Saturday morning I was up fairly early to go visit Lisa and James Cornish. Some of you may know Lisa as Lisa Gowland or Lisa Harrison, her and James were both on the FMDS and worked in Newcastle, Leeds & Sheffield. They moved out to Melbourne about 18months ago and are both working at the University in Finance roles. Was great to see them and chat about their experiences of financial management here, as well as family life - they live a few minutes from the b...

Having been here 4 weeks the time had come to move out of my serviced apartment (Can’t believe have been here 4 weeks!). I can’t move into the new one until Sunday so after considering my options around paying for a hotel for an extra couple of nights either in Brisbane or up the coast, I decided to jump on a plane and head down to Melbourne to see Kul (Pams sister, my former London housemate) & her fella Glenn. Its only a 2 hour flight – just like gett...

We woke up to pouring rain again, but by 9 it had eased off and by 10 it was brilliant sunshine. Again we had some breakfast in a beachside cafe and we're ready to hit the road around 10. This part of the great ocean road is the original road and pretty much follows alongside the coast. It was built as an employment programme after WW1 to employ the men returning from the war To our right the coastline is a mixture of beaches with soft golden sand and bright bl...

As planned we were up fairly early this morning and made use of the Internet at the hostel to book accommodation for the next 2 nights - I didn't want to get caught out again! We then went in search of breakfast. Coming out of the hostel we realised we were right on the beach - it was so dark last night we'd not seen the sea just 50m away at the end of the road! So round the corner from the hostel was a beach side cafe which made the most amazing poached eggs a...

After more chatting and more food (this time dim sum) Andy & I left Melbourne on our Great Ocean Road-trip. Although we'd booked a small Toyota Yaris, Hertz had upgraded us to something similar to an open top tank! (And while a removal roof in summer is great, it can not be removed when it's pouring with rain like it will be this wk!) But least the indicators and windscreen wipers were the right way round this time. We left slightly later than planned so ra...