Melbourne at an end

At time of writing we have less than 48 hours left in Melbourne - and scarily - Australia as a whole!! Has it really been 60 days?

Well actually it has been 60 days and it has been brilliant - this last wee stretch in Melbourne has been particularly great but certainly different to what we have been doing so far. To set the scene we have been staying with a friend of mine from sports coaching in Glasgow (Vicky) who is living with another sporting Scot here in Melbourne (Adrienne). Both of whom are renting a flat and very kindly agreed to let us stay with them during our time in Melbourne. Even more generously than that - they let us borrow their camper van (Harold) and their Sat-Nav (Betsy) so that we could explore the coast. (more about that later)

First things first though - you can probably recognise the guy in the photo at the top of the page - he was in Taggart 4 times and this other guy he's with has been in a TV show called Neighbours for almost a hundred years apparently and once held the Ramsay street record of 40 runs not out before he was dismissed for smashing Madge's window. He is best known for his role as shellsuit bob in River City - but we know him as wee Stefan ;o)

Ok, so we went to Neighbours night in Melbourne and had a bit of a laugh - usually Dr Karl Kennedy plays with his band but he is in the Uk doing Panto so we got Stefan Dennis instead which was hilarious. He was a rubbish singer and dancer of course but it was funny anyway. The rest of the night was just a bit tacky but fun and current stars from the show mingle with the plebs and sign autographs (you'll see our photos on flickr soon)Stefan asked if he could get his photo taken with me when the girls weren;t looking, they weren;t pleased but he was delighted. ;o)

Our latest adventure with a camper van took us down Great Ocean road where we saw the cuddly fella in the other photo at the top. No we didnt; take this at the zoo but at the side of the road on the way to a lighthouse called Cape Otway. We saw tons of Koalas just hanging about but this one was so close to the ground that we were able to get really close.

The final photo in the trio at the top of the page is of us in a town called Lorne (no, not named after the famous square sausage) where we were able to cook on an outdoor barbie before heading off to a free camp spot for the evening. Pretty nice to be out next to the Ocean cooking your dinner. Even though the weather wasn;t great (bit cloudy) this dinner was made betterby the fact that there was another Koala just hanging about in the tree above us.

We've seen a lot on this final leg of the Australia trip and we are extremely grateful to Vicky and Adrienne ( to whom we hope we can return the favour when they come to NZ) for putting up with us... I mean putting us up for so long and for lending us the van - cheers girls!

Ok, best go for now - we have one final day in Melbourne tomorrow and then we are off to NZ on Sunday. Flying to Christchurch, arriving at 11pm at night it will take us a few days to get ourselves sorted out but hopefully you should get more photos and more blogging soon.

All the best,

Stephen and Katie.