Hi all!

Melbourne is just a flying visit for me and am only staying for 2 nights.

When I was in Cairns a few days ago, I found out that Kylie Minougue was playing in Melbourne (her home town), so I tried to get a ticket and very successful I was too. I managed to get a ticket quite close to the stage and was looking forward to an evening dancing in the isle and singing away with all the thousands of other people there.

When I arrived at the Rod Laver Arena, the place was packed with loads of people and quite a few were gay men with pink feather boas - they looked great and the evening had a good feel to it.

Kylie came on stage at 8pm with so many old and new hits from Especially for you, I should be so lucky to spinning around. We weren'y officially allowed to take photos, but so many people did, so I took a few sneaky ones too (check them out). One star guest appeared on stage...her sister Danni Minugue - the crowd gave her a massive cheer! The costumes were great and loved the dresses (I wanted one!). She was on stage for a couple of hours and money well spent and where else to see her, but in Melbourne on her last day in Australia before going to the UK tour dates. Matt and Dave, you'll have a ball when you go and see her on the 6th January 2007.

The next day I's booked myslef on a winery tour, visiting 4 different vineyards in the Yarra Valley of Melbourne. The first we visitied was St Huberts where we were taught how to drink wine (I know how to do that, I've had enough practice), but this was a little different. We started to sample the wines at 11am as the pallet is the most sensitive and you benefit from all the flavours in the wine...see I am learning all about vino! (God, this is going to be a very hard day and I'm going to be pi$$ed by 2pm - is that a bad thing?!) :-)

They showed us how to smell and try and guess what other blends you can pick from the glass of wine (pears, pencil shavings, passion fruit etc.). We then were shown how to suck the wine from the glass and swosh around in your mouth like mouthwash and you had a choice to spit or swallow, I much prefer to swallow to appreciate the wine (hey I know you guys what you're thinking!). I couldn't get used to this technique, because it made me choke and the woman telling us how to do it said that it could also come out of your nose if you did it wrong....very attractive I thought!!

After 15 small glasses of wine and taking in the views from the Yarra Valley and rolling hills of vineyards in the distance, we made our way to the second vineyard - Rochford Wines, Yarra Valley, set in 188 acres of vineyard. This is where we also stopped for a scrummy lunch in their fine dining restaurant with a complimentery glass of bubbly - lovely! As ever the views were amazing from the tower led by the spiral staircase from the restaurant. We were shown where the wine was made and the process of the wine making together with aging champagne...the home of Chandon (Moet & Chandon). "The bubbles in champagne is like stars in the night sky"

Vineyard number three was Yerring Station, a few more delicious wines were sampled (I'd probably had about 20 glasses of wines by 2pm as was feeling rather tipsy...well I was feeling like that after about 5 tasters!).  The name of the 4th vineyard...Mmm I can't remember the name of it...too much wine, but it was good too! :-)

I'm off to Sydney again tomorrow to spend my Christmas with my relatives in the traditional Australian way - bikini in the sun, seafood of the barbi!   HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! :-)

I'm missing you all heaps and sending you warm wishes for Christmas.

Love

Txx