Hello everyone, We arrived in Melbourne on Sunday and met with Steve, a family friend who we were going to stay with for the week. We went out for a meal and caught up with Steve and his girlfriend Linda then we went to bed in a room with walls and carpet - it was heavenly. Monday saw the time for us to part with dear old Sheila (the campervan), she had served us well but in a way we were a little relieved to see the back of her. The rest of the day was spent on trams and trains navigating ourselves around Melbourne and again trying to take in as much of the city as we could. We had a calm, relatively relaxing week, watching TV walking around and just glad not to be driving and aiming for the next destination. Steve had a large plasma screen linked to his computer with lots of downloaded series like ER, West Wing and Lost. It was great to feel a sense of normality and catch up on what we had been missing since we left the UK. Don't worry we didn't spend all day watching TV, in fact we actually found ourselves feeling guilty after a short time as the weather was beautiful and we were in Melbourne so we made sure we went into the town and all the museums and got a good feeling for the city. We met with Steve's parents (Ken and Linda) one night and had a Barbeque, our first proper one since being in Australia! I hadn't seen his parents since I was young and they visited us. They moved to Australia in 1983 and are good friends with my mum and dad, Ken played in the band with my dad so it was good to hear the stories about my dad and talk about the differences in Australia and the UK, and also to find out exactly what AFL football was all about! The remainder of our time was spent seeing all there was to see in Melbourne and we both came away really liking the city and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there. We move onto Sydney next so stay tuned for the latest on our second trip to the New South Wales Capital. Enjoying ourselves but thinking of you all and we send lots of Love ROB and KATE