A little video

I'm excited to share a video I made of my travels in the last fortnight. I arrived home on Thursday night, having visited Sydney three times (!), as well as Adelaide and Darwin, with a few nights in Canberra in between.

Most of the time I was travelling for work, training other newsrooms who are about to start work on the project I've been piloting for a year. But there was plenty of fun things in between. I saw friends for dinners and coffee, and had just enough time to explore each city.

When we were in Sydney, we met our new niece Maeve, saw the Archibald Prize ... and had to get our car towed when it broke down on the highway at night! It was an eventful few weeks.

Here are a few highlights:

SYDNEY

One of my favourite discoveries was Blackwattle Bay Park, which was a few blocks away from our Airbnb in Annandale. It's a beautiful city walk that's right by the water, with plenty of spots to picnic and rest. There's also an impressive kid's playground that I texted my friend about!

We swung by Black Star Pastry in Newtown to pick up pastries for a breakfast with friends. We ordered a few coffees too, and it was hands down the most satisfying coffee I've ever had.

A few quick city recommendations - the Jenny Watson exhibition at the MCA is fantastic, it's fun and feminist. It's also a free show. We grabbed lunch at the Burger Project nearby, they reminded me of Shake Shack burgers from New York. A very good thing.

On the days that I was visiting for work, I woke up early to check out The Grounds of the City, which was old-worldly. It's worth booking - I wandered in on a weekday and almost missed out on breakfast. I'd love to return to try the cakes. And I finally made it to Aqua S, which had an English Breakfast Tea soft serve special running. If you visit the Town Hall shop, you'll find it in an arcade that I'd love to visit at night. It's full of Asian eateries and shops, where I bought these fun phone stickers.

We spent a bit of time in Manly too, because Tony is part of a group exhibition at the gallery (the show's still on if you're keen!). One night, we had dinner at Papi Chulo and shared a delicious barbecue chicken platter. For coffee, we went to the Barefoot Coffee Traders, which happened to specialise in waffles :)

ADELAIDE

My time in Adelaide was shorter, I had a cosy Sunday lunch at Hey Jupiter!, a French-inspired cafe. There was also time to visit the JamFactory, a design space that my friend Sabine recommended. I was secretly hoping I'd be in Adelaide later in the week, so I could try Africola. Instead, I had breakfast at Crack Kitchen and dinner at a cute Hong Kong inspired diner. There are more Adelaide recommendations from our recent visit, and from a local too :)

DARWIN

My friend Georgia lives in Darwin, and every night after work she'd pick me up to see the sunset. We went to the Nightcliff Jetty on my first night, and I loved seeing how many people were there. Some were picnicking (there were some cute food trucks nearby), others were just taking it in with their dogs. I hear there's a lovely pool nearby too.

On my last night in town, we watched the sun go down from Fannie Bay. Next time I'd love to visit the Fannie Bay Cool Spot, which is an iconic ice cream shop! I had the most free time in Darwin, so I visited the museum and gallery, looked tentatively at the beach (it was so hot but no one was on it!), and swam at the hotel pool instead :)

This was my favourite dinner. We went to PM (worth booking ahead), and shared fries, calamari and the most delicious saganaki, which was covered in honey. On my lunch break, I loved poking around the Star Village. I bought tassel earrings from Lulu and Daw (they had stacks of them!) and joined the line for a salad and juice at Simply Foods.

I had such a good time but am very happy to be spending a Sunday at home. I managed to finish four books while I was travelling, which I'll share soon.

Three days in Adelaide

We've heard so many great things about Adelaide over the last few years and were excited to check out the city after exploring South Australia's wine country last month. We stayed in a great apartment in North Adelaide, which had cute cafes like E for Ethel and was an easy half hour walk into town.

We spent an afternoon at the Art Gallery of South Australia, where we found some hidden gems amongst what had looked like a collection of European style history paintings. I especially loved two video works, Richard Lewer's Worse luck I am still here, which I watched a few times over and a surreal 40 minute piece by AES+F group from Russia called Allegoria Sacra - I managed to watch the entire thing from start to finish, I was totally captivated. Tony also led the way to Greenaway Gallery, a contemporary art space in the suburb of Kent Town.

On the food front, we loved Maid Mice, which serves Vietnamese-inspired burgers and really great fries. My only regret is not going with the burger banquet option, it was so delicious! We spent a bit of time stocking up on clothes in the city and loved Monday's Coffee Store and The Beigelry for New York inspired bagels and apple pie soda. Of a night, Clever Little Taylor was a lovely spot for a drink. We discovered Rundle Street East a little late in our stay but loved the look of all the cafes (a few hidden away in Ebenezer Place) and fancy shops.

Before we began the long drive home, we stopped by the beach where we saw a dolphin playing in the sea :) We'd love to come back one day to check out a few things we missed, like the Adelaide Hills and Samstag Museum. I'd also love to check out the Adelaide Festival, the South Australian Living Artists Festival and try out this foodie guide to Adelaide, discovered a month too late.

Angela Osborn - Life in Adelaide, SA

I’m excited to share another instalment of the Life In series today. I met up with the lovely Angela Osborn when I was in South Australia recently. Angela grew up on a farm and moved to Adelaide after she finished school to study fashion design. Now 30, the full-time psychology student gives us a glimpse into her everyday life in the city of churches. 

I moved to Adelaide after I finished Year 12 and I've been here ever since.

