The flight from Sydney to Adelaide was brief and uneventful. But there was a bit of excitement for me just after landing, when I found a five dollar note wafting past my feet in the stiff breeze that greeted us on the tarmac. Yay! We like free money.

Cousin Sue & her husband Barry crept up on me while I was waiting for my luggage. Once again I was caught unawares by the absence of customs controls before meeting groundside people - I keep forgetting I'm flying domestic when the journeys are as long as they are. We drove for twenty minutes right through the centre of Adelaide, and Barry explained that Adelaide is known as the 20 Minute City, because everything is only 20 minutes away from everything else. It's remarkably true too!

Adelaide is a pretty little city, with a grid arrangement surrounded on all four sides by a thick strip of park land - aptly known as the Parklands - separating the centre from the inner suburbs. There isn't much high-rise architecture, apparently because of problems with the subsoil, so the streets are built on a very human scale. The fine spring weather and the lush greenery are a recent addition, however: until about two weeks ago, there was a very severe drought here (as elsewhere).

At home, we sat down under the covered area of the back garden and had a barbecue dinner of T-bone steaks and salads. It was really quite chilly before too long, so there was definitely no question of trying out the swimming pool there and then. Instead, we drove up into the hills to the east of Adelaide, up to the top of Mount Lofty, and admired the view of the city by night. It was really rather cold up there, so we didn't hang about. Back at home, I soon collapsed into bed.

Thursday was a much hotter day. I went for a walk around the local area with Sue, while Barry went for a game of squash with their son-in-law Stuart. I ran up to the nearby bakery to get fresh bread rolls for our lunch, which were advertised as Hungarian rolls. They were very tasty indeed, especially when filled with scrummy ham and salads. I spent the afternoon by the swimming pool, reading my book and snoozing.

That evening, after a meal of grilled chicken and burgers, the three of us drove to Adelaide's seaside suburb Glenelg. We walked out onto the pier to admire the extremely calm seas, and then headed to the main drag for a coffee. Then we drove back into the city and stopped on Rundle Street, Adelaide's main cafe/restaurant/bar street, for a beer in an English pub called the Elephant. There appear to be lots of young people out for a good time in Adelaide.

On Friday Barry went to the Adelaide cricket ground to watch the first day of the test against the West Indies. Sue & I dropped him off there, then headed to the shops to buy some lunch and prepare for dinner: their son Dave & his wife Amanda were coming, along with their two kids Sam and Ellie. Back at the house we had lunch in their second sitting room, which Sue likes to refer to as the 'snug' - and it is quite snug too.

In the afternoon we sat and nattered in the garden, as well as looking at photos on my website and in Sue's many photo albums. Then I went for a laze by the pool (ooh, it is a hard life). Later on I cooked tacos with all the trimmings, not realising that neither Sue nor Barry had ever had Mexican food before! Luckily they liked it, as did Dave & his family. They had brought an apple pie and a pavlova for dessert, which also went down well.

Saturday was a fantastic day, and one of the days I was most looking forward to during my Adelaide visit: it's the day we went into the Barossa Valley to some of Australia's most fantastic vineyards. Before visiting any wineries we stopped at the Whispering Wall, which is a 100-year-old concrete dam with amazing acoustic properties. There we got chatting with a retired couple from NSW who are driving all around the country. Their dog - or perhaps its waterproof fleece jumper - was amazing for a busload of Malaysian tourists, who all took photos with it!

As to the wineries proper, we started off at Kies, where a hen's do party were getting very much into the spirit of things. My nose was tickled not so much by their wines (which were tasty) as by the heady aroma of the apricot trough lollies in the men's urinal. Then we went to Jacob's Creek but were very disappointed by the crap wines they had on for tasting. We stopped for lunch in Tanunda but it was a touch disappointing really. My kangaroo steaks were okay but Sue's chicken & Barry's lamb shanks were not too good.

Thankfully, lunch was quickly forgotten when we went into Chateau Tanunda winery and soaked up the atmosphere of their dusty barrels and friendly staff. Then our afternoon turned from great to fabulous when we got chatting with Ronelle at Wolf Blass. She was mad as a hatter! And she was exceptionally generous with the wines - even giving us the premium ones that you're supposed to pay to taste. She was such an amusing woman with so many stories to tell! It was great.

In the evening, their daughter Julie came for dinner with her husband Stuart and their kids Callum and Elise, who are five and three and gorgeous! They took to me very quickly and we had lots of fun over rump steaks and chevaps (which I haven't had since I was in our village in Austria, where they were called by their Serb name of cevap cici but were clearly the same skinless sausage that the Turks call shish kebab).

Friday night was quite an alcoholic one, and - unusually for me - I woke up on Saturday with a decidedly groggy head. Coffee and toast helped put that behind me, and I headed over to Lane Cove on Sydney's north shore to spend the day with Julian, Fleur, Natasha & Josef, where I had lived for a few days when first I arrived in Australia back in January.

