Hey!

We made a 12 hour train journey south of Sydney to Melbourne. And went from staying in a lovely apartment to a hostel. We spent the first couple of days wandering around Melbourne, finding out where everything was and just getting our bearings. We stopped off in federation square where they where showing the Sydney cricket test match between Australia and Pakistan on a giant screen. A café had supplied deck chairs and an umbrella, so we just sat back, relaxed watching the cricket all afternoon. The next few days we occupied ourselves by sunbathing on port Melbourne beach, and spending a good part of the evening in McDonalds using the free wifi.

We managed to find ourselves an apartment in the suburb of St Kilda, just south of Melbourne CBD, which is known as one of the top 10 “hippest” places to stay in the world apparently. It’s a beach town with plenty of café’s, restaurants, bars and had plenty of things to do here. But the thing we most enjoyed doing the most was sunbathing on St Kilda beach, the weather was perfect and we could just laze around all day. As we had wifi in our apartment, there was no need to spend our evenings in McDonalds, so we had plenty of time to take walk’s around St Kilda and the harbour area.

One evening we went to see a 20/20 cricket match at the MCG, Victoria were playing Tasmania in a must win game and it certainly was a great night. Just over 40,000 turned up for the game and it was a really entertaining match with plenty of wickets and 6’s, Victoria ended up winning and reaching the semi finals of the Big Bash Tournament.

Hit for Haiti! Due to the earthquake in Haiti, Roger Federer organised a charity doubles match the day before the Australian open began. Tickets were going on sale that morning at Federation Square 9am, we got there at 9am and the queue was already a couple of hours long So we began queuing but luckily for us and everyone else who was behind us, due to such popular demand, they opened up the ticket office at Rod Laver arena in Melbourne Park. The only problem was it about a 20 minute walk there, although when racing for tickets a 20 minute walk turned out to be a 10 minute very quick walk in flip flops. We got to Rod Laver and there was hardly a queue, but as it was general admission, people started queuing outside the arena at 10am for a 2pm start. We thought better of that and headed back to our apartment for some breakfast and a sit down. We returned a few hours later and by this time, the queue had grown quite a bit. So we just nestled ourselves in the side of one queue and ended up having amazing seats. The players were split into two teams, team red, which consisted of Rafael Nadal, Novak Jokovic, Kim Clijsters, and Hot Andy Rodd*** (as Rhi likes to call him) and team blue who were, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Leyton Hewitt and Sam Stosur. It was such a good day, all the players were mic’d up and were talking and making fun out of each other throughout the game. And it only cost us $10 each.

The next day was the beginning of the Australian open and we had tickets to see Safina, Hot Andy Roddick, Del Portro and Henin, Rhi and I, had another great day at the tennis, supporting Hot Andy Rodd*** and we just wish we could have gone again to see more games at the open.

We then decided to spend a little time away from Melbourne, so travelled along the Great Ocean road for the next 7 days. We split our time between the towns of Port Campbell and Apollo Bay, spending a few nights in each. During our stay we spent most of our time enjoying the beautiful beaches, visiting the twelve apostles, loch ard gorge and admiring the beautiful sunset along the wonderful coastline. But also we were also glued to the tv, in particular the Australian open, many hours were spent watching the tennis that week. We celebrated Australia day in true Australian style, well sort of, we spent the day at the beach, Watched Home and Away and tried drinking Bundaberg rum but we could only manage a few sips as it was pretty disgusting.

Our time on the great ocean road came to an end and we made our way back our apartment in St Kilda, Melbourne. After our trip, we were glad to be back in our apartment. We spent the next few days on the beach and our evenings watching the latter stages of the Australian open, supporting Andy Murray after hot Andy Rodd*** was knocked out.

In the following days we tried to see as much of Melbourne as possible. There is a special tram route mainly for tourists called the City Circle tram which does a loop of the main city centre, stopping at all the sites of interest along way. Its also free so we took full advantage of this! We used it to make a full journey around the centre, stopping at the docklands area for a look around. One of the main tourist attractions in Melbourne is the Eureka sky deck, it has full 360 degree views of Melbourne on the 88th floor and the lift only takes 30 seconds to get there! It was a really great way of seeing the whole of Melbourne.

One of the must-do things for Brits in Melbourne is the Neighbours tour and trivia night. Being avid neighbours fans ourselves we made sure we didn’t miss out! At the neighbours trivia night, we got to meet a past and present neighbours ‘stars’, we had our photos taken with Ned Parker who Rhi quite fancies, Steve Parker and Dr Karl who Rhi fancies but wont admit to it. We had a real good time, and our quiz team “home and away” came second thanks to us.

We really enjoyed our time in Melbourne and the suburb of St Kilda, dividing our time between the lovely beaches and the city centre. We’re now off to meet up with Rhiannon’s family, where we’ll be travelling up and down the east coast.