They say that getting there is half of the journey… but it's not ideal when that journey involves a Greyhound bus for 12 hours that breaks down if it rains, and it's raining!After limping into Coffs Harbour the bus finally conked out and the driver left us all in McDonalds until a replacement could be found.Luckily that only took a few hours, but I was so grateful to be off the bus by the time we reached Byron! Byron Bay is chilled to the moon and back (descri...

and so you find me back once again in Sydney! It's actually great to be back and in a strange way feels like coming home after being here for so long. The train from Melbourne was fine, the aircon was up too high as is always the way with these things and I didn't have enough layers with me (as my big bag had been checked in and so was riding in a different carriage) and so sleep was rather hard to come by.What was interesting was leaving Melbourne and seeing qu...

Suvi and I picked up our wheels - a very snazzy pale blue Hyundai hatchback in the city where we met Annabel.We successfully navigated our way out of Melbourne, despite the trams trying to confuse us and rules on having to turn right from left hand lanes, and over the impressive West Gate Bridge.I think we also drove on Batman Avenue (possibly the best road name that I have seen so far!)Our first stop was for lunch in Torquay.Nothing like English Torquay and its ...

I jumped straight off the plane and pretty much straight into the Melbourne scene with a few catch up drinks with Michael Green (who sailed with us at home), his new wife (Liesel) and some of their friends at the Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron.After dinner at Leo's in St Kilda we ended up having "dessert" (cocktails) in a great small bar, where I had the strangest chance encounter yet - Helen Platts (one of Thalia's best friend's from school) was in the...

Last day in Tassie and it was still raining... we took a shorter drive over to the Tasman Pennisula and Port Arthur where we used to send the convicts who reoffened once they got to Australia. Really enlightening place and an absolutely stunning location. Unfortunately there is also a rather horrible recent past as a crazy gunman a few years ago went on a random shooting in one of the cafes on the site in which a lot of people died. We took a boat ride around the...