9th February

We made it to central Melbourne by late morning and caught a tram into the city when we realised we would never find a parking slot for a three and a half metre high vehicle in the centre of a city and had to drive out to a suburb. As we have found everywhere the locals were very helpful in pointing us in the right direction. Central Melbourne is based on a grid system and is really well served by trams and buses. The children loved these and we spent the afternoon perusing the streets, watching the street entertainers and joining in the Chinese New year celebrations including making Chinese hats and playing with the animals. The culture of achievement and celebration is everywhere and is supported with the sporting stadia from Olympic and Commonwealth games and of course the world famous Melbourne Cricket Ground. We had booked into a caravan park in one of the suburbs and it turned out to be really quite lovely. As with many of the sites we have stayed at there are a good deal of permanent residents in the site and a few sites for tourists like us. It makes people watching quite interesting as it makes you wonder why people have ended up living in a caravan park and what they do for a living etc.

10th Feb
Today we all slept in until 8.00 which was lovely and set off late morning for a suburb called St Kilda which is right on the bay and meant to be very chic and trendy so obviously we would fit in straight away. They were having their festival today which involved loads of street stalls, entertainment, bands and sports competitions. The weather was fabulous and everyone seemed to be having a ball. Apparently the festival draws crowds from a long way. By the time it got to mid afternoon there were certainly tens of thousands and it got a bit much for the children as they end up just looking at people's backsides as you walk around! That evening we chilled at the site, and the children watched a DVD in the van which we can only do when the van is plugged into the mains. A hot day but lots of fun.

11th Feb
Today it's back to school - literally! I had made an arrangement to visit a school in Melbourne Called Nazareth College which is where the new Chaplain at my school in England has come from. Jude started at SJB (St John the Baptist school where i work) in January so our paths never crossed in England before we left on Christmas Eve but I had met her when she flew over for an interview. Jude is a lovely lady and insisted I get in contact with her school in Melbourne so we could visit when we passed through. So here we were - and by a complete coincidence it was just ten minutes from our campground - spooky eh? The children's reaction to going to the school was interesting - Rosie really wasn't sure at first but I think that was more the 'newness' of the experience rather than the fact that it was a school. Connie was very excited and Isla and Meg thought the whole thing hilarious - as usual. We arrived at the school and were greeted by Anne who is the Principal and absolutely delightful. We then had a tour round with two of the older students and they were just brilliant - lovely children and interested in what we were doing and the girls. It was uncanny at how closely Nazareth matched with SJB in it's ethos, curriculum and the way the catholicity of the school came through. It became obvious over lunch with Anne afterwards that she shared a similar philosophy of education as Ani, my own headteacher, so we were very much on the same wavelength. The Catholic education system in Australia (or at least Victoria) is one of three main systems - completely private, Catholic (with some fees) and the state system. We left Nazareth College with a very positive view of the Catholic system in Victoria and also an invitation to dinner at Anne's house the following evening! I have to say how well Rosie, Connie, Isla and Meg behaved. They never let us down in those situations and were brilliant - thank you guys!

We finished the day with a couple of hours on the beach at Brighton (another suburb by the bay). I throughly enjoyed watching all the kite surfers and vowed to get my kites out again when I get home.

In the evening we got the Skype working on the laptop and becuase we had a wireless connection we were able to chat with Kieran (Michele's brother) and see him - quite spooky really when you are on the other side of the world (the concept was spooky , not Kieran).

12th Feb
Back into the city today and the Melbourne museum. This had been recommended to us by a couple of people and met all expectations. The children loved it and particularly the life sciences section where they found out about how the human body works. There were some full size models of humans at various ages with no clothes on which particularly interested the children as they could tell us which members of our family looked like each model and we just about got away with the video on conception, pregnancy and birth without too many awkward questions! The other section they always love in museums is the animals and we were able to see all the Australian animals we had read about and seen in books but not yet seen in the wild like wombats and emus. It was quite a wake up call as in the mammals section there were a few which had transparent plastic boxes over them to stop them being pinched as these are the ones which are now extinct. Without exception they are extinct due to human intervention as well. I wondered how many plastic boxes would be there in ten or twenty years time!

In the evening we headed out to a suburb near the bush where Anne and her husband Matt lived in 20 acres of bushland. We were made to feel so welcome and the children helped collect eggs and played with Paddy the dog which is their ideal way to spend a couple of hours. Matt described how vulnerable they are to fires in bush area and told us about a vicious fire in their area 20 years ago where 22 locals and firecrew died and many more lost homes. After a delicious meal we headed back to the campground in a contented mood realising how lucky we were to be having this whole experience, meeting some lovely people on the way and realising how blessed we were to be able to do this with our children.

13th Feb
We got up a little later as it was such a late night last night and did a day in the city again doing some shopping and seeing a few places we hadn't managed earlier in the week. A highlight was the public library and an exhibition about Ned kelly who was a notorious outlaw in Victoria and was hanged in the melbourne Gaol in 1880 after a shoot out with police dressed in some home made body armour. The armour was effective except he didn't make any for his legs and the police shot them to bits instead until he fell over and couldn't get up! We saw letters he had written proclaiming his innocence for his misdemeanours and the actual suit of armour he used. The children love a rascal and throughly enjoyed it.

it was also an important day in Australian history today as you may well have seen in the news. Kevin Rudd, the new PM, made a long speech saying sorry for the treatment of the aboriginal people of the nation for the the first 70 years of the 20th century. It was long overdue as the previous administration had never quite managed to actually say sorry and had been admonished regularly for that reason. It went down very well with the people of Australia (from what we could see anyway) and was quite a momentous occasion to witness. The suffering was quite incredible in some areas particularly for what they call the Lost Generations. These are children who were forcibly taken from their parents because it was thought they were not being well cared for and it was felt they would be better off with welfare organisations or the church. The grief and misery over these happenings has been ongoing ever since. The apologies today will hopefully be the first steps on the road to a new future and some closure for those people who suffered.