On Saturday we had our last full day in Melbourne so decided to spend if around St. Kilda. We went to Luna Park and had a ride on the old-fashioned, wooden rollercoaster. Great fun and good views. We then had cake and coffee on Ackland Street (loads of great cafes there). That night we stayed up late to watch the FA Cup Final, which went to extra time, so was later than planned.

 

Next day we were up early to go into town to pick up our hire car for the Great Ocean Road. We headed out of Melbourne and quickly reached Torquay at the start of the ocean drive. Here we stoped at a cafe on the sea front, before heading down to Lorne. When we hit Lorne, we had to divert about 2 hours inland as the road was closed for a marathon - most frustrating! We missed the prettiest part of the road and ended up in Apollo Bay later than planned. Still, we had enough time to drive further up the coast to the highlight of the Great Ocean Road - the 12 Apostles. These are 12 (although you can't actually see all 12) stacks along the coast. The weather wasn't great, so we didn't quite get the picture postcard shot. We then drove back east to Apollo Bay for the night.

 

On Monday we had another early start to go and see the Otway Peninsula and it's lighthouse. After a bit of a look around there, it was back in the car and a drive back down the now open Great Ocean Road to Melbourne. It was our last night in Melbourne, so we headed out into St. Kilda for some more great food.

 

Next day was a 5am start to catch the tram and bus to the airport for our flight to Hobart, Tasmania. We said goodbye to our room and house for the last two weeks. Once we arrived in Hobart we checked into our run-down hostel, and then took ourselves off to the dockside for some great calamari, fish and chips. After a wander around the nicer bits of town, we had an early night.

 

On Wednesday morning we got up and went to pick up the hire car. Four hours and a few stops in some nice little towns along the way, we arrived in Tasmania's second town, Launceston. On the way we had passed through the main farming area of the state and saw many examples of the logging that is still controversial today. Launceston seemed a bit busier than Hobart and we walked ten minutes out of town to the nearby Gorge. A hour or so's pleasant walk along the gorge and back into town, via the redeveloped dockland area. We had a bit of a struggle finding somewhere to eat as everywhere recommended in our guidebook was no longer to be found! We ended up in a cheap and cheerful Italian place.

 

Next morning we drove west through a few more small towns. Our first stop was at a cheese making place for lots of samples of some cheese-making education. As usual in an Australian semi-educational place (in our experience so far, anyway!), shortly after we arrived, the palce filled up with kids on a school-outing! After beating a hasty retreat we stopped off at a town a bit further west and found the strangest shop in the world. It had ten different rooms filled with more stuff than you can ever imagine, ranging from the incredibly tacky (5 foot tall Betty Boop dolls) to the most exquisite, genuine Venetian ball masks. A very bizzare, slightly bewildering and unexpected place! After this we drove onto Mount Cradle for, what we hoped, would be one of the most spectacular places in Tassie. Sadly, the weather also decided to be very spectacular and after we had spent 20 dollars for park entry, put on a very heavy display of rain. So much so that we abandoned plans for a two hour walk around a nearby lake and headed back to a nearby hotel for a pint, chips and, later, cream teas! Very nice, if not quite we had hoped for. We then drove on to Strahan (somehow, pronounced 'strawn' - almost Norfolk-esque in it's pronounciation) through some very heavy rain and nasty driving conditions.

 

On Friday we had a brief look around the picturesque Strahan and then headed east and into the World Heritage site around Derwent River. Here we did a couple of nice walks, but the weather was pretty overcast.

 

Next day we headed back to Hobart, via another National Park (where we saw some huge trees and a few marsupials, called Pedomelons - like smaller wallabies). In Hobart we went to Salamanca market for some Iranian kebabs and a nosey, before being picked up by Wayne - a friend of a friend who we had met in South America - who had offered to put us up for the night. We went for a drive with Wayne down the beautiful southern coast near Hobart, before he cooked us some seafood (after a few wrong turns to get the ingredients...) and we enjoyed a few bottles of his seven hundred-plus wine collection.

 

Today has seen another flight, to Sydney this time and we're currently waiting for our washing to be done, so we can go and do some house hunting. We hope to spend two weeks here in a similar set-up to what we did in Melbourne.

 

 

 

Staurday evening saw us having an early night and on Sunday we went to the Royal Botanic Gardens for a picnic (very nice - but very busy as it is Mother's Day here in Oz).

 

Monday - chores (washing clothes). Very exciting...

 

Tuesday - Fitzroy Gardens (Captain Cook's cottage - shipped over from Yorkshire and full of small children) and Melbourne Museum (Great Walls of China display and a section on the impact of European settlers on the Aboriginal peoples - including the fact that mixed race Aboriginal kids were removed from their families for their own 'good' up until as late as 1971.

 

Wednesday - the State Library (beautiful building) and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

 

Thursday - Immigration Museum. This was really interesting with lots of info about the different immigration policies in place in Australia over the last 200 years. It showed the impacts on the Aboriginal peoples and how racist many of the policies have been over the years, with White Australia policies and 'The Dictation Test' (where immigrants had to be able to pass a dictation test in the European language of the Immigration officer's chosing - could be any European language, not necessarily that of their home country - and could be repeated in different languages until the applicant failed!) used to discriminate against non-British immigrants. We also saw a poster for the 'ten pound pom' scheme that my mum immigrated to Melbourne under in the late 1950s. In the evening we went to a fantastic Lebanese restaurant called Abla's. We had a great 'banquet' and would definitely recommend it - although make sure you wear your baggiest trousers!! We finished the evening off in a bar on Brunswick Street listening to live music.

