We arrived on our very last Greyhound bus, and the worst yet. Another 12 hour journey through the night. I think with all the stress of trying to make the bus in time, it made us restless and very sweaty!

We didn't hold out much hope on the accommodation front. Three weeks prior we put an ad on Gumtree website, requesting a bed. We had a response from a girl called Alicia who lives in St Kilda. She was charging us $25 each a night to stop in a mattress in her lounge. Originally she was charging the same for her flat mates bedroom, but a German girl had booked it before us. So we weren't too impressed that she was wanting to charge the same for a mattress in the lounge! So we rang around some hostels just to prepare incase after the viewing we thought.. nah! Anyway we turned up and was pleasantly surprised.. we had her room while she stopped at her boyfriends! Although one night she stopped on the sofa... he had obviously had enough of her! The apartment was great, so we indulged in some home cooking, with limited, budget ingredients. We did annoy the German girl one night.. we ate all her expensive bread.. oops-a-daisy! Bloody inconsiderate German.. haha!

We rode around St Kilda on Alicia's and her flat mates bicycles, weaving in and out of the traffic, near enough getting ran over. We looked like little goons with our helmets on!

We spent the next day catching trams (free of charge!) around the city centre, looking at the city and attempting to find James a cheap camera.. and of course we failed! But we did book a trip to The Great Ocean Road.

A great start to the day.. we slept through the alarm and nearly missed the ocean road trip.. so after a lot of running around we made it to the mini bus. We travelled about 440km in total, stopping off at various little quaint towns and villages (like Lorne and Torquay), beaches, the well known 12 Apostles and the London Bridge. The 12 Apostles is basically now 9 because of erosion, and their huge mounds of rock dotted in the sea. The London bridge is a similar thing but it joined the mainland with the "bridge" which no longer exists now. It collapsed whilst a couple were getting it on.. they had to be rescued by a helicopter.. haha! The views here are breath taking. The sea is simply a bed of frothy milk, with extremely huge and violent waves. The ocean road definitely needs to be done on a motorbike or in a sports car. The coastline and the windy roads are fantastic. I had an uncomfortable journey though, a very tall German girl kept putting her knees against the back of my seat, and she kept trapping my hair!! Bloody inconsiderate German!! We had thunder pants on our bus... this old Chinese bloke (about to pop his cloggs) was shuffling along to see a viewpoint, stopped, and did the loudest and longest fart right in front of us!!! No wonder why his son kept running around with a wheel chair... Tar-rar-e-bum-de-a the old Chinese man pumped today, he blew his son away, Tar-rar-e-bum-de-a!!! On the way back we called for noodles and each got a complimentary bottle of warm coke :)

New Years Eve the temperature hit 40 degrees! It was like a hot hairdryer being blown in your face constantly, you couldn't breathe. I decided to attempt a jog on the hottest day ever! What a bad idea... I had to get to the sea to cool down... I was over heating! That night we went into the city to watch the fireworks over the river. They were set off in tandem on various sky scrapers circling the river... certainly put a smile on my face! A New Years to remember! That night we were with a guy from Sheffield I know.. small world!

Our luck nearly ran out... we thought the plane to Auckland, NZ was at 8pm but it was at 6pm! We then began to run around like idiots at about 4.45pm; just after we invited Kate round for a coffee before we left (a girl we met in Asia). She come all the way over to see us in absolute chaos, so it was a quick hi bye! Thankfully Alicia offered to drive us to the airport, about 20 minutes away and it was Sunday so the roads were clear. We ran through the terminal to the departure desk...The check-in woman said that the plane has been delayed half an hour, and if it wasn't we wouldn't have been able to check in.. someone somewhere is definitely looking down on us!

Melbourne is an amazing city with a great vibe, and we both definitely want to come back here. So much to my reluctancy, we bid farewell to Oz and hello to NZ!