G,day from sunny Victoria! The drive from Adelaide to Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road was lovely, but the drive into Melbourne was not! Everyone told us how easy Melbourne was to get about, but I think the fact that we went from single roads with hardly any other vehicles on it to 4 lanes with hundreds of crazy drivers kind of threw us slightly. On route to Melbourne 'we' managed to loose one of my very expensive flip flops. In saying 'we', I mean Me, Fuzzy and Ally Clumph. No-one is claiming responsibilty for the loss, but the Clumph was in the back at the time of the incident and back seat passenger always has responsibility for making sure nothing falls out of the side door... Anyway, aside from that tragedy we also managed to nearly lose Fuzzy's surfboard. One minute it was on the roof, next minute we heard a noise, pulled over and discovered surf board was no more. After lots of finger pointing (Emma the driver was being blamed..?!) and trawling up and down the road several times, Fuzzy spotted surfboard lying in a crumpled heap on the opposite side of the road. Amazingly the board, fellow road users and innocent by standers were all unscaithed from the incident. A bungy cord securing the board had burst, so from then on, board got pride of place in the back of the van. After reaching Melbourne and booking into a campsite (where the staff were so full of their own importance it was frightening), we packed Ally off to meet his mate and Fuz and I headed to Phillip Island to see the miniature penguins. What should have been an hour and a half drive turned into almost 4 hours due to us heading out of the city at 3pm on a Friday afternoon on a bank holiday weekend. However, it was well worth it to see the tiny pingu's. It was freezing and we had to wait until it was dark until they came out of the water, but we had a baby one next to us giving us a wee bit of a side show while it waited for it's mummy to come out of the water. After one night at the campsite we headed into the YHA in town and had a wander around Melbourne for the next couple of days, including a trip to Ramsay Street (which is absolutely tiny), a tour on the free tram, victoria markets (I subjected Fuz to 4 hours at the market and purchased nothing, but did get quite topsy on the free wine tastings) and a fleeting visit to Brighton beach to see the famous beach huts. For our last night in Melbourne we headed to a hostel in St.Kilda and booked into the (in)famous Neighbours night. There was hundreds of mainly British backpackers forming two orderly queues running into the same door (one to buy a ticket, then you had to go to the end of the other queue to actually get into the venue). Once we were in the venue we waited over two and a half hours to see the Neighbours (I actually missed them coming in as I had to go for a wee, couldn't wait a second longer and then wasn't allowed back to my prime viewing spot). They dutifully walked round all the tables and got their photos taken, then left. However, the highlight of th evening was Dr. Karl Kennedy and his band kicking off their set with the Foo Fighters 'Best of You'. Very surprising and extremely entertaining! A relatively early night for us though, because we were heading off to Canberra the next day. Once back at the hostel, I was last seen trying to convince a French couple to buy our van... Not sure I am the natural sales woman i thought i was!