In the morning we went to central Melbourne and walked through the old shopping arcades. It is a nice area of the city and we had some coffee and cake at one place. We did mainly window shopping but had a good time. Around eleven o’clock we met up with Jason Boyed and his son Jordan. We decided to have lunch with them on the south side of the river Yarra. Alex also came with her kids and we had a simple but very nice lunch. At quarter past one we walked over to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the largest stadium in Melbourne, able to seat 100.000 spectators, to watch a game of Australian Rules Football or footy. It was an important game between the Hawthorn Hawks and the Collingwood Magpies. The game had pulled a ... read more

We got up at 06:15 to be ready for breakfast with Josephine and Chris. They live just outside of Corryong on a hill overlooking the valley, a beautiful farmhouse with plenty of room for family, friends and animals. Chris is the local vet and Jose works as a high school teacher. They have four girls (15-21) and the oldest was home. After a real Australian breakfast with homemade pancakes, bread, jam and coffee and a lot of caching up we drove down towards Melbourne. On the way to Melbourne we past Tallangatta by lake Hume and saw the dead trees still standing in the lake as they have since the 1950’s. We of course stopped at Glenrowan to look at the place where Ned Kelly fell, and to have a coffee with scones. One thing that ... read more

We got up early, had a quick breakfast and drove of to Canberra. The Kings Highway took us up steep mountainsides with some hairpin curves and the landscape changed as we ascended and became more serene. We came to Canberra around twelve o clock but could check in directly and then headed directly down town. We started at the Questacon, a hands on science museum, and then walked up to the parliament houses. Very different designs but both are nice. After that we went to see the Australian War Memorial but we arrived only half an hour before they closed so we only looked at the grave of the Unknown Soldier. The closing ceremony with the lone piper was very moving. As we were looking for a place to eat Nils noticed that his mobile phone ... read more

This morning we got up in time because we planned to visit the Blue Mountains. We drove up to the mountains along highway 4. It took almost 2 hours and we saw the temperature drop from 18 degrees down to only 6 degrees. When we got out of the car we first had to put on some extra layers. We stopped in Katoomba and as Adam’s father John had suggested we bought a round trip ticket for Scenic world. It included the steepest railway ride in the world (52 degrees) down to the bottom of the valley as well as two cable car rides one back up out of the valley and one horizontally over a waterfall, the views where incredible. We saw the famed “three sisters”, three enormous stone pillars that rise from the valley ... read more

Jennyfer took the 08:15 train to Newcastle this morning to visit Nuweigh. City rail worked well and she got there and back without problems for only $16! The boys and me went to pick up the rental car, a light blue Holden Cruzer. Despite the local car brand I had some trouble blending in to the pumping Sydney traffic. Central Sydney was perhaps not the best place to pick up left-hand driving again. After a few navigational mishaps we managed to get out to Bondi Beach where we spent a beautiful morning watching the surfers, the skaters, and people jogging and strolling along the beach. In one end of the beach we found a winter-fair complete with an ice-skating rink with real ice. The boy’s spent an hour watching the activities at the skate park. Curt ... read more