Hey!! Our last night in Melbourne was a really nice family meal along the riverside where we walked along the promenade admiring the city all lit up at night. The Crowne hotel has these giant fire explosions every hour so we watched in amazement as we could really feel the heat off them. We left Melbourne, and said a very tearful goodbye to Vicki, Laura, Mark, Kelly, Ryan and Monty the dog to head of to Auckland on Sunday. Once we arrived in Auckland and had ...

so we arrived in Melbourne to have a massive family reunion and a general catch up, exchanging stories with Vicky and laura. The following day we hired a car and were joined by vicky and laura for a trip to Phillip Island. We had a picnic on smith's beach and bought an ice cream from smithy's cafe!! Then we all ate pizza on the beach before me and steve went to see the fairy penguins come in from the sea at sunset after a day of catching fish for their young. It...

What can we say about Sydney.... When we arrived, it did nothing but rain!!! Our hostel is ok, offers loads of free nights out and breakfast but we did have a friend in the room which made it hard to sleep....he was fast, black and about 4 inches long and landed on Becs in the middle of the night! (it was a cockroach before you read that wrong!) Mike took us out on Saturday night to a nice bar which was good fun to let our hair down and was great to catch up. T...

Hey All! Surfing lesson on Tuesday was interesting!! - Becs was more knee boarding than anything....eveytime she tried to stand up, she dived off holding her nose! - Steve was cruising the waves like a pro though, he's got the bug for it now! We checked out surfers paradise beach afterwards which was really nice and a few shops too. On Wednesday, we went on a tour to the Springbrook National Park which was pretty amazing. We did a 4km trek through the rainfore...

Hey! On Saturday we were still in Brisbane so we visited Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin's zoo) to check out some big boy crocs! We hand fed kangaroos, held a koala and saw a really interactive show with birds, snakes and crocs. We saw some gorgeous tigers aswell, right up close! When we got back to our hostel, we decided to make the most of the night and head down to South Bank river and have our first meal out at a vietnamese restaurant which was tasty and have a s...