I grew up in Naracoorte, which is about three-and-a-half to four hours away in the south east. Naracoorte is a really lovely little town but it's a small town. We've always had family in Adelaide and it was a big exciting thing to visit for a holiday. 

Often people from cities like Sydney or Melbourne think Adelaide is just a big country town and not a real city. It doesn’t bother me because it's all relative. Growing up on a farm I was like - Adelaide is so big, there's public transport!

I'd always planned to move to Adelaide when I finished high school, it’s just the thing you do. Initially I hadn't decided if I wanted to do psychology or fashion design and I ended up going with fashion design. I moved around a lot through different share houses. I probably lived in half a dozen suburbs, which was stressful but in one sense moving to a new city and moving to all of these different areas did give me a better understanding of the layout of the city. 

I've certainly considered moving to Sydney or Melbourne.

When I was considering moving to Sydney I was just feeling a bit lost and wanted to move away, and then I met Matt. I might have put aside that plan to move because I thought this guy's really cute and nice. We've been married for six years now and we really love where we live. 

We live in Oakden, which is a little suburb about 15 minutes out of the city.

Matt's parents and a lot of our friends are on the north east side, a bit further out of the city. We didn't want to be too far away from our sense of community there but we wanted to be a bit closer to the city. We wanted to be smart and buy into an area that might increase in value and that's one of the things about Adelaide - a young couple can afford a mortgage for a three bedroom house. If we were in Sydney that would not be happening.

When we were looking around at different houses we'd never heard of the suburb Oakden. It's quite small and it was actually only built in the '90s. Prior to that it was agricultural land or CSIRO land and then it was developed into housing. The houses are mostly quite small and because of that there are a lot of parks and outdoor communal spaces.

On a typical day I study at Uni SA. 

Two years ago I decided I really wanted to study psychology. I thought, it's 10 years later and I’m still interested it, maybe I should just bite the bullet and go to uni, and that's what I've done. 

Most of my subjects are at the Magill campus, which I love because it's green and there's a little creek that runs through it, it's really beautiful. But this last semester, I've had two subjects at Magilll and two subjects at City East. So I might go to a lecture at City East at 8am - 8am lectures that's cruel - and then have another class, and then I'd go to Magill for another class, then home to listen to a lecture online.

I don't drive because it scares the shit out of me, I'm working on that. I usually rely on public transport.  If you were driving it would probably take 15 minutes tops to travel between campuses but buses always take a little bit longer. But it's not too bad, for people from other cities getting somewhere in 20 minutes is amazing.

We absolutely love the beach so we'll often drive to Semaphore.

There's a really cute little cafe there called Whipped, we'll often go for brunch and for a walk along the beach. That's one of the things I love about Adelaide, you can drive for 30 minutes and you're at the beach and 30 minutes in the opposite direction and you're in the Adelaide Hills at a winery. 

Another one of our favourite cafes is in Stirling, again it's not that far away but you feel like you're far from the city. It's a cafe that's attached to an organic market, so we'll often go there for brunch and then wander around the market. There are two bookshops in the street, we are obsessed with books so always look, Matilda's bookshop is new books and the other one is secondhand books. There's also Topiary cafe, which is part of Newmann's Nursery. The food is incredible.

We went to a new microbrewery on Saturday night, I think it’s Adelaide’s first but generally speaking, we more often hang out at a friend's place. 

It's easier, you don’t have to worry about parking and a lot of our friends have kids now, so we're more likely to go for dinner or grab a pizza and watch the football, just something relaxed. Because there are a lot of kids there will be barbecues and lunches, which I like. It's interesting seeing that shift from going out to a pub to being at someone's house and now daytime activities with all these little kids running around. 

With visitors we’d want to take them to a coastal location like Glenelg or Henley beach and there will have to be a winery, there are so many nice wineries.

Maggie Beer's Farm Shop in the Barossa is a great place to take visitors. The shop overlooks a lake and once we saw little turtles swimming in it! They have yummy picnic baskets on offer and we're actually planning a trip there with Matt's parents as a really late Mother’s Day present. 

I was at the Two Hands cellar door in the Barossa recently and they have two gorgeous young Rhodesian Ridgebacks - Saffy and Daisy. I'd never been to this winery before but I'd highly recommend them to anyone visiting the region. Their wines are delicious, the atmosphere of the cellar door was lovely and I appreciate their philosophy - they charge a small fee for wine tasting, which is entirely donated to the Uganda Project. Rockford cellar door have beautiful old buildings and their wines are amazing. 

Hahndorf is really beautiful and as well as the pubs and eateries, there's some lovely wineries as well. Hahndorf Hill winery do this thing that's chocolate and wine tasting, it's called ChocoVino and they might have single origin chocolates or a mix of chocolates from different places. It's amazing, they'll pair each of these chocolates with a wine and they even had a little bit of a raw cacao bean, so you can see what it tastes like raw. It’s really fun. 

I like being part of a city that’s really diverse.

I just like wandering around the city, I like seeing the buskers and seeing all of these different cultures coming together. In Naracoorte, it's a lot more diverse now than it used to be but what I love about Adelaide is that you see people from so many different subcultures and that's just embraced, it's just normal. 

Thank you Angela! She's on Instagram if you'd like to see more snippets of her life in Adelaide, including a few more photos of her super cute cat. Thanks too to Tim and Sophie for the introduction :) You can find more Life in interviews here.

Photos by Angela Osborn.