One thing's for certain, I certainly don't feel like a backpacker at the moment. It's so nice to stay in a real home, have home cooked food and good company. I'm feeling really spoilt and it's great. Well I'm still in Melbourne and still staying with Chris & Bruce and they have been a couple of stars. On Tuesday Chris drove me into the city and we spent the whole day orientering the place for my benefit which included jumping on this great old tram for a free ride. Melbourne city is actually really lovely, the Yarra river runs right through it and as well as the tall buildings you can see above it has these fantastic little arcardes and walkways which are really quaint and these wonderful old trams, plus I love Federation Square with it's quirky architecture. I visited the information centre and picked up loads of info on where to go and what to do and it looks like I'm going to be a busy girl even though I could not get tickets for the tennis - gutted, as I should have arranged this sooner but did not, as I expected a kind of Wimbledon arrangement where you could go at the end of the day to get those cheap ticket returns for the end of day play but they don't do that here (needs sorting Melbourne). Wednesday was the races at Moonee Valley - see I said I did not feel like a backpacker (they don't go horse racing!!). It was a night-time fixutre and we got there late afternoon and was in the Members enclosure for a nice dinner and lots of drinks (very posh). I was very well behaved and did not loose tons of dollars for once, in fact I actually won 3 times and came out about evens. It was a good night and Chris's and Bruce's friends are a good bunch. Yesterday was Australia Day, so Bruce did not have to work and we all set off early in his big Landrover to hit the high ground and escape the 41 degree heat the city was expecting. Driving through the Yarra Valley (via Croydon, mum...) we reached the forests of the Yarra Range/Mystic Mountains and Marysville (they ski here in the winter). It was really lovely up there - tall pine trees, great ferns, wild porcupines, little creeks and rivers, great waterfalls and millions of flies. I was also on the look out for a Gunni but no luck here (do they exist or not??). Also Bruce is trekking down all these old forest huts so we 4-wheeled drove through mud tracks to find this one that kept escaping them (they've searched for it 3 times before) and we got there and Bruce had a big smile on his face which was good to see. Today Chris is taking me to Philip Island and I'm so so excited as I'm finally going to see my fav animal ever, Penguins and I've never seen these live before in the wild - can't wait and feel just like a big kid. Tomorrow I'm going to spend the day in the city - Rick Stein is in town so I'm going to see him in the morning doing a demo then it's off to Federation Square as there's a great Stanley Kubrick exhibition on which I'd like to see and I might just loose myself in those arcardes and maybe a bar or two.