Day Three

We arrived in Adelaide early in the morning and were eager to jump off the train and get a proper cooked breakfast. We were advised by the married couple to get a taxi into Adelaide as it was faster and more reliable than the coach service that operated from the station. We jumped into the first available taxi and were immediately taken for a ride by a cabbie who knew we were from out of town and decided to teach us a valuable lesson about being specific when a running meter is involved.

Actually he did, to his credit, drop us right in front of an excellent cafe where we got a good breakfast and some life-giving coffee. Once we had fed the body it was time to feed the mind and we strolled through the CBD of Adelaide, pausing to admire some of the handsome old buildings that had been excellently preserved. Being the so-called “Festival City”, there was a lot of beautiful art to see from the streets; from the coins embedded in the pavement to the big steel balls proudly erected in the middle of the walkway. Sadly our time ran out and we had to hail another taxi, this time being very specific as to where we were going.

A lot of new people had boarded the train since we’d arrived in Adelaide. One fairly large group seemed to be travelling together and turned out to be a group of students from UTS (University of Technology Sydney) that had been attending a sustainability conference. For the most part they were polite but one of them, and I single him out to be the target of my irritation, developed a habit of dropping into our chairs whenever we got up to go to the dining cart and then pretending not to notice when we came back. The little git.

We got into Broken Hill in the late afternoon and were treated to a nicely preserved city centre. Broken Hill is another mining town but it rates higher than Karlgoorlie for the number of artists that call it home. There is a touching memorial to soldiers lost both in World War I & II as well as a smaller, but still handsome, memorial to those lost in the Vietnam War. There is also a rather eerie restaurant that is based on a big hill over-looking the city. It looms over the town like some Bond Villain’s hideout and feels a bit out of place.

Tomorrow we shall arrive in Sydney and once more sleep in comfortable beds!