Leaving Melbourne - 18/9/09 - Benalla - Vctoria We left Melbourne on Friday the 18th of September with a tree planting trip to Benalla (in Northern Victoria) first on the itinerary. I finished work on Friday and so did John so the car packing was left until after work. As ever it took longer than we’d planned and of course we had loads more stuff once we had to actually find a place for it in the car. Still we finally headed off to Benalla late ish and arrived at about midnight. We’d got a free bed for the two nights [View Full Entry]

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After the trip to Alice Springs we had a couple of quiet weekends relaxing and getting kit for our YHA skiing trip (at the end of July). We now have lots more stuff to pack / sell but we'll worry about that in a few months time! The highlight of this couple of weeks was probably heading to the local pub to see England's victory at Lords...very entertaining...though the landlord was threatening to charge me more for my beer for being a pom! We both worked half-days on the Friday before the skiing weekend so set off for the long drive [View Full Entry]

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Having waved off our second set of visitors it was only a couple of days before we flew out on a holiday ourselves. It was an early start on the Saturday for our flight to Alice Springs (via Adelaide on the way as it saved us a few dollars!). We arrived and the courtesy minibus dropped us at the very relaxed Alice Lodge hostel - chilled out music, hammocks, blue skies...I could have stayed forever! We were, however, already booked on a 3 day (2 night) tour to Kings Canyon, Uluru (Ayres Rock) and The Olgas so lounging about in a [View Full Entry]

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(Caroline) We had planned to do a bit more camping the weekend after Lorne but decided to give it a miss for a while until the days are a bit longer. As a result our weekend plans were not as well formulated as they have sometimes been so it was rather quiet. We spent Saturday morning at the fruit and veg market in Richmond then went on the hunt for curtain fabric for the car. We came back with some tasteful shark pattern and spent the rest of the afternoon affixing velcro to various bit and pieces. On Sunday we took [View Full Entry]

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We took our new-to-us (old-to-the-rest-of-the-world) car on a little trip for the bank holiday weekend. The Queen's birthday bank holiday reminded us suitably of bank holidays at home with grey skies and chilly afternoons but still we can't really complain seeing as it is nearly mid-winter and camping was really pretty pleasant. We headed off from Richmond early on Saturday morning towards the Great Ocean Road via Ray's Outdoors - Australia's answer to Millets (where we currently seem to be spending about half our wages!). We were back on the road again by 10.30am with a new camping stove, [View Full Entry]

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Hello again, Sorry for the long gap between updates - a mixture of reasons...mainly our slow internet connection (hence no photo updates just yet) and a lack of things to update everybody on! If you have been bothering to check at regular intervals it might be worth subscribing to the blog - I think it then sends you an e-mail if we add anything. The weekdays have mainly been filled with working, Caroline's enjoying her job at the hospital and I haven't a day off in the last 3 weeks. We're now looking forward to the arrival of more visitors - [View Full Entry]

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Caroline has been working hard and peddling to work each day and I've even done a few days work over the last couple of weeks. We've been spending some time working out the best ways to spend the cash - first stop looks like a trip to Alice Springs and a tour of Uluru / some other bits and bobs in the desert. Having decided that we would like to go skiing at some point (probably the cross country variety) we have been looking around for cheap ski gear. Last weekend we headed out with our bikes (on the train) to [View Full Entry]

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Hello again, the last 10 days have been quite busy. First things first, we bought (very) second hand bikes on gumtree - mine's a lovely purple number while Caroline's is silver...peeling to a tasteful turquoise. A good bit of recycling though (no pun intended) - I think these bikes have seen a lot of Australia - most recently in the hands of helpful Henrik from Norway and a very nice girl called Bea from London. We've since peddled them round lots, including the road in Albert Park where they hold the grand prix (I won). We've also peddled along the River [View Full Entry]

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We've moved. We now live 7 minutes from the MCG on foot and about 5 minutes on the train from the city centre. We have been making the most of being jobless (don't tell Uncle Jay!) and have been mostly reading in the park, wandering around aimlessly (well we're pretending to explore new places but more often it's aimless wandering!) and sitting on the beach. We had a bit of a heat wave earlier in the week so have made the most of it as the first week we were here was really autumnal (and blooming cold). John has got a [View Full Entry]

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With aching legs we headed to Australia (another big plane). It was a smooth trip, arriving at our hostel at lunchtime…in time for a bit of extra kip! Melbourne has made a big impression already, it seems fantastic and really easy to get around. Everyone here has been really friendly, the hostel vibe is certainly entertaining - we will miss it. The last few days have been spent trying to sort out the boring bits - jobs, houses, bank accounts, tax numbers…and getting to know the area. We headed down to the beach at St. Kilda and later at Brighton and [View Full Entry]

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