After a good night's sleep in our four-bed room (luxury compared to some of the bigger dorms we've stayed in!) we headed back to Southern Cross station to get the train to Beechworth. We were going there to stay with Rosa, who we met on the Green Tortoise trip in America, along with her daughter Sally. The train journey had an eventful start - we'd just sat down when a big group of African girls walked past, complaining noisily about people being racist. The train guard followed them and when they took their seats at the other end of our carriage, two security men got on to talk to them. It looked like they were going to be thrown off for causing a disturbance, but they suddenly quietened down and were all asleep after five minutes of the journey. A few too many fizzy pops in the bar before getting on methinks…

The trip took about three and a half hours to get to Wangaratta, where we had to catch a coach for the rest of the journey to Beechworth, which took half an hour. The train wasn't that comfortable as all of the seats faced each other and we ended up sitting opposite a man who took up two seats on his side, which meant very little leg room for the whole journey!

When we transferred to the bus, we got some free entertainment along the way from the driver, who kept getting calls on his hands-free phone. He answered by saying 'Good afternoon, V-Line coach services, Roger speaking…' and after a few seconds the caller would say 'Hello Gerard?' Roger would say 'It's not Gerard, it's Roger!' The caller couldn't hear properly, the line kept going dead and the whole thing was repeated several times, with the driver getting less polite and more annoyed each time. The whole coach heard all of it, but we never did find out who Gerard was!

Finally, we arrived in Beechworth and had to walk to Rosa's house, which didn't look too far but when you're carrying the amount of stuff that we were it felt like it took a lifetime! We let ourselves in with the spare key (which we found in its hiding place outside!) and were soon joined by Rosa, home from work. We spent some time catching up while she prepared some amazing Chinese food for tea - yum!

After tea, we went for a walk around Beechworth and down to the lake, before eventually ending up in one of Beechworth's four pubs (the Hotel Nicholas) after popping into them all to decide which one we liked best! There was a band playing and some of Rosa's friends were sitting next to us so we ended up staying till about midnight, and then walked back home in the dark and rain! We're not impressed with the rain - it's not supposed to do that in Australia, and if it does, they should put on the postcards!