Neighbours...... Everybody needs good Neighbours!!

---

Oh yes, you read that right!!!! Neighbours tour day!!!

Arghhhh, getting up at the crack of dawn as we needed to be at the tour office for 8.30am and we made our way to the train station in Sandringham. It only took 35 mins to get to Flinders Street station in the City and the hustle and bustle of the city and those off to work!

I'd driven past the tour office on the Sunday when I'd hailed a taxi from the Hilton at the Wharf to the train station but, in true Lisa Thomas fashion, had failed to realise it was over 300 building numbers away from the train station!!!! Ooops. Distance and size have really never been my strong point! I refer people back to when i ordered new pin boards for work and they turned out to be the size of one wall and had to go back and i ordered 5 calculators too and they turned out to be miniature!!!

Anyway, we made the journey, on foot to the tour office arriving at bang on 8.30am!! We checked in and then went to the cafe next door to grab some provisions. In my haste and in a panic I'd lost the ticket confirmation, which incidentally we didn't even need again, I left my rain jacket in the cafe! I got on the bus and once we were on our way to Erinsborough High(!) I realised. But really I was just excited about Ramsay Street. We learnt on the way, the the current school in Neighbours is not the original. As the original was a High School more recently they wrote to all the parents requesting permission to film and they asked for money! So they moved to a college. The school was easily recognisable from seeing it on TV, unfortunately we were unable to stop for too long by the school to get a good shot of it.

We next drove by where the exterior Lassisters shots are done and into the studio compound. Unfortunately they were filming over at Lou's Mechanics so we weren't able to go much further than the car park, but our guide pointed out where things would be.

Next stop...... RAMSAY STREET or as it's really known, Pin Oak Court! How disappointing is it that we had to take our own Ramsay Street sign with us to have photo's with! Anyway, it was ace. We had photo's stood on the step at the original Jim Robinson's house, and had a look in their garage, and we had photo's outside Paul Robinson's house, Harold Bishop's house, The Kennedy's house and where Mrs Mangel used to live!!! With the Ramsay Street sign, without the sign, sometimes with 2 signs!!! We were like real life stalker tourists!!!!

We also shot a short piece which I'm sure is Logie worthy!!! It was me running out (doing a comedy run!) of Paul Robinson's house and as the camera panned round I'd been run over by an unsuspecting car in Ramsay Street!! It's amazing that people there don't appear to learn the Green Cross Code and don't look both ways before they cross!!!!!

On leaving Ramsay Street (ahhh) we made our way to St Kilda where we met Sam Clark who played Ringo!!! He's no longer in the show in Australia but not sure if he's still on screen in the UK - but we're only 5 weeks behind the Aussies!!!! He was lovely, really good guy who answered lots of questions and told us that he's now doing some music projects.

After we made our way back to the City where we had a wander around the Arts Centre, had lunch at the Blue Train Cafe - was delicious and spent the afternoon pottering around.

The Ramsay Street Experience was awesome and is a a must for a Neighbours fans on a visit to Melbourne.

xxx

---