Our first full day in Melbourne was Thursday. We spent the day finding our way around the city and scoping out what was happening over the next few days whilst we're in the area. On Thursday evening, Alex and Aliesje took us to their favourite local restaurant. This was a great place with really friendly staff and amazing Malaysian food. Alex tried kangaroo for the first time - in a curry - it tasted just like beef! I had a king prawn, scallop and squid curry - yum!

On Friday, we went to the Melbourne Cricket Ground to watch the final one day test match between Oz and the West Indies. I wouldn't exactly call myself a cricket fan (I was asking a lot of questions!), but it was a great day and Oz won! The weather was lush (in the 30s for most of the day) and despite there being a relatively small crowd of spectators of around 15,000, there was a great atmosphere. Security were kept busy trying to confiscate all the blow-up balls that were being batted around the crowd. When they eventually got their hands on one, the whole crowd would boo, before someone else in the crowd would blow up another and the whole charade would start again!

On Saturday afternoon, we (finally) went to see Avatar!! The screen at the IMAX in Melbourne is 7 storeys high and is the 3rd largest in the world, so a great location to see this film. If you're yet to see it, then you must go now!! It is an amazing film and in 3D it is just incredible! Afterwards, we headed into the city where a "sustainable world" festival was being held in the centre. We wandered around this before making our way over to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl by the Yarra River, where they were having the second of four free classical music concerts. The performances were by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and were very impressive! A really relaxing thing to do on an amazing summers evening :-)

Sunday was a fairly uneventful day - we decided to recharge the batteries before leaving Melbourne to start the next leg of the journey. In the evening, we went to the Melbourne Botanic Gardens to watch their "moonlight cinema". This is a big inflatable screen that is set up inside in the park, so we set off with our picnic and wine to watch that evenings performance... New Moon, the second installment of the Twilight saga. The event was sponsored by Schweppes, amongst others, and as a result there were men in tux handing out complimentary G&Ts... Result! The film began as soon as the sun went down... it was pretty surreal watching a film about vampires and werewolves whilst bats were flying overhead!!

We headed back into the city yesterday to sort out a few things before leaving - including our Greyhound coach tickets for the West Coast part of the journey, as we have to hand back Brucey in Perth and do the last month backpacker stylee! The highlight of the day was passing a guy dressed up as what we thought was a penguin, but was in fact...a Nandos chicken handing out free chicken wings! They have Nandos over here, but so far we have resisted, so this was our first taste of Nandos in over 2 months (which most of you will know is a long time for us to go without it!).

Massive thanks to Alex and Aliesje for letting us stay at theirs the last few days (especially given they have been away for the most part of it!) It's been the perfect location for us to explore Melbourne from and it's been great to have a proper bed for a few days!

And now on to the next part of the trip, the Great Ocean Road... it's time to practice our board skills!