Tuesday 16th November

Once again a rather cloudy start to the day but the weather soon brightened. Melbourne appears to have a coffee culture, you either sit in a cafe and drink it or you walk around holding a cup of it.

We visited the art gallery. A modern, purpose built structure housing some of Melbourne's wealth of art. We tagged on to a free guided tour, given by a very enthusiastic and informative gentleman. The tour started with an exhibition of indigenous art, with some interesting contemporary pieces. He then showed us important pieces of Australian art by artists who had their artistic education in Europe. Their challenge was to represent the natural colours of Australia, which are quite different from those in Europe, with the dominant eucalyptus trees having a grey olive green colour - despite the intense light from the sun.

After this we visited a superb exhibition in the ACMI (Australian Centre for Moving Image). It had hands on equipment and displays of the history of Moving Image from flicky books through zoetropes onto black and white and colour cinema to television and computer animation games to modern cgi. There was an excellent section devoted to Australian cinema with recorded commentaries from directors, designers, sound engineers, actors and casting directors.

Watched a good street entertainer outside the museum, who picked on Steve. When he put on a white helmet in preparation for riding the tall unicycle, he ran over to Steve, pointed at his head and said "Look Twins" and then off mic said to Steve "It's just a joke please don't hurt me"! It's always Steve that gets picked on, same jokes all over the world. Steve says Good comedy travels and piss taking travels even better!

Strolled to the Greek quarter and dined in Mediterranean style but careful of our budget as for some reason Barclays have denied me access to my wealth. After a delicious dinner we returned to the hostel and enjoyed a 20minute rant to the Barclays call centre to re-establish contact with my money.

Wednesday 17th November

Australian weather has taken a turn for the better over the last few days with clear skies and bright blue sunshine. Caught the tram to St Kilda. Strolling along the seafront and then along the pier with tea, scones, jam and cream as our reward. Walked back through the arty town centre and caught the tram back to Melbourne. Where we strolled along the river and over the bridge before heading out for dinner in the Italian quarter we had passed through last night. We previously found the Italian quarter very easily, almost by accident, but had great difficulty relocating it and gave up and looked for somewhere else before it appeared. Some of the best things in life are elusive like this. This dining experience rated amongst one of our best. A simple meal but beautifully cooked and served by diligent waiters. A fitting last dinner in this continent.