G'Day all!

So we've finally made it to Melbourne, our last stop in Australia. We'll all be pretty gutted to leave the East Coast, especially since the weather in New Zealand is much colder & wetter than here but the scenery over there is supposed to be well worth the sacrifice.

We've just come on an overnight bus from Sydney where we spent the best part of a week and could happily have spent a couple more there enjoying the views across the bay to the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. It was weird having two of the worlds most famous sights just 10 minutes walk from our hostel so we made the most of the opportunity and spent quite a large portion of every day sat in the Botanical Gardens down by the water.

We also got chance to see a play at the Opera House which was a bit of a bonus since we were expecting it to be far more expensive than it turned out to be. The play was a bit deep for my liking but at least i can say i saw something there. I (Steve) became a bit obsessed with the place and went again the next night to see the Sydney Symphony Orchestra which i thought was far better and so did the rest of the audience judging by their 10 minute standing ovation at the end!

We had an afternoon out at the Syney Aquarium on Friday which was really impressive with it's underwater glass tunnels and collection of massive sharks & rays. It was strange seeing all the colourful reef fish in tanks though after we'd swam with most of them on the Great Barrier Reef a few weeks earlier!

So now we have the rest of today and half of tomorrow to run around Melbourne taking in as many of the sights as we can before we fly off to Christchurch tomorrow evening...well that's the plan anyway; these things have a habit of changing at the last minute!

Hope everyone's still out there reading our fortnightly blog. I'm gonna try to get onto it a bit more regularly in New Zealand if the internet's a bit more helpful! I'm also going to try to get some pics on when we get there (i think i might get a clip round the ear off Mum if i don't get onto it soon!) i have just tried to upload some but the computers here are being difficult as ever.

Hope you're all enjoying the warm weather back home while it's getting colder and colder over here! Take care all and keep the messages coming

us lot x x x