We return to Sydney Road for brunch, at the coffee roasters where our current hosts get their beans. The food is incredible. Read the coffee blog.

Our first stop this morning is the gold museum in the Old Treasury Building. Here we hoped to fill the gaps in our knowledge: how the gold was found, how the gold licences worked, when the Chinese workers came, and the Lambing Flat riot. None of this gets a mention. Instead we are told again that it was a hard place to be; it attracted gold diggers from near, far and of all sorts of disciplines; that some people made it big, and that many did not. We enjoy the museum's excellent phrasing for the reasoning behind it being built:

"Between 1853 and 1857, six million ounces (186 tonnes) of gold from Victoria's diggings was brought under armed guard to Melbourne, destined for the strong rooms of the colony's treasury offices and major banks. As the precious deposits grew, banks found themselves greatly inconvenienced, while the vaults of the government treasury offices... proved inadequate for storing their weekly consignment of bullion."

Inconvenienced by the amount of gold. What a brilliant thought.

There are small room exhibitions on other topics including Ned Kelly (of course), female felons (including a selection of early mugshots), and politics (including women's suffrage). Two panoramas taken from the top of the nearby Parliament building in 1862 and 2012 show the town from its beginnings to the present day. Downstairs are various "experience" rooms with audio or video accounts of experiences during the gold rush.

We stroll up the road to Parliament House, and chance on a free tour. Facts garnered include the following:
- State Parliament assembled in 1851.
- The Chambers were constructed in 1856 but the rest was built in stages, and only finally finished in 1930.
- It's bicameral; the Legislative Assembly (lower house); and the Legislative Council (upper house). The colours are green and red, adopted from the House of Commons and House of Lords.
- Their lower house has a mace (like Jersey!) which was made in 1891 and is 150cms long.
- Most of the decor is local Australian cedar, and Victorian gold leaf was used extensively throughout the building (because they had so much of it!).
- 88 MPs in the lower chamber and and 40 MPs in the upper.
- Voting: according to our guide, the party whips announce amounts of yays and nays in government and opposition, and independents or smaller parties announce individually.
- Pairs book: if a government member is ill or out of the country, his pair's vote will also be skipped, so that the gov-opp balance remains the same. Apparently we also have this in the UK. Who knew?! (Not us... Oops).

Outside after the tour, it's got hot. We get the tram to Fitzroy for coffee and lunch in another of Melbourne's highly rated cafes, before going to 'Third Drawer Down' across the road, an edgy arty shop.

We wander through to Melbourne Museum, and beg our way in to the shop a few minutes before it closes from a grumpy looking woman who warns us that we have exactly one minute... (By the way, why do such places close the shop at the same time as they close the museum?! It's free money for them! They should be encouraging visitors to stay and spend). While Foxy skips off to use the facilities, I wait by the exit and I'm chased on by 3 people in the space of 6 minutes. Have we missed something? Do Melbourne trams triple in price after 5.05pm? Perhaps the museum comes alive and you risk being eaten by a dinosaur if you're still inside at 5.10pm? What is it people, don't you know how lucky you have it working here?!

Anyway. We enjoy a bit more air conditioning in the iMax next door to the museum, before we feel strong enough to venture into the 30 degrees heat once more. We walk onwards to Carlton and the Readings bookshop (we love a good bookshop).

Home for omelette again, and packing our bags for Uluru tomorrow morning! How exciting!

AB