Australia is different to New Zealand. People speak differently, instead of saying "ah yeah bro, ay" they say "g'day", "no worries" and "good on ya". They also have mammals. Really cool ones.

In Melbourne we stayed with another old housemate of mine, the brilliant Helen Maynard-Casely and her gent of a husband Andy. They moved out here from Edinburgh last year when Helen got a job working at the Australian synchrotron (bit like CERN, but friendlier). They're fantastic tour guides - we couldn't have picked better people to introduce us to Oz.

On our first day we looked around the boutique and funky city that is Melbourne. They are big on graffiti art here and the Lonely Planet walking tour is a really good way to see some of it. We barely scratched the surface to be honest, but I got to impression that Melbourne is like all the coolest bits of London compressed into a smaller space and that any gaps left over are filled with restaurants.

For the next two days we escaped to the country as Helen, Andy, Si and I went on a camping trip to Wilson's Promontory - the most southerly part of mainland Australia. The "Prom" is a wilderness getaway; with walks through the bush and along beautiful windswept beaches. It's most famous spot is the aptly named Squeaky Beach, where the dry sand is just the right size and shape to squeak when you walk on it (or do a running jump onto it from top of a top sand dune).

The coolest thing about our camping trip was the wildlife though. I'm not just talking about the greater spotted Simon Perkins here, but also the various exciting animals that we saw both at the Prom and then on Phillip Island on our way home. In two days we ticked off over 10 new animals in our virtual I-spy Australia books. My favourites were the wombats, galahs, koalas, wallabies, kangaroos and little penguins; Si also really liked the scorpion, the bull ants, and the whitetail spider. The baby koala was probably the cutest thing I've ever seen ever. We had an amazing time taking photos and all the animals were much, much more interesting in real life than on telly - with the exception of the emus.

We finished our Melbourne leg on Thursday night by being as sophisticated as you can be in clothes that you've been wearing every day for the past two months and went wine tasting. We met up with Jen and Duncan - high-flying and fun meteorologist friends from Reading Uni and the street savvy Helen Brand who was at UCL with me and now works with Helen at the synchrotron. The whole bunch of us spent a few happy and informative hours at a local wines showcase in the middle of town. I tried lots of wine and - not being a connoisseur - I can confirm that they all tasted of wine and all contributed towards the squiffy-ness that I developed as the night went on.

At 8:30pm the showcase ended so, brand new bottles in hand, we all went out for a dinner of all-you-can-eat Chinese dumplings. This was Jen's or Helen Brand's idea - either way it was a good one. If you ever find yourself in Melbourne, on the giggly side of sophisticated, and someone says "shall we go for dumplings..?" then definately say "yes", you won't be disappointed.

Once again it was properly awesome to see old friends and I was sad to leave. But as the lovely ladies at the Flight Centre can't make our flight to Indonesia any later, we were forced to push on to Sydney.