Adelaide, Australia

ADELAIDE is always thought of as a gracious city and an easy place to live in, and despite a population of around one million and a veneer of sophistication, it still has the feel of an overgrown country town. It's a pretty place, laid out on either side of the Torrens River, ringed with a green belt of parks and set against the rolling hills of the Mount Lofty Ranges. During the hot, dry summer the parklands are kept green by irrigation from the waters of the Murray River on which the city depends, though there's always a sense that the rawness of the Outback is waiting to take over.

The original occupants of the Adelaide plains were the Kuarna people, though their traditional way of life was destroyed within twenty years of the landing of Governor John Hindmarsh at Holdfast Bay in 1836. The colony's surveyor general, Colonel William Light, had visionary plans for the new city. After a long struggle with Hindmarsh, who wanted to build around a harbour, Light got his wish for an inland city with a strong connection to the river, formed around wide and spacious avenues and squares. Postwar immigration provided the final element missing from Light's plan: the human one. Italians now make up the city's biggest non-Anglo cultural group, and in the hot, dry summers, Mediterranean-style alfresco eating and drinking lend the city a vaguely European air. Not surprisingly, one of Adelaide's chief delights is its food and wine, with South Australian vintages in every cellar, and restaurants and cafés as varied as Sydney and Melbourne's, only much cheaper.

Outwardly conservative, Adelaide nonetheless takes advantage of South Australia's liberal traditions, with a nudist beach, relaxed drug laws and 24-hour hotel licences. It's the free and easy lifestyle within an ordered framework that's so appealing; Adelaide may not be an obvious destination in itself, but it's a great place for a relaxed break on your way up to the Northern Territory or across to Western Australia.