Greetings and salutations from the Southern hemisphere!

I figured it was time to update this blog as things have been slow on the old blogging front!

I guess I'll start with Sound Relief, a couple of weeks ago. As no doubt you have been aware, a vast proportion of Victoria was burnt by bushfires in February(cheers for the phone calls and text messages of worry and support by the way - I received approximately none). As a result, a load of musicians got together and filled the MCG (capacity of 100,000) for a day of fundraising music. What transpired was a rather long day that, while had its highlights, had too many "who are they?" moments for us.

A personal highlight for me was the surprise and unbilled reformation of Crowded House. Leah didn't like them in the first place. Kings of Leon played but only four songs, and not even "Sex is on Fire", although considering the subject of the fundraiser, I'm prepared to forgive them.

After sitting through a hip-hop band so bad that the organisers "accidentally" lost all electrical stage power, and a country and western snooze, we endured one of the worst ever minutes silence I've ever seen but then Kylie trotted out and sang some Australian ditty that none of us had heard of.

And that summed up the rest of the night. The last three headlne bands were Hunters and Collectors, Split Enz and Midnight Oil. Nope, me neither. They seem to have been HUGE in the day because everybody (except us) knew the words. Now, John Farnham (of "I'm The Voice" fame) is having a huge comeback tour off the back of his Sydney Sound Relief performance with coldplay. So much so, that the Dairy Milk advert with the gorilla has been redubbed with that song instead of Phil Collins.

Last weekend was time to pay $100 to watch blurs fly by with loads of noise and not have a clue what's going on! That's right, it was the Australian grand prix, just a twenty minute walk from our flat! Handy!

Now, on television, I find it boring watching cars going around and around for two hours. On the track, I get a wee rush watching the speed of the cars go by but I haven't got a scooby which car is who and which car is winning. In fact, at the end of the race, we actually went to a big screen and watched it there. Defeated the purpose, you might think, but it was the only way to find out who won.

Immediately after the race, we got to go on to the track and make "vroom" noises. The Who also played a concert that we saw about half of, but seeing as it was a school night, we had to go home.

Talking of work, I've been offered to be sponsored until December 2009 and Leah looks certain to be offered a job in my school. So good news on that front!

This weekend, we went to V festival at Melbourne Showgrounds. We saw Duffy (duff), Madness (mad), Snow patrol (better than you'd think), Elbow (stunk out the joint - see what I did there?), Kaiser Chiefs (good but arrogant), Killers (OK), Razorlight (not inspiring) and the mighty Vanilla Ice. Leah really didn't want to go to see the Icemeister but it was a funny half-hour set where he unashamedly referenced Ice Ice Baby in every song (and of course sang it too).

We left the showgrounds and got on the express train to Southern Cross Station. Upon arriving, we left our seats and I nearly walked in to a small-ish man with glasses walking off the train from the opposite aisle. Well, if it wasn't Alan Fletcher aka Karl Kennedy! He informed a few of us that the sound at the festival was really good and that Snow Patrol were special.

Today I ran my 14.1K race and I ran a pretty poor time, dragging my sorry ass in after approximately 72 minutes. Leah managed to star spot another neighbours actor at the finishing line - Dan Fitzgerald himself. That's twice she's seen him - I'm on high alert! I think i beat him but Joel from Neighbours of old, was way faster than me.

We've posted pictures of the Grand Prix and V Festival tonight so feel free to peruse them at your own leisure. Oh, and post some messages, wouldya?

Anyway, flying (yikes) to Alice Springs tomorrow and off to Uluru (Ayers rock) on Tuesday.

We'll let you know how that goes!

Later,

Stephen