What is the difference between Melbourne and any other Australian city? It's home of Neighbours! I'm not saying I used to be obsessed by the programme, but I did make my mum trawl around London one Christmas in search of a circular spice rack the same as Madge had in her kitchen. We eventually found the one in Peter Jones on Sloane Square and I still have it to this day. Luckily Richard used to watch it in the early days too so he was familiar with all the...

Our experience of the Great Ocean Road was like being on a tourist hop-on hop-off bus. As we drove along the road there'd be a short turning off to the right every ten minutes or so to see some creatively named coastline attraction. Over three days we made our way from Mount Gambia in South Australia to Torquay in Victoria. The first part of the journey the weather was cloudy and the scenery pretty dull so I slept for a lot of it. We stopped for lunch to eat ...

Mount Gambia was just a place name on the map and a convenient distance from Adelaide to lay our heads for the night before embarking on the Great Ocean Road. As we approached the town we were pleasantly surprised by its size and bustling streets - a contrast to many sleepy towns we drive through. The caravan park we'd chosen to stay in was up a hill near a lake which we'd heard was worth seeing. As we drove up through the pine forest we got a further surprise...

While we were crossing the Nullarbor into South Australia the weather in Adelaide was dangerously hot - around 45 degrees Celsius. "Goody!" Katy said; "Uh-oh" I thought. By the time we arrived, however, the heatwave had passed. It was quite cool with a mixture of sunshine and clouds… and gale-force winds. Not good if you're in a flimsy tent! Our second night there was the worst. Luckily there were trees all around and we could hear the wo...

When we arrived in Port Augusta, Katy noticed that she appeared to be developing a slight cold. Not put off, we arranged to have the car serviced in a couple of days time and then prepared for a visit to the Flinders Ranges, a mountainous area which we both fancied liked the look of. With Katy fortified by a simple cold remedy - for some reason they don't appear to sell Day Nurse or Night Nurse over here - we set off on the 120-km drive over attractive hilly ter...