Melbourne, Victoria - 3rd December 2008
Car Kilometres: 186,215
Distance Travelled: 306km
Total Distance Travelled: 17,964km

Feeling a little frazzled again, but this time fully anticipating it, we beat a hasty path (via McDonalds for a trusty breakfast), to the same campsite we stayed at before on our whistle-stop visit to Melbourne. We pitch up and rest up, only leaving the comfort of the tent to visit the facilities and swap some books in the tv room, although we manage to reply to a few emails and get our washing done, so the day isn't a lost cause.
The following day, fully recovered and ready to venture out into the big bad city, we catch a bus into town. An hour later, we hop off and dive in...
Population 3.7million, Melbourne is one of the biggest, busiest, most bustling places we've been in Australia for a while, and is definitely a sharp change from laid back Tassie (our Japanese experience seems like an age away already). Once we've got a handle on the more frenetic rhythm of the city, we step on in and start to enjoy the pace.
Dodging well dressed office types, students who looked like they'd just stepped off the catwalk and ding-dinging trams as best we could, we walked down to Flinders Street, and on to Federation Square, where we are lucky to catch a few games of the Homeless World Cup. We see Australia get beaten by a Middle-Eastern team, and watch the highly spirited Irish team celebrating a previous win... I'm fairly sure that if Dave was writing this bit, you'd get a more detailed commentary, but since Melbourne is the home of Ramsay Street, this particular blog has been firmly sent my way.
The architecture is old and grand next to sleek and super modern; retro next to gothic - it's a mish-mash that works wonderfully, and the look and feel of Melbourne's CBD is incredibly cohesive and comfortable, especially given the diversity of styles that have been splashed together. Oh, and the graffiti and street art are second to none - some of the graffiti even has an official City permit - and can be witnessed by glancing up any of the winding laneways that criss-cross the central area.
We wander, open mouthed, up and down the streets and laneways; pausing only to wait for a tram to pass, to gawk at the sights or to guzzle a coffee. I suspect we sound a bit daft and easily overwhelmed, especially considering that we were only in Tokyo a few weeks ago, but the whole feel of the City is just lovely, and we feel like we want to drink in as much of it as we can.
Some of my excitement, however, is down to tomorrow's planned events... a visit to Pin Oak Court, or Ramsay Street as it is better known, is booked in and paid for...
... I'm up at the crack of dawn voluntarily, and like a child on Christmas Day dragging at my parent's dressing gown to show them what Santa has brought, I drag poor Dave awake too. We have an hour's bus back into town, and then a half an hour walk to where the official tour begins. We could have visited the street ourselves for free, but this wasn't something I wanted to scrimp on, and we didn't want to just rock up and stomp around taking photos without permission. Plus, the tour promised extras and a meeting with a 'celebrity' from the show.
It started well: there was a group of about 20 of us, all keen Pommie female fans, with a few reluctant husbands and boyfriends being dragged along for the ride. Dave was subdued but safe in the knowledge that him accompanying me on this meant that not only would I pretty much be obliged to attend to his every whim for the next few days, but would guarantee him a partner in crime for the inevitable Lord of the Rings tours later on in New Zealand. I gave him the job of official photographer to help him pass the time.
The guide was very dry and very, very funny. She'd obviously done the tour a gadzillion times before, but appeared to be a real Neighbours geek, and have a genuine love for her job; giving every indication that she was fully aware about how cheesy the whole thing was, it had the effect of taking the pressure off feeling self-conscious and geeky, leaving us girls free to indulge in our daft adoration of a 20 odd-year old Australian soap opera.
We were heartily encouraged to reminisce about the early years, and mom even texted me to remind me that I'd first watched it as a nipper, whilst a baby Keren was having her afternoon feed next to me. Our first stop was a drive-by of the old Erinsborough High, actually a school for foreign students, most of whom don't speak English and can't fathom why busloads of tourists come by every day to snap pictures of the frontage. They use somewhere else now though, but since most people were fresh off the plane from England where Neighbours is six months behind, there was no need to take us to the new school, since no one would have recognised it.
We then drove past the Global Television studio block - just one frontage has been variously used as the police station, the vet's practice and the much visited hospital (although again, they use a different one now), just by clever use of signage, appropriate cars, and uniformed actors. It comes across as a real shoestring operation, done with the minimum of expenditure with the maximum of effect. We also pass a bit on the same lot (bit of grass surrounded by chain-link fence, grim looking building in the background), that made up the title scene for Prisoner: Cell Block H
A few minutes' later, and we're driving in through the studio gates - these have also doubled several times as the prison gates when various characters have been released from detention on the show. We then stopped outside Carpenter's Mechanics, and Dave's interest was briefly caught by the stock of cars from the program that were parked out front- all have been extensively recycled and handed down in ownership through various characters over time. As poor Dave went back to re-examining his fingernails, we investigated the bus stop where various scenes have been filmed over the years, pushed our noses up against the glass at Grease Monkeys (who goes there these days?!), and cruised by the warehouse where the disastrous 'illegal rave' took place last year.
Then the tour got even better (in my opinion), when we reached Ramsay Street itself. Even Dave perked up at the sight of something he's seen on tv being there to see in real life. Pin Oak Court seems tiny, and actually looks a bit scuzzier and more like a normal Aussie street in the flesh than it does on television - a lot of the grass on the verges is dead, and some of the houses at the entrance to the cul-de-sac are looking a little worse for wear. It's incredibly familiar though, and with a beefy security guard in attendance to make sure we don't intrude on the residents while we're there, we're glad we didn't just turn up under our own steam.
We weren't lucky enough to catch the cast filming in the street while we were there, since they were all off at a river and in the studios working on the 'tragic rafting accident' season finale. However, the last item on the itinerary was our meeting with an actor, past or present, from the show...
We drove for another half an hour or so to pretty beachside St Kilda, and stop right next to a theatre near Luna Park (which comes complete with another bordering on sinister laughing face as the entrance, just like in Sydney), where we pile out and prepare to meet our 'star'. Up dawdled "Irish Connor" as he was introduced as - he was a little plumper than we'd last seen him a few years ago when he left the show. He was friendly enough though, and took a particular shine to some of the Irish girls on the bus, one of whom claimed to have gone to school with a friend of a friend of his dog, or similar.
Dave has started to entertain himself by this point, and asks some probing questions about how much young ex-Connor is getting paid for this gig, which are tactfully avoided... I'm so far into the cheese factor by this point that there's no going back, and I even get a photo taken with him. I don't tell him that I would have much preferred Toadie, and that Dave would have been better pleased with a visit from Kylie, since the young man appears to be suffering from a hefty hangover and probably wouldn't have taken the news too well.
The tour is over, and we watch more old clips on the bus DVD player on the ride back to Melbourne CBD. I thought it was ace, and even Dave grudgingly admits that it was fun, although I suspect that he's relieved we didn't do the lengthier weekend tour, and is glad that it's all over at last.
Back in town, we hop on and off the free trams a few times to get ourselves around the city grid, and grab a couple of coffees and two cakes for a total of $8 - possibly an inner-city cheapest coffee in Australia record. As the sun drops, we wander around the riverside and take a few photos, before hot stepping it back to Federation Square to meet up with a distant cousin of mine who's just moved over here.
After a few drinks and swapping a few tales, we're ready to hit the sack, and realise just in time that we're about to miss the last bus of the night. After a dash through the busy city streets, we make it to the bus just in the nick of time, and are back in the tent with a cup of milo before the hour is out. Tomorrow, we tackle the Great Ocean Road...