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...