The Lorne Bowling Club was as you might imagine, a wooden chalet type place not redecorated since it was built in the 1950's. The Australian welcome was as usual big and warm and the food surprisingly good. The rockling served on a bed of sweet potato mash with asparagus slipped down a treat. This morning after a comfortable night at Great View and fuelled by John's cooked brekkie we hit the great ocean road proper. It was to be a day of ups and downs in more ...

Having picked up our little hire car in the centre of Melbourne we successfully managed to get out of the city in one piece. The navigating was relatively easy but it is the "hook right turns" peculiar to Melbourne that you need to look out for. It's all to do with the tram lines, if you want to turn right over a tram line you have to pull up left and wait there until your chosen route has a free access, if no tram line you can make your turn in the normal way. A...

Melbourne did not disappoint. We have felt really at home here. It's another big city but somehow very easy to cope with. As ever there has been a big Australian Welcome starting with free bus and tram rides around the main sites. Yesterday we hopped on the bus passing up avenues of colonial style houses, through an emerging, docklands and around many sports venues ( the Olympics was here in about 1956). Melbourne is the home of Australian Rules Football a total...

Well here we are in Melbourne after the 5th of our 9 flights. We are getting pretty familiar with this automatic check in business. It's all done by computer now, just think of all those check in staff out of work. We do still have human in-flight attendants and I assume we are not relying on autopilots to fly the things. (yet). This was just a short hop of 90 minutes but they managed to fit in a complimentary snack of can you believe a "Devonshire Cream Tea" O...

What to see when you only have 3 days in Sydney? The time has flown but we seem to have packed a lot in. A boat tour of the harbour orientated us to the key sites and with clear blue skies gave some fantastic photo opportunities. A high light was definitely going to see South Pacific at the Opera House, a very special night. On Saturday we did some window shopping , popped into the Apple shop for some advice and had coffee at Darling Harbour. We were delighted...