G'day from Sidders! Yep, we finally made it to the famous city after driving 18,000kms around this huuuuge country, bit of a road trip huh!

Spent a few days down in miserable Melbourne (it was cold and wet, not what we're used to!!) Highlights were definitely the Great Ocean Road and the Elephant & Wheelbarrow pub in the city!! Drove the Great Ocean Road from Torquay - real surfy little town, probably not that different from the one at home! The scenery was awesome and for the first couple of hours you actually are driving on the cliff edge! Got some fantastic pictures and the weather was kind for most of the day which made it even better. The most famous bits of the trip, 12 Apostles, Loch Ard Gorge and London Bridge were a little disappointing, there's only 7 apostles left and London Bridge has fallen down!!! Must be the coach loads of tourists visiting everyday, all them clicks and flashes from the yips cameras have obviously taken their toll!! Great experience though, glad we did it.

As for the Elephant & Wheelbarrow pub in the city, need we say more? Great night!!

We drove out to Victoria country and visited Sovereign Hill at Ballarat, an old gold mining town that still exists as if its 1850s. We got to watch the gold being purified and made into a bar, worth $80,000, James reckons there's a plot to be made to rob the place! (you can tell he's been reading criminal and military books in his spare time, 8 of them i might add!) Keep your eye on the news for a gold robbery in Ballarat! We even got to pan for gold ourselves and managed to find 5 bits! Thought it was all a game for the kids but when we realised there actually was gold to be found we spent most of the day sieving a load of sand looking to make our fortune! Might have enough for a lollipop! Good day out.

Went to the sports parks and saw the MCG, Olympic Park (1948ish), Rod Laver Arena (World swimming championships were on). Fairly old stadiums but good to see where it all happens.  

Oh nearly forgot, we also went to visit Ramsey Street (Neighbours), had to be done!! Finally found Pin Oak Court aka Ramsey Street and were surprised how tiny it is, don't know how they manage to have their games of cricket in the street! And even more surprising, people actually live there, and no not Harold Bishop or Paul Robinson! There's even a lady who has the thrilling job of patrolling the street making sure no crazy tourists go and knock on the doors! We're not quite that bad! Still, it was good to see the famous street that we've watched for so many years, didn't bump into any stars though unfortunately.

Drove back to Sydney for our last 2 weeks in Lou and our last 3 weeks in Oz! Decided to drive overnight as its a 900kms journey. So left about 3pm after having lunch in the van in shopping centre carpark - imagine sitting in Tescos carpark cooking your lunch, the looks you'd get! Things like that don't bother us anymore obviously! Set off on our journey and stopped to get some pictures of the most awesome sunset we'd ever seen. The sky was a deep red and with a few thin clouds about it looked fantastic. Back on the road following the road trains to keep our path clear of hopping roos! Stopped for dinner at a real old truckers cafe about 10pm, burger for Loz and a whopping mixed grill for Jim with creamy coffees for both, no wonder they're all so fat! Carried on til our eyes were like yips and pulled into a service station around 1am before we nodded off! Good thing about having Lou, we climbed in the back pulled the curtains and had a couple of hours kip!! Pikeys!! Woke up as daylight was beckoning, looked out the window and realised we were in amongst a load of road trains and petrol tankers, good job we don't smoke! We nipped into good old McDs for a coffee and a hashbrown before setting off again. Finally arrived in Sydney as all the normal people were getting up!  

Easter came and went without us taking much notice, only realised it was that time of year cos the caravan park filled up with kids! Although we did make the most of the oven in the camp kitchen (a rarity) and cooked ourselves a roast dinner, nothing like home but it was still a treat! Since being here we've been up the OzTower, an observation tower giving views of the city, we spent the day on Bondi Beach - nice beach but a bit overrated, the promenade looked like Blackpool or Brighton! We walked across the Harbour Bridge, went on a ferry across from Manly to the city, had fish and chips on Circular Quay, made faces through the window of Channel 7 (like they do on This Morning), had a few pints in an Irish pub in the city and been on the underground so we've done pretty well! But the piece de resistance has to be where we're off to later...........wait for it..........................................................................................

The Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra playing Mozart, Vivaldi & Edward Elgar (pomp & circumstance man) at the world famous Sydney Opera House !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now are you impressed!!!

Well we just hope we recognise some of the tunes or else we're gonna be pretty bored for 2 1/2 hours!! Thought we'd go out with a bang! We'll probably end up heading off for a kebab half way through, we'll see!

So since finally handing Lou back last Tuesday we've been living in an apartment in Manly Beach (30mins by ferry from Sydney city) and its been absolute luxury! We finally got to unpack after nearly 4 months on the road and James is well happy cos he gets to dash to the loo in the middle of the night without having to get dressed and trek across a caravan park to the amenities block!! We're a five minute walk to Manly Beach and the same to Manly Wharf where the ferries go to Sydney, this is the place where everyone meets up in the afternoons and spends the whole night drinking in the nice bars overlooking the harbour. We've spent a couple of evenings there too, just to be sociable of course! Manly is a really nice holiday town, there's a lot of backpackers here, which the locals feel have changed Manly over the last couple of years but there's also lots of nice restaurants (too expensive for us but they look nice!), 2 great beaches and you're only half hour from the city so its a great place to stay.

We fly out to Christchurch, NZ on Tuesday morning and pick up our next van from the airport.

Competition Time: Whoever can come up with the best name for our new zealand campervan will get a surprise gift from New Zealand when we get home!!! 

 We're looking forward to getting to NZ, feels like we've pretty much done Oz now and it'll be good to see some different sites, different people and learn a different way of life again. We've loved Oz, particularly the West Coast and down the middle, people always ask us what our favourite place has been, it's hard to pick one cos everywhere is so different but our favourites are: Uluru & Kings canyon, Pinnacles, Turquoise & Coral Bay, Surfers Paradise (of course, for Jim), Sydney Harbour, Kalbarri & Karijini National Parks, and anywhere that sells Strongbow!! 

But we've decided we wouldn't want to settle here, it's a great place to visit and there's so much to see but it's not for us. So don't worry all, we'll be coming home sometime, but you certainly get the bug and we might just go round again!

Jim's been on the sports website and once again gutted, Spurs still seem to bottle the big games. Looks like it could be a good finale chasing for European places and top spot so please keep me updated as time differences make it hard to keep updated. It's either spending all night in the bars waiting til 3 or 4 in the morning and for most of you reading this you'll know that after that long in the pub i'd be singing the house down and would have totally forgotten why i was there, so i can't seem to win! And as for Lauren, she would have thrown up as much as she did in India!

That's all for now folks, our next update will be from chilly NZ! Hope you're all happy and well, take care.

Loz and Jim xxxxxxxxx