We have now been in Melbourne for a few days and have managed to catch up with a few friends ahead of our weekend camping trip to the Grampians this afternoon.

After getting ourselves set up at the campsite outside of town we went for a drive around on Wednesday to try to get ourselves familiar with the city, but it is so much bigger than anything that we have become used to recently! We did at least manage to find out where we needed to go in the evening to meet Jamie, who we hadn't seen for almost three years!

We set off nice and early to make sure we weren't late, but didn't bank on getting caught in the mother of all rush hours, which wasn't helped by the fact that Pink was apparently playing at the exhibition centre. We plodded along in the traffic and were completely amazed by the road rules of Melbourne CBD as cars that are turning right have to wait in the left-hand lane and perform a 'hook turn' when the lights turn red. It's supposed to mean that cars don't block the tram lanes that run along the middle of the road, but at one point it looked like there had been a multiple car pileup in the middle of the road and we had to wait for the lights to change from green to red and back again three times before we could even cross the junction!

Eventually we made it to Jamie's place in Richmond and it was great to see him again after so long and finally meet his mystery woman, Laura (well, not really a mystery only we have found that you can only ask him one question at a time and even then you normally have to ask him several times!) and even better to find out that they both still had their strong northern accents. After the pleasantries were completed we set off with them both to Jamie's distant relatives as we had been invited to dinner, which was really nice as we had never met them or even spoken to them before. It was great to have some home-cooked food again after being on the road for a couple of months and to be in a family atmosphere again (even if we were just gate crashing).

Yesterday we packed up from the campsite and headed to Natalie's place where we stayed for the night and started our search for somewhere to stay while we are in Melbourne. Several phone calls later and we have ourselves a shortlist of places that might be suitable, which we are planning to look at after our weekend away. Last night we met Dan for the first time and were treated to dinner by Natalie (although it was almost breakfast by the time she had finished cooking due to the "catching up" she had to do with us) before having a good night's sleep in a nice warm room for the first time in quite a while.

We spent most of this morning running around getting everything ready for the weekend away and in just over a couple of hours we are leaving for The Grampians with Natalie, Dan, Jamie and Laura for what should be a great weekend of camping, walking and sight-seeing with just a few beers thrown in for good measure!