Day 3 Tuesday 6th Febuary

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08:00am

Not that much in the news... Bushfires, Should Big Brother be banned, Cyclone in the North and Anthrax break out on a farm. There is also a large amount of UK issues in the news... which kind of surprises me. The letterbomb and the lastest Turkey Farm bird flu problems (please send any text jokes to me as I'm sure there must be loads about them now).

Sports news: Ricky Ponting gets Cricketer of the year and the Alan border medal. Much like our Sport Personailty awards.. but just for Cricket, its fronted by Ex UK Survivor presented turned Cricket pundit for Channel 4 (till they lost their rights) Mark Nichols... who now works with Richie Berneud on Foxtel.
Its also Eng vs NZ today, which starts at 1.30pm

So day three begins, and to be honest we are not too sure what we are going to be doing today.

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01:00pm

Whats this got to do with the price of fish?
Over breakfast we decided to walk down to the Market to have a look around.... basically its much like Watford Market... but a tad bigger. The market boasts '240 shops under one roof'....which range for fruit, butchers, cheese to fish stalls and cafe's and souvenir shops. As the bold title above says... why is this worth mentioning? Well... its interesting to see how the variety and prices differ between home and here....
So what did we conclude? Well its hard to say.... its definetly cheaper then Sainsburys.... but wether thats comparing 'apples with apples' I'm not sure. Lee and I have only ever been to Watford Market a couple of times.. and that was for new foam cushions for our sofa (and even then that was 6 years ago). One thing I can say for sure... the fruit is huge over here compared to anything I have seen in the UK. Things like peppers are twice the size of those that we would buy in the UK. We spent a bit of time walking around the various isles and then went to the Tourist Board to follow up on another trip we arranged... Kayaking ... more on that later..

We then joined the rest of Adelaide's office workers for lunch.
We've decided to watch the cricket for the afternoon... although... Vaughns not having a good time as he's out for a duck in the second over.

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12:00
Now I am a bit sketchy on some of the details ... so your gonna just have to bear with me for this bit.. but I think this just kinda sums up the people here to a T.
Now when I lastleft you we were watching the Cricket... and thats where we will pick it up... England were a couple overs short of completeing their innings, and Lee and I decided that we would go out for a meal then come back and watch the remaining couple of hours of cricket.
Lee wanted to have a shower so she went up to the room... and I said I would follow in a few minutes.
Lee went off and I continued to supp beer and watch the cricket.
There were three Aussie blokes on the next table, drinking beer talking and generally watching the world go by, as well as watching the cricket.

We started chatting about Vaughn and his great contribution to the runs total, and then they invited me over to chat further.
The three guys all worked in Construction, and were on a 'Health and Safety Gone Mad' course.. which for them was OK mainly because they were out of the desert and in gerneral popoulation where they could 'get some grog'.
All of them were contractors for SANTOS, a company that owned a large building round the corner from the hotel (Santos, or South Australia Morthern Territory Oil Services). The guys usually work up in 'Coopers Corner' which is the part of Australia where the borders of South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales meet... an area which is pretty much desert and in the middle of nowhere.
Each of the guys were from a different part of Australia, one from South Australia... around 5 hour drive from Adelaide.. (in comparison to living 1hr away in the UK). One of the other guys lives in Victoria, Melbourne, and the last guy was from New South Wales... north of Sydney near Newcastle.
They had bought me a beer in their round, and in turn I bought one back... and Lee came down and joined us .. after losing patience when I hadn't returned...
One of them decided to order a dozen oysters,,, can't remember the specific name of the dish but they were Oysters with chopped bacon, topped with some cheese, grilled, and then a splash of worcestor sauce.... Lee declined so I felt that I had to try one... or two. I was informed there was an art to eat them... first you supp the suase and juice, then you use a small specially designed fork to detatch the Oyster.. and then you briskfully slip the contents of the shell into your mouth in one full sweep, and then enjoy the delight of what can only be described as 'chunky flu'. Apart from the texture.. I do like oysters. The guys had been drinking beer in the bar for most of the time we were there... and they had a system... as SANTOS was paying for their time and their rooms etc... they would not pay for beer... so the guys basically had the hotel charge them for 'coke' on the bill instead. Now I am neverone for 'working the system' when it comes to expenses, but I had to marvel at these guys.... they invited us to join them for an evening meal and go out later on to the (ahem) 'Crazy Horse'.... Lee was invited... but if she wanted to go to bed early it was fine (they joked of course).
I had to ask Lee to remind me what sort of things we talked about.... we swapped stories most of the evening.. like Buncefield and fishing etc...when I asked them about the Adelaide being full of weirdo's they seemed to agree...

They also agreed that their TV was ordinary and that their adverts were appalling. There were some differences in culture which were evident. The latest racism scandels in the UK baffled the Aussies... who are forward about defending their borders.... (it all came up when they commented about England Cricketer Monty Panasaar).
There was also some surprising things that came out like ... they feed their dogs raw eggs because it makes their dogs coat shine, so they can seem them in the dark....(remember these guys are your typical Country Aussie blokes where hunting, shooting and fishing is pretty much part of the lifestyle.... one of them would basically take his son out for some hunting and fishing trips over weekends to the middle of no-where....).
We went for some food with them, where more beer was consumed, more stories were swapped. England won the Cricket, which was a surprise for all of us.
We then retired to the bar, again, had a few more beers.
Lee and I soon retired to bed.... pretty happy we had stayed up and not fallen asleep early.