clubs' and empty bars, we found a 'place' that was serving pizza. It was dubbed 'australia's pizza house'. It had a few games machines in the back, played 'large' dance anthems and was pretty ... No... totally empty. Behind the counter were two typical Aussie teenagers... greasy hair protuding out of their caps, and an aura of 'whatchawantmate?' about them.......But they were serving none the less. I didn't feel too bad about our situation as an english couple were served before us and were in the same situation....obviously suffering from jetlag.....
We retired to our hotel and hit the hay (again...).

EMAIL WATCH:

Another email from Steve:

So, yeah, loads of sharks! Interesting . . . . if you like sharks!!!

Nice big shark jaws . . . . yeah . . . .  right . . . . .  anyway . .  . . I
best go and clean out the bin!!!

haha . .  .LOL

Give me a break mate... its only day 2... ;-)

An email from my eldest brother John:

Ants,

Glad to see you got to Australia Ok.

I like your Blog at least you will not bore me with your photos on your return.

You missed a fantastic weekend here in the UK.

England beat Scotland and the Irish beat the Welsh.

It  was bright and sunny quite mild here with it only hitting -5 at night here in Shropshire.

I see from your news that 60% of Aussies are obese.  Well  they do like to win at everything, Perhaps it will become a national sport.

Enjoy your holiday and be nice to those large Aussie's.

Jon

Cheers Jon. We've got Sky News in the room, so managed to catch the highlights of the Rugby.. I was hoping it would help me sleep....

And an email from Haiko:

Hey up mate,

You like rubbing it in that it’s good weather over there.

If you seen the highlights of the rugby you’ll see what I meant by Clown!!!!! Don’t get this new rule on obstruction and by the players reactions they don’t either.

Titans have and interesting shirt this season.

Glad you’re having a good time, the places seem cheap to rent in Adelaide, not like Sydney.

Speak soon

Cheers pal.. its the heat... you can't get away from it.. (there I go again.......)

Right, thats all for day 2... day 3 is just begining.....

DAY 2 Stats

Weirdo's encounter rate: 5
Weather: hot