Shrimpless' Oz......

Well "how are ya" from Melbourne?

Since we last wrote we have had a huge change in basically everything, food, weather, people, culture, roads, hostels....and penguins! It has been a massive change coming from Asia where we had such great experiences and we've both found it quite difficult to get used to the change so far! We arrived a week and a half ago and have spent the time in Melbourne just sorting ourselves out and dong boring stuff like opening bank accounts and tax numbers....almost like being home, so we actually dont have too much to write about for a change...

The things we have managed since we have been here are just checking out the city, blagging a free tour of the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground....which also has Aussie rules, a.k.a. gay irish football played there), been to the beach, weathered several hail storms some of which were the size of grapes.....big grapes, and went looking for penguins, yep they have penguins here!!

The MCG was pretty impressive, it's a 100,000 seater stadium which we were just walking past on what seemed the only day of the year that it was closed only for a security guard to apologise that we couldnt go on a tour that day (not that we wanted to anyway) and give us free passes to make up for the "inconvenience"!! We have been to the beach a couple of times and with the typical Melbourne weather of "4 seasons in a day" its been pretty tricky! Some days we have been in long trousers, fleeces and waterproofs and the day after getting burnt on the beach! And then last night we walked to the beach, down the pier and along the breakwater and got a few feet from the tiny Penguins that live in the rocks! V.Cool!

Other than that we have walked for miles, cooked for ourselves for the first time in a month and a half and paid tons more than we would have wanted for anything and everything! We are now heading on to Sydney tomorrow to try our luck there, check out the sites and see if we can find some work leading up to or just after Christmas, also hoping that the weather improves too!

So far Aus has been a big mixture, but not once have we been invited to a BBQ....and even less seen shrimps on one, spotted a Kangaroo, been bathed in 'winter sunshine' or seen someone wearing a hat with corks on it! Hmmmm, lets hope things improve!

Hopefully things will start to get more Christmassy here over the next few weeks as it must already be building back there?! Take care and will speak soon from our next stop with some touristy photos no doubt!

Ally and Alice xx

P.S. The sea urchin'd hand update is that we went to a GP, got charged a load for the doctor to listen to the whole story to then give the diagnosis that I was a "Poor ole' bugger' and be referred for X-rays! 2 days, 3 x-rays later and another appointment later I have been referred to a plastc surgeon hand specialist......great! It seems to be getting better slowly though so am just going to hit it with a bible and se what happens! Will probably be seeing if there is a doc in Sydney now for an opinion....so it continues....only me! :-)

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