Hey everyone!! We booked a flight back at Xmas from Agnes Water to take us from Sydney to Melbourne instead of taking a 10 hour Greyhound journey.....proved a very good choice!! We arrived in Avalon Airport around 7pm and caught the 1hour shuttle service into the city centre. We had a short walk to our hostel Melbourne Connection (no thrills in this place) which was a little old but comfortable!! Picked up a Subway and had a sleep.

We had a really chilled out 2 weeks in Melbourne, we did leave to go to Great Ocean Road & the Grampians (separate page) only for 4days. In our first week we were really central to the city and it gave us a good chance to walk all the gardens and visit the WW1 & 2 memorials aswell as seeing the Melbourne Cricket Ground which I think is the biggest and best cricket ground in the world. Melbourne is also famed for it's Tennis so we visited the complex which was very nice. Art is massive in Melbourne and there's hundreds of galleries to visit and lot's of markets selling locally made art which is also very nice. We also met up with Ria's parents friends for the day Dom, Tom & Jazzy on Valentines Day and they took us for a lovely meal at Naturaj just outside of the city centre which we really enjoyed. A week in the city was nice but probably a little too much.

After getting back from Great Ocean Road we headed for St Kilda 10mins on the Tram from the City. We had a really nice setup in the Hostel (St Kilda Beach House) we had our own room. The beach was just 5 minute walk and the shops and cafes and bars even shorter. Ria's friend Rachel had arrived from the UK and we met her for a few days and she treated us to a Starbucks she seemed a little bit homesick but still as funny as ever. We spent the week topping up our tans on the beach and just relaxing. We did treat ourselves by eating out a few nights and having a few drinks but it was really nice just to relax and St Kilda was a lovely place to do this!!

Relaxing was over as soon as we went to stay with Graham in Mentone (20mins from Melbourne)!! Graham is a friend of a friend from Wales and after contacting him he invited us to stay with him for 4days. He's absoultely the greatest host so funny and nice. We spent the 4days drinking continously watching TV on his huge plasma and he knows hows to cook a great stir-fry!! It was also nice to see how Australians really live and how Grahams kids Anwyn 17 and Arwel 11 have so many options with Sports and Learning the opportunities are great.

The last we saw of Graham was the night before we left...we got so drunk we left him sleeping in his chair snoring and holding a bowl of nuts hehe.......anyway we caught the Taxi to the airport which happened to be a great let down. The airport was crap!! Anyway our flight left at 6pm and our new adventure was to start in New Zealand!!

Farewell Australia.....Hello New Zealandxxx