SUNDAY 8TH MARCH
It’s my 28th birthday today. I rang my mother at 09:30am South Australia time, so in England it was 23:00p.m, 7th March. As she has no concept of international time zones, she didn’t realise it was my birthday. When I told her, all she said was, ‘well it’s not the 8th here, and you were born in England not Australia.’ Fair enough, that’s me told.
The Adelaide Fringe is on here, it’s a bit like the Edinburgh Fringe, but with more Aussie’s if you can believe that. We went for a walk to check out some of the shows. Most of them have an entry fee, obviously, so it was the free shows for us. By free, I mean buskers and kid’s entertainment, which isn’t really something I’m bothered about. I suppose if you pay to see the acts on show it’ll be better, but as Louise and I are going to the races tomorrow, we can’t afford to do everything.
We got the tram down to Glenelg beach. It’s a nice sandy beach and it wasn’t too overcrowded. We didn’t have any bathers so it’s a bit of a moot point as we couldn’t go swimming. It was almost sunset, and that’s feeding time, so I definitely wouldn’t have gone anyway. Instead we walked along the pier, along with the things you expect to see such as people crab fishing; we also saw a group of teenager’s fish out a tandem from the sea!
Louise phoned her Dad and I got birthday wishes of him as it was now the 8th March back in England. That reminds me, I must get my Mother a map with lines of longitude and international time zones.
MONDAY 9TH MARCH
Today we’re off to the Adelaide Cup; although it’s not as big as the Melbourne Cup, it still justifies public holiday status in South Australia, so for that reason alone we went. To get to the track you have to take an AU$8 tram ride of around 6miles (9.5km). I was a little worried about my appearance as it was a big race day. Back home any big race meeting you have to go in your best clobber. Not Australia though, I was dressed in black combat pants and a shirt, these are the best clothes I own. At best I look like a tramp who’s just robbed a fresh bin bag of clothes from the doorstep of Dr. Barnado’s after the pissheads have been dressing up in them after a nights boozing.
Because I didn’t really get a birthday present yesterday, I was allowed a bet today. Normally I would have backed myself to pick a few winners, but we’re in Australia and it’s Grade 2 racing and there’s only one jockey I’ve heard of.
That said I got a few tips off a stranger whilst I was having breakfast. It didn’t help me as I didn’t back any of the horses he told me (the price was too short and I’m a gambler) and 3 out of 4 won. Never mind.
After a long afternoon there and losing around AU$100, we left. We were a little disappointed not to have won anything between us, but we budgeted to lose so it wasn’t a problem.
It was tea-time so we went to the casino for a AU$5 roast dinner. Whilst we were there I persuaded Louise to let me have another AU$20 on the roulette.
Within 5 spins of the wheel I had made back the money that we’d spent at the races. Not bad going, so for a whole day’s entertainment we had spent a grand total of AU$0. That’s exactly my kind of day: a free one.
TUESDAY 10TH MARCH
Today is the last day in the city for 9 days as we’re off to the ‘Red Centre’ on another tour. Because we had to get everything ready and believe it or not we’re still sticking to a budget, we spent most of the day in the hostel watching crap TV.
I found out to my disappointment that the cricket had been on at the Adelaide Oval over the weekend after being told by the staff in the hostel that it hadn’t. That was one of a couple of bug-bares I had with the hostel. I was also told by them that none of the fast food outlets (you know the ones) had free wi-fi, and so was conned out of AU$15 for web access. After it was too late, I found out that they did do it for free. Usually they’ll help you to find this sort of information as it’s makes a difference; this hostel wasn’t really into helping you though, they were just after a few more dollars from you, they even charged you a dollar for every bottle of beer you brought on the premises.
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