I've run out of time - I'm hitting the jungle tomorrow and have not caught up with my blog, so am going to do a summary - as much for myself as you and will fill in the gaps when I'm back in the land of internet cafes! So I arrived at the scummiest hostel so far - in St Kilda, Melbourne. I was given the choice of 2 rooms - a mixed or a girls only. The girls only had a really strong smell of french soft cheese - yuk! my choice was made for me, but as it turned out there were only girls in the other one too, one of whom was Agnes, who i then spent most of the week with and got on well with. On Tuesday I queued up for ground passes for the tennis and Agnes and I spent several hours in Margaret Court Arena and show court 2 watching players like Guccione (aussie) and Gasquet - french seeded player. It was absolutely baking hot - everything was burning, so mid afternoon we went and upgraded to the Hisense and watched Venus Williams and Jo-Wilfried Tsongas first round matches, which were really exciting and the stadium was in shade. The following day I did a few cultural things like go to Melbourne museum and ride the free circle tram that had commentary on all the sights. I jumped off mid way to get a better look at the "Cow in a tree" sculpture - apparently inspired from real life after flood waters have gone down! It was pretty good, I liked it! Thursday I was back at Melbourne Park, with a 2nd row ticket for the Rod Laver arena, so I got to watch Simon beat Guccione (the Aussies weren't happy, but I was!) then Nadal play Karanusic, which was really exciting! He obviously won easily but his whole presence was pretty cool, especially as he went on to win overall! After this, we got to see another Aussie - Sam Stoser, win to become the first Aussie through to the 3rd round - that was before the media picked up on what was going on with Jelena Dokic! The next day I went on a wine tour of the Yarra Valley where we visited 4 wineries of varying size, finishing at Domain Chandon with champagne. It was a really lovely day, including the gormet lunch and the fudge we bought at Rochford. As usual with wine tours I felt like I was learning a lot but as normal, after a few glasses I found the information slipping away from me! The most interesting was about how they get the dark colour in pinot noir which is essentially a white grape with red skin, by sinking the "cap" regularly in increase contact time with the skin. They also showed us the riddling rack designed by Veuve Clicquot to help remove the yeast after the bubbles are put back in the champagne. On saturday I went on the neighbours tour which took us to Ramsey st which is TINY!! absolutely mini, i couldn't believe it! The houses obviously look exactly right though. We had the cheesy shots taken with the road sign and then headed to the studios to see the external sets. This was weird as they were just fronts to buildings so no insides! Back at the office where we were dropped off we got to meet Michelle Scully (sister of Flic and Steph who went to live in the States!) and she signed autographs before we headed off. Agnes and I did a tour of the Great Ocean Road on the Sunday which was brilliant and we had a really good group of people along with us. Our guide was Bernie who had a beard to rival Father Christmas, and he was hilarious, a really good guide so we had lots of fun. We visited Bells beach, the lighthouse where they filmed "round the twist", the 12 apostles and London bridge to name but a few! WE also got to see wild koalas which were really cute!! Australia day was pretty lazy for me, I went and had lunch with Ningrum who I met in Kakadu and who lives in Melbourne, then I headed into town catching the dregs of the lifesaving ducks in the duck race on the Yarra and watching some tennis in Federation square before heading back to St. Kilda. IN the evening I dragged Agnes to the neighbours night -she'd never seen it! - where we joined a team with some friendly English guys for the quiz - which was really hard! We got to meet Carmella, Connor, Janelle and of course Dr Karl, who loves neighbours night and is there every week! It was a really fun night, I loved it! The next day Agnes and I went and had a look round Brunswick street and went back to the Fitz for lunch - where Arwa and I had sheltered from the rain last time we were in Melbourne. Agnes left that evening and I spent my last day- the day of 43 degrees plus, lying on the beach and going in the sea and drinking fluids before heading to the airport to fly to Perth. On the flight I sat next to a really interesting guy who is a vet in Melbourne. We had a long chat about the survey/study he is designing to monitor the honey bee population - and monitor the spread of the parasite that is affecting bees across Europe. Apparently the parasite is 1.6mm wide and if on the surface will drop off if you sprinkle icing sugar on the bee! The other thing we discussed - which will be of no interest to anyone except me (and maybe Arwa/Kate) - was a trial he'd done on giving a sheep chemo - (dox/vinc/cyclo) and how he was planning on presenting it at an international sheep vets conference in Norway! It was fascinating, we talked in depth about how you work out the doses for sheep of drugs that aren't really used for animals. Definitely the most interesting person I've talked to on a flight so far!