Landing at Melbourne, we quickly picked up our bags hindered by the helpful airport staff putting all the other flight's bags on the conveyor belt before ours. Kirsti's Dad picked us up and dropped us at The Palace for the pub quiz to defend our title of the previous week's champions oh and to spend our $50 winnings! Needless to say we won again by an astounding margin thanks mostly, I like to believe, on my skills at identifying the top selling hits in the UK between 1990 and the present. To my utter shame I managed to name all the ones by previous Pop Idol and X-Factor winners!

Tuesday we spent having a well earned rest, after all that driving and walking I was exhausted. I slept and slept and slept and then caught up on my correspondence (ie messed around on Facebook) and tried to cull the photos from over 800 to a more manageable number, watched some cheesy films and the nightly dose of the Winter Olympics of which we were getting really bored especially of the clips of Torah Bright getting her gold medal for snowboarding. I can't believe it counts as a sport when all the competitors look like they hang out in the park on skateboards drinking cider and grunting!

The rest of the week was spent trying to sort out my new phone. Thanks to a man called Abdul, allegedly the 3 store manager, it felt like an eternity! I'd worked out that it wasn't possible for me to go on a contract due to the fact that I didn't have 12 months left on my visa (apparently unless you sort out your phone on the day that you get here you can't have a contract), had no permanent address and therefore no proof of it and no job so therefore no proof of income. None of this seemed to bother Abdul and when I asked him for a pre-paid phone he decided that I was to have a contract as it's better value. Despite my protestations that it was too complicated and I'd quite like just to have the pre-paid phone please he insisted that he was the manager and would sort it all out...so we went ahead with the application.

Hurdle one: I didn't know my bank details to set up the direct debit so he had me call the bank to find them out.

Hurdle two: No proof of address overcome by pretending he had seen my bank statement and then asking me to email one over as soon as I had one. He asked Kirsti how long she'd been living at her place (my temporary address and about 12 months) and then put down 2 years.

Hurdle three: Lack of a job overcome by marrying me off (perhaps to my brother or dad!?) and putting me down as a housewife.

Hurdle four: when the credit check went through it came back saying that I didn't have a full 12 months on my visa and therefore the request had been denied (like I told him it would) and so he put me on a month by month contract which then meant I had to buy the phone outright.

Hurdle five: I'd chosen a phone that included free skype calls and unlimited facebook access...Abdul knew which one I wanted but when he went to get one for me there weren't any left. By this point my head was about to explode with the ineptitude of this man. So he phoned his friend, the manager of another store in the city and his housemate to put one by for me giving me their phone numbers so I could go and get it. I asked him if it would be alright to go the next morning as we were supposed to be going out for dinner but he said I had to go right then. No matter that it was a 45 minute tram ride back into the city, then we had to find the store and try to get the phone of the guys that work there who had very little idea about what I was talking about.

Having left the house at midday we then got back after 7 flustered, exhausted and annoyed but with a working phone in my hand. Well almost working, there was no sign of the promised skype and facebook but I could send messages and make calls woop woop I was getting there!

On Friday we picked up another shiny car, this time a lovely dark blue Toyota Corolla and took it to the Healesville Sanctuary on the outskirts of Melbourne. It took so long to get there on the highway with the most traffic lights ever that we treated ourselves to gourmet pizza at a winery before we went into the sanctuary. Healesville is part of the trio of Melbourne zoos and is a haven for native species including an animal hospital. In some ways it was better than the traditional zoo, they've built it around the existing habitat and it feels much less manicured. On the other hand there're no elephants or giraffes. We watched a show of the birds of prey which was pretty exciting for a geek like me. We were really on the hunt for Tassie devils as we never got the chance to see them over there. There was one devil awake and running round and round his enclosure like a mad thing! He was very sweet though. We saw all the usual things including roos, wallabies, a sleepy wombat, emus, duck billed platypus, a whole host of cockatoos, galahs and other Aussie birds, snakes, lizards, a little croc, some terrapins up to no good, and my particular favourites; the echidnas which are like big hedgehogs but way cooler! The koalas were even awake and munching on some eucalyptus leaves in a lazy fashion. We rushed back to ice a cake and then headed over to one of Kirsti's brother's friend's house with some Malibu and pineapple juice where I learned all about Aussie Rules Football which is apparently much better than 'soccer' there's no offside rule for a start and the players wear really tiny shorts! They are also much less mashed up than rugby players. It's a big deal in Melbourne but I'm reserving judgement and still supporting David James' thighs for now!

With that it was the end of my time in Melbourne for now and we packed to leave for the 8 hour drive to Canberra...