Well if we thought the Kiwi's loved telling us how much better off they are without us, the Aussies have made an art out of it. The minute we arrived in Melbourne from Christchurch we were faced with all sorts of 'Pom-bashing', from the "Tonk-a-Pom" cricket campaign, to presenters on morning TV saying how the English look down their noses at the Aussies, to the "Whinging Poms" beer commercial and to your average Aussie in the pub telling English tourists how great their country is and how bad England is. Come on convicts, get over it!

Anyway, so we arrived in Melbourne amidst one of the biggest bush fires in history (which covered 25% of the state of Victoria) and headed straight to St Kilda, a beach suburb with cool shops and restaurants. Staying at Base Backpackers our worst fears were soon realised. Not only is about 10% of England in Australia right now, but it's the 10% from the 18 to 21 year old age group looking to get laid and drunk. This became more apparent a few weeks later whilst swimming on our Fraser Island trip a young lad asked Rich if he wanted to go "splash some girls with him". "No, you're alright thanks mate!" We're told old for this!

Melbourne has a really relaxed feel to it considering it's a city of about 3.5 million people, and like most Australian cities is on the coast, so has easy access to great beaches. It's also the sports capital of Australia, with a Formula 1 Grand Prix, the Melbourne Open tennis, and has a huge cricket ground. Surely though Melbourne is known for being home to one of Australia's biggest exports, Neighbours. Every Monday night in St Kilda there is Neighbour's night at the Elephant & Wheelbarrow pub, where three Neighbour's legends turn up to meet the fans (and in Toady's case sleep with the fans!). On our night we had Toadfish, Lynn Scully and the legendary Harold Bishop.

After a quick question and answer session, the 'stars' go round the pub for photos with the fans, the highlights being when Toady asked Allison how long we'd been dating (cheeky galah) and Rich telling Harold he'd been a fan since Prisoner Cell Block H. You can see Harold's famous chin-wobble on our pictures as he replied, "You're far too young". What a night!

After three days in St Kilda we moved to the city for two nights, before hiring a car to drive the Great Ocean Road.