I'll refrain from starting off with a cheesy & cliched "G'day mates", but only just...  The Australia leg of our trip was more like a Melbourne leg with a Sydney big toe (a beautiful pedicured one at that). We'd originally wanted to do some diving on the Great Barrier Reef, but the gravitational pull of the Brendan Murfin champagne supernova was too strong for us to resist, and we hightailed it to Melbourne, albeit circuitously. Instead of flying Singapore - Melbourne direct we had the great pleasure of landing and being forcefully disembarked at 5am for a security clearance at the delightfully charming cosmopolitan airport of Darwin, with salt being rubbed into the wound by the only TV there showing South Africa getting woefully & embarassinlgly thrashed by Australia in the World Cup cricket semifinals. Welcome to Australia mate!  Things improved rapidly from there, and after only having notified Bren 18 hours before our arrival he met us at his door and it was as if a year hadn't seperated him from Kirst & I. We spent the next 2 weeks with him, his lovely lady Lou, and Minger Linnegar, being shown around Melbourne & St Kilda in particular. Many many fine wines (we'd caught them a week after a wine tasting holiday to the Yarra Valley, lucky us!), awesome home-cooked meals (hadn't had one of those in months), a Dave Matthews Band concert (he was good enough to postpone his planned show from April to May 1, someone high up must have mentioned we'd be coming), Carl Cox rocking a small nightclub (I'm told it isn't normally that London-ish in Melbourne but it was one helluva week), a day of Yarra Valley wining and silliness, and quality time that almost had our cups overflowing with happiness, the only fly in the ointment being us having to leave.  It's said that "Home is where the Heart is", and Melbourne felt like home for us simply by being around people that made our hearts sing. See photos for more festive mushiness.  We'd planned an all-too-brief sojourn the Sydney to see what all the fuss was about (we do have Cape Town after all) and see some more long-missed mates. We were sublimely hosted by Sheryn & Grayson, plied with even more good food and wine, and treated to the splendour that is Sydney Harbour, a fine chardonnay & cappuccino in the sunshine in front of the Opera House, and the beauty of taking a magnificent cruise from Circular Quay to Manley and back, whcih anywhere else in the world would have cost a packet as a chartered tourist boat, but in Sydney is simply public transport on the ferry! Byron Bay seemed magnetically to attract us over the sunny weekend to meet up with friends, and aside from the 90 minute public bus rides required to get there was worth it to see so many smiles we'd missed over the last few months and years.  We had a huge list of other friends we couldn't hook up with, and thanks to the generosity of those we did managed to get a glimpse of real life Down Under, not the touristified version, and a great one it seems to us. New Zealand is currently blowing our minds with it's ridiculously spectacular scenery, and we've adapted well to the newness of a mobile home. Surprisingly, internet facilities are sparse so probably no more news till we hit S America in late June.  Kia Ora as they say down here, love and happiness to all y'all. Check out the website for photos, try the slideshow to see the captions if you want a bit of fun and context. Ciao from us and our 4-berth campervan KnD