It was wonderful to see them all again! I first went to their house and met Julian & Josef there. Josef is just over a year old now, and completely changed. Where before he was a tiny tot, now he's a big bruiser. Such a big boy! Not tall or fat or weirdly shaped in any way, just uniformly bigger than your average, like he's been magnified. The three of us went into town to meet Fleur & Natasha, who were busy selling raffle tickets for Natasha's school fair.

When Natasha saw me through the crowds, she dropped everything and ran towards me, arms flailing and hat flapping in the breeze. She launched herself into my outstretched arms and gave me the biggest hug and loads of kisses!! You'd think she hadn't seen me for a lifetime. But then, I suppose I hadn't seen her for almost the whole of Josef's lifetime.

We had lunch together and then came home. Fleur had to go to a school committee meeting, but Julian & I stayed at home with the kids. We had a lovely afternoon playing various games and cooking and stuff. When Fleur came home in the evening we ate and then Fleur dropped me off at the railway station. It wasn't goodbye just yet; I arranged to come back and spend some time when Fleur wasn't so busy.

I headed back to Johannes' flat in Woolloomooloo and had to have a little sleep because all this living the high life was taking its toll. Then I got ready to go out - again! This time it was to a dance party being held in the grounds of Sydney University. It was called Club Arak and was a Middle Eastern themed party.

I wasn't sure what exactly this entailed, but when I arrived (after an interesting chat with a Bosnian Serb taxi driver) I discovered that the party was full of Middle Eastern people, some of them in traditional dress but most of them dressed for serious dance action. Johannes wasn't there yet but I saw his friend Tom and went to chat with him. Before long other friends had arrived and the evening went quickly.

The music was a crazy blend of traditional Eastern Mediterranean sounds & instruments with a pumping dance beat. There was a huge screen up at the back of the hall and they were showing snippets from classic Middle Eastern movies - you know, belly dancing, women in alluring fabrics, men smoking shisha and drinking mint tea, that sort of thing. The music was non-stop and the rhythm was addictive. I had a great time all the way through to the end at 3am. Then it was as much as I could do to keep my eyes open in the taxi back to Johannes' place.

Sunday was a day of rest. My life at the moment seems to consist of having a bunch of fun and then having to rest. Perhaps I'm getting old. Or perhaps it's this cold I've got, that just doesn't seem to want to go away. Hm, perhaps I'm burning the candle at both ends a little too much in my last weeks in Australia.

I managed to rouse myself energy-level-wise enough to go for a drink with Johannes in the afternoon and then meet up with my friend Ian and a mate of his, Neil, for some beers and a meal at a delicious Lebanese-owned Italian restaurant. My pizza was to die for: parma ham, rocket & parmesan shavings with a balsamic reduction. Yum!

On Monday I headed over to Lane Cove and spent the day with Fleur & Josef. (Natasha was at preschool and Julian was at work.) That evening I cooked them a huge feast of chicken schnitzels with seven different kinds of salad, followed by a tiramisu. I have to say, it was all scrumptious! I collapsed into bed shortly thereafter, having worn myself out playing with Natasha after she got home from school.

The next morning I made my way back to Sydney on the bus, with the scent of a remarkably peach-flavoured flower from Fleur's front garden caressing my nostrils all the way. This helped to sugar the bitter pill of my last farewell from the Scantlebury family. I hope I will see them again before too long. I carried the floral theme on by walking back to Woolloomooloo through the Botanical Gardens.

In the afternoon I met up with the lovely Kate, who I first met in Samoa last year. We had cupcakes in one place and posh tea in another (the Queen Victoria Building Tea House, don't you know!), all the while talking and laughing. But I had to cut our time together short because I was due to meet up with Chris & Andrew, some friends of Ian's, for dinner that night. Chris had lived in Italy so when he invited me round for spaghetti bolognese I knew I was in for a treat. I brought some of my tiramisu with me, to keep the Italian theme going, and the meal was wonderful.

And then, all of a sudden, it was my last day in Sydney. I pottered about in Johannes' flat, packing my bags and reading some Kafka. After lunch Johannes came back from work and we sat down for coffee and cakes (Johannes had procured some Austrian poppy seed cake from an Austrian bakery). I am excited about possibly meeting up with him in Munich after Christmas; the prospect of seeing him there helps me to think that my Australian adventure is not going to be completely over once I get on that plane in December.

But I couldn't leave Sydney without a little bit of drama, could I? So there I am, standing on the street outside Johannes' flat after he's convinced me to catch a taxi to the airport instead of leaving sooner to catch a train, but it's beginning to rain AND it's bloody driver changeover time, isn't it! So I'm getting stresseder and stresseder as every taxi that goes past already has a fare. I decide to cut my losses and head up the steps to Potts Point and walk to King's Cross station, but just at the top of the hill I find an empty taxi!!! It was clearly meant to be.

And so I checked in at the Virgin Blue counter (my first time with this airline; not bad) and prepared to go.