 

Friday - Old Melbourne Gaol. Interesting look around the old gaol. Site of Ned Kelly's hanging.

 

On Wednesday, we ended up at the South Melbourne market, having a good snoop round all the stores, looking at the different types of fish for sale, and finding plenty of things we'd like to buy for our (so far, non-existent!) home in all the nearby shops.

 

The next day we took the tram up Chapel Street to the Prahran Market. First we went to a nearby colonial house, but it was closed, so we had to make-do with a look round the gardens instead. Prahran is a bit more up-market and snooty than any of the other suburbs we've been to so far, and we didn't like it so much.

 

Yesterday was my birthday (31 in case you're asking) and we started it with a lie-in and breakfast in bed. We then wandered around St. Kilda for a couple of hours, taking afternoon coffee and cake on one of the piers stretching out into the bay. The weather was perfect, with some great views. Then we went to a nearby restaurant for dinner. We had to wait a while for a table to become available, so had a few drinks to keep us going. The food was great and afterwards we met up with a couple who were staying at the same house as us in a nearby bar. A band was playing (kind of a rockier Red Hot Chilli Peppers) and they weren't too bad. We made it our until 2.30 or so, so not a bad evening's work.

 

Today, we've been a bit fragile, so we went up to Victoria Market (arrived just as it was closing...), saw an Aussie film, 'Noise' - not as good as it could have been, and are now in an internet cafe (oddly enough, what with me writing this and all...).

 

On Saturday we safely touched down in Melbourne and took a taxi into the city centre where our hostel awaited. The hostel was the last of four city centre hostels we tried to book from Auckland and was the only one we could find a room in, so we were not too surprised when it appeared to be pretty grim from the outside. Sadly, it just got worse inside, being really run down, dirty and with the thinnest walls imaginable. You could hear everything that was being said by anyone in the next rooms. We went out for a quick bite to eat and wandered through the CBD and down to the riverside, where there are loads of restaurants, bars and food courts. We then returned to the hostel and tried to get some sleep. This was not helped by people in the next room (who were not even staying at the hostel) going backwards and forwards to the room every half an hour until after 4 in the morning! Not a good nights sleep. Next morning we had the goal of finding somewhere to live for the next two weeks - and getting out of the hostel as quickly as possible! We went off to Fitzroy, a bohemian neighbourhood to the north of the CBD, where there are loads of cool bars, restuarants and, we hoped somewhere for us to rent. After scouring gumtree.com and a nearby cafe with a rental  listings noticeboard, we had a couple of possibilities. The first was in Fitzroy and we dicounted that one as soon as we walked in the door. We don't mind slumming it a bit if the price is right, but they would have had to pay us to stay at this place! A bunch of squatters would probably have kept the place looking better! Oh well, next up was a room in a house in St. Kilda, a southern suburb. A quick tram ride later we were being shown round a really beautiful Victorian house, that, although it had seen better days and could do with a real good spring clean, was miles better. It even had a chandalier in the bedroom! We decided to go for the room there and agreed with the landlord to move in the next day.

After another interupted (although not so bad this time) night's sleep, we checked out of Hotel Bakpak and took the tram down to St Kilda. We paid up for the next two weeks and began settling into our new place. A quick trip to the shops later, we were all sorted and set up for the next couple of days. That night we cooked our first meal in our new, temporary, home and met some of the other tennants (about nine others, although we've only met 5 of them, so far). It'll be great to be in one place for more than a couple of days after all this travelling!

Today, we've climbed (well, 'lifted') to the top of the Melbourne Observation Deck for great views over the city. This afternoon, Xana has a hair appointment in Fitzroy and that will be about that for today.

 

We left Wellington and drove the four hours or so up the west coast in the drizzle to New Plymouth. This medium size town is next door to Mount Taranaki, so the next day we were lucky enough to have some great weather and decided to go for a walk along the side of this volcano. We only walked for a couple of hours (it is possible to climb the whole mountain in a single day if you start early enough). Afterwards we drove along the coast and found a nice beach with black, volcanic sand. In the evening we went to the cinema and saw 'The Last King of Scotland' - well worth a watch.

 

Next day we had another roadwork strewn drive, this time to Auckland. Not saw what it is with this country and road works, but it seems impossible to drive for more than 15 minutes without passing a roadwork. We must have drive through well over thirty seperate roadworks on the way to Auckland... Anway, we arrived out our city centre hostel and cleared out the car, as we were returning it the next day. We then headed off to move some of our future flights around. We now have two months in Australia and two months in SE Asia, returning to the UK on the 16th September.

 

On Thursday we had to drop off the car and we then spent some time trying to find some accommodation for Melbourne. We're looking for a flat/house-share as we'll be there for two weeks or so. In the afternoon we just chilled out and that evening we went for a really nice Japanese meal (there are loads of Asian restaurants in Auckland).

 

Yesterday, we spent some more time sorting out accommodation (have a couple of leads, but are waiting to see when we arrive in Melbourne tonight) and in the evening we visited a restaurant on K' road that we had eaten at the first time we were in Auckland. Again the food was great. Afterwards we got a bottle of wine and went back to the hostel, where we ended up watching the truely awful (even Xana agreed with this...) 'Coyote Ugly'!

 

Today we're just hanging around (with a slight hangover!), waiting for our lift to the airport. We'll be in Melbourne by about 6pm (local time). We're really looking forward to spending a bit of time in cities after all the beautiful wilderness or New Zealand. Should be good!