My first blog ever, how exciting. Well I've been here approx 5 days so I'm going to have to back track a little.
Oki sooo, I think I'll count my flight as day 1 (6th Sep), even though I wasn't in Australia until the 7th, it marks the beginning of my travels. Me and my Mum drove down to Manchester on the Monday evening for my early morning flight the next morning. At this point the reality of going to Australia hadn't properly hit me, I was more concerned about the usual Airport related worries over baggage allowances and restrictions. But I gave up on my packing/re-packing about half 1 on the Monday morning. God I'm boring myself with the formality of this blog, hopefully it will get more interesting when I get to actually landing in Aus... Anywho, so leaving my Mum at the gate was emotional and I just had to concentrate on going through the motions until my arrival onto the plane. When I first sat in my seat I was distracted by novelties of my airoplane blanket and cushion, not to mention the mini tv screen in front of me! Further novelties ensued. Meal times were fun; choosing a mains from the menu provided and and getting a 3 course meal (miniscule portions, though overall sufficient). My whole flight was broken into two: the first to Abu Dhabi, lasting around 7 hours and the second to Melbourne around 12 hours. I took advantage of films on the flight, starting with Clash of the Titans, then, shrek 3, then, about the first half hour of The A-team resumed on the second flight at the point I left off; to my delight I was able to fast forward, ha. Followed by Date Night when I couldn't manage to sleep and lastly Troy. I think I drifted off 2 hrs max just before Troy due to sheer exhaustion because previous to that I just couldn't get to sleep! Jet lag shmetlag.
I landed in Melbourne around 6pm ish their time, got my handbag sniffed by a cute and most non-intimidating security dog I've ever seen and then was re-united with Chloe. I don't think I've ever ran to anyone in the airport before but I did this time, even though I was somewhat hindered by my trolly. I was then introduced to my Aunt and Uncle, Terry and Dianne, who have generously offered me and Chloe to stay with them for our time in Melbourne.

After a much needed long sleep, mine and Chloe's mission for our first day was to walk to the shops, although, in terms of my travels it counts as day 2. One of the first things we learnt on our arrival was that, the perspective of distances in Melbourne and the rest of Australia is different to how we consider them in England, mainly because yes, bascially it is a bigger country. Ok so a good example is the distance between North Ringwood (where we're staying) into the city of Melbourne, averaging at around a 45min drive. Therefore, getting back to our mission for day 2; the walk to the shops was more difficult than it sounds! Predictably we got lost, well, took a wrong turn and walked in a circle back to the house, then found the shops the second time round; the entire venture having taken a slightly longer time than anticipated. We bought shampoo and conditioner then made it safely back to the house.
Terry and Dianne had bought some amazing lamb from the butchers for our tea that evening, and it seriously was the best lamb I think I've ever tasted.

Day 3, me and Chloe made it into the city. The city is massive. We didn't cover much that day, though acquired some useful reference points: the city centre st, Flinder's Street, the two Meyers' shopping centres and the ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) building, where we saw the Tim Burton exhibition, which was awesome. The exhibition impressively covered a chronological account of Burton's childhood and career, also going into detail over his influences, inspirations etc. The second part of the exhibition focused on his more recent films: from Batman and Beetlejuice, through to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland. Each film presented bits and pieces of models, puppets and props, some of my highlights included, the miniature models from Mars Attacks and Nightmare Before Christmas and Johnny Depp's costumes from Alice in Wonderland (and Edward Scissorhands, but this was at the beginning of the exhibition). After 4 hours of the exhibition we were absolutely ravenous, and wandered the cities streets to find somewhere relitively cheap and tasty to eat. We chose sushi; sushi take-aways', cafes' and restaurants' are everywhere here and so much cheaper than in the UK. We felt as though we had had our fill of culture for one day so decided to go do a spot of light shopping. Finding our kind of shops took some time but eventually we discovered some shopping malls yay. After heading back to North Ringwood we came back to a yummy meal of 3 different kinds of fish and joined by one of our cousins Alex and his girlfriend Laura. A lovely meal with lovely company.

Day 4, we went back into the city, today with one main objective: to buy warm clothing. We underestimated how cold it would be in Melbourne this time of year, even though its their spring its still a bit nippy. Similar to the weather we were getting in the UK recently, overcast, sunny spells, general chilliness. I bought a coat and two pairs of warm and practical shoes (Mum will be proud). Chloe on the other hand bought a jacket and two pairs of impracticle shoes, tsk. I'll let her off though; she hasn't had nice shoes for a a couple of months. The warm clothes weren't just for Melbourne in general but also for the football match we were going to on the evening with Alex, Laura and Laura's sister. As mine and Chloe's first ever "football" match it proved to be a fun and exciting experience. Now Australian football is not like English football for a start they can touch the ball and have four posts on either side of the pitch... which is round. Me and Chloe summed it up to be a combination of football, rugby, netball, its gets wierder - and pokemon, that last one being Chloe's interpretation of the circle in the centre of the pitch which "looks like a pokeball". Despite knowing zilch about the game we were supporting Fremantle who Alex misleadingly got us supporting, turning out not only to be the losing team but the team who apparently never stood a chance of beating the Cats (opposing team) in the first place. Nonetheless, it was fun to be the only 3 people supporting the team, excluding the cheerleaders, in a crowd of approx 44,000. After the match we walked into the city to meet our other cousin, Graham and his girlfriend Nat. We briefly stayed in a club with fun decor and good music before being driven home, very kindly by Graham and Nat.

Day 5, thank god we had chance to sleep in this morning, having been up at 6:45 am the past two mornings in order to get a lift to the st by Dianne on her way to work; to get the train into the city. My breakfast merged into lunch time, shortly followed by Graham, Nat and another cousin Chris dropping in with sandwiches for lunch. We all (all of the above, plus me Chloe, Terry and Dianne) went for a walk to Warrandyte Park, a short drive from Ringwood, in Lilydale in the Yarra Vally. The walk began up a hill and once at the top we could see vineyards, huge gold course and the Yarra River of the Valley, not to mention my first sighting of kangaroos! They were of the Eastern Grey variety and in a troop/mob of roughly 25-30 and some had babies in their pouches! We didn't get too close, just admired from afar. Apparently, if a kangaroo is provoked they can kick you with their back legs and tear your torso right open; thus the safe distance kept. On the way back down the hill we walked alongside downstream of the Yarra River; where deterioration of the river has resulted in erosion of its banks and bed making the water supply dirty, in other words I couldn't drink water straight from the river when i was thirsty meh. From here we visited Chris's house and met his two gorgeous jack russells' Tyson and Chloe. Chloe is an interesting little creature who has OCD over her ball and will literally stare at you until you throw it for her, and yes I'm still referring to Chloe the jack russell.

Day 6, Graham and Nat took me and Chloe to a cafe close to where they live for breakfast, where we discovered a delicious sandwich called a BLAT, or the Aussie's version of our BLT but with avocado and hollandaise, yummmm. We got dropped back at the house and we've just been chilling this evening, trying to update our blogs etc which brings me up to this very moment!