Adelaide

Take the endless stream of galleries, institutions, museums and historical gems of architecture that ring the boulevards around the green-belts of the Botanic Gardens and City Zoo on the banks of the River Torrens, and you will glimpse a little of what people mean when they say that Adelaide is on the up. Yes sir, leaving its quaint and traditional reputation as the “City of Churches” firmly at the altar in the Holy Trinity Church (Australia’s first Anglican church) or the neo-Gothic St Francis Xavier's Cathedral, locals here have embraced the cool. There are now bubbling bars and dive drinkeries hidden betwixt the streets; a welcome change for the town’s multicultural undercurrent that’s made up largely of ex-pats from China and the UK. Aussie rules erupts from time-to-time below the stands of the Adelaide Oval, while the Adelaide Fringe Festival is now the second-largest of its kind in the entire Southern Hemisphere. Adelaide tour guides also often tout the natural wonders that surround the urban area: the windswept Flinders Ranges, the Adelaide Hills and the salt-sprayed Kangaroo Island.