I know I am lazy and it is not the cheepest way to travel but I booked a tour! The tour picks you up in Sydney and takes you ona scenic route to Melbourne, the accomodation is included and some of the meals (it is still bloody expensive) but it's a good way of me meeting people to travel with.

It was a really early start in Sydney; I met the rest of the group which turned out to be only 4 other people which was a bit disappointing especially as I was the only English one but the tour guide was on pretty good form if not a tad arrogant (as quite a few of the Australians I have met seem to be compared to English standards). We headed by mini bus to Canberra, the custom made capitol, where we got to go round Parliament House which has cleverly been built into a hill so that it has grass running over the whole roof - the theory was so the the people of Australia could walk over the top while the members of parliament could work from underneath. We got some lunch here and I found they have a fast food salad place in Australia, I was pretty impressed!

We then headed through Cooma and got to our destination; Thredbo. It's basically a ski resort which was empty as it is not ski season! I did get to use the spa pool though and dinner was provided by a miniature Jamie Oliver - he really was, he looked and sounded exactly the same just slightly smaller; he did also seem to think he was an amazing cook as well, working in Michellen restaurants etc. but to be honest I know we were having a backpackers dish and it was only pasta but I expected a bit better after all the hype!

In the morning we went to the "Roof of Australia", Mount Kosciuszko. We took the ski lift up then it was a 13km round trip up to the summit. It was a pretty nice walk if not a bit windy and the ski lift was great. After that we were back on the bus heading to Gippsland Lakes on the Barry Way via Snowy River County which gave us some great views before we crossed into the state of Victoria.

We didn't do a lot at Gippsland Lakes to be honest, we had the fish and chip dinner that was included and went back to the hostel. It was a really early start for us as we headed to Wilson Promontory the most Southern tip of mainland Australia. It was a bit wierd going here as over half the park had burnt down in fires so there was lots of tree skeletons to look at! there was supposed to be lots of wildlife (one of the reasons I booked the trip) but sadly I thnk a lot of them had been barbequed before I arrived! I did get to see a couple of Wallaby's though. We walked on squeeky beach which is very white and squeeks as you walk on it. There were hardly any people around - I guess because of the fires. We took a hike along the granite rock formations out to the tip of the peninsula so we could say we had been to the most southern point! We did get to see some rare parrot things on the way back, they had obviously been displaced because of the fires and were looking for a new home!

We drove to Melbourne that afternoon and I got dropped off at my swish hostel.