Merry Christmas everyone! We're now in Geelong staying with Jo's second cousin and his family. It's not actually that warm... but warm enough for shorts!

We met up with Marko (Aussie hero we met in Buenos Aires) and Suzie's grandma in Brighton before starting the long journey back to Melbourne. We split this into 2 chunks, driving back to Halls Gap in the Grampians for a brief night's sleep. In the morning we completed the drive and jumped on a train to Bairnsdale to meet daughter number 3 of the Brigg family.

We stayed with Cath and Stephen in a village called Nungurner in Gippsland. The bush fires have made the situation pretty tense but we were never in any immediate danger. However, it was very smokey and we saw some photos of how bad it has been (think of the end of the world) so it's scary stuff. We visited Lakes Entrance and Bairnsdale and their son Joel took us out to experience Friday night out in a country town - Pokies followed by pool back at his awesome house. It was another relaxing couple of days and once again we were looked after very well indeed.

Yesterday we got the train back to Melbourne and then onto Geelong. Pete and Mel's house is lovely - designed it themselves and very minimalistic. We're looking forward to an Aussie christmas.

Hope you all have a great day. Lots of love

jo & mike xxx