Hi Everyone!! Sorry we haven't updated the blog in a while. We've been in Australia for three weeks now, and spent that time in Victoria. We've been based with Anna's uncle and aunt in Bendigo, which is a large town about 2hours north of Melbourne. Anna's cousin Gemma also lives there and has been showing us around the sights. Its been nice to be staying in a home where we can unpack and laze around knowing we don't have to packup the next day. There are also 2 dogs and 9 puppies (well 4 now) so its quite a full house). In the first week in Aus Emily had her 19th Birthday! Which we celebrated in style. We went on a pub crawl around Bendigo which was fun and we ended up doing karaoke to Shaggy "It wasn't me" in some horrible trashy club! Tres amusant! Whilst we've been in Bendigo we did a fair bit of shopping, visited some vineyards... wine tasting ummm, been swimming- in the pool and a dirty river (not quite like the ones in thailand!), visited many a cafe and some of the neighbouring nice towns. One day we went rock climbing with Micheal to a national park, it was really nice but we weren't too good at the rock climbing so spent most of the time exploring around. this is where Emily had her first encounter with a alive kangaroo about 3m away (we'd seen many a dead one at the side of the road) but it came straight at us!! I think it was trying to get away but it was very funny all the same.

In our second week we went to Melbourne, spending half the time with Anna's other australian aunt, uncle and cousin James, and the other half of the time staying with her cousin Camille. James had just started at Melbourne university, so we spent quite a bit of time checking out australian uni life- quite different to england. Melbourne is a very nice city, we visited most of the sights; Federation square, the queen victoria market, St kilda beach. We did a neighbours tour on the saturday which took us around all the outdoor set and of course to Ramsey Street which was all good fun! Also we went to Neighbours night which was at St Kilda and met some of the stars- Dr Karl Kennedy, Malcomn Kennedy, Janelle and Connor, it was a really fun night and St Patricks day which added to it! On one day we went to Healesville sanctuary where there were loads of australian animals, including kangaroos, kaolas, platapuses, wallabies, dingos etc. There was also a really cool birds of prey display, where we had falcons swooping over our heads- quite unnerving. Whilst we were in Melbourne there was a heat wave and it was 40degrees on somedays, very unusual for autumn in victoria, also not so nice in Camille's small airconditioningless flat!

For easter weekend we have been with Micheal, Michelle, Gemma and Camille to a holiday house at ocean grove, which is on the great ocean road. We've had a really good time. it hasn't been as hot so we didn't do much lying on the beach but we explored lots of nice towns, and had many a walk along the beaches. Also the Surf Pro was on a Torquay so on one of the days we went and watched that, which was cool to see the worlds best surfers in action! We had fish and chips on the beach which was great, we had shark...tasted like cod but hey! We had a nice easter day, insted of easter eggs we got easter wombats and bilbys! We also introduced chocolate crispy buns to australia! We watched the sunset whilst eating dinner on the last night, it was beautiful, so many colours in the sky. We are heading up north Cairns tomorrow so we will be backpackers again!