Thursday 8th March

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your well wishes for our 1st wedding anniversary – the last year has flown by.

It was really great to meet Lee’s great uncle and auntie on Monday night.  They have a beautiful house in a quiet hillside town on the outskirts of Melbourne.  We told them of our bad start to Melbourne only to be told we’ve been visiting the yukky areas.  We certainly learn’t a lot from talking to them about where to go and about moving here too as they did the same years ago (twice!).

On their advice, the next day we set off early to the Mornington Peninsula which despite a long drive was a very nice spot.  We stopped off for a walk along the coast at a town called Sorrento.  At first we thought the locals were ever so friendly in waving to us, only to realise they were fighting flies off their faces.  A few minutes into our walk we came across the same problem.  They fly in your mouth, up your nose and in your ears and are extremely persistent.  Lee and I came up with a solution (see picture of lee) which was only a temporary fix as they still were buzzing around our faces.  It’s a shame because it seems like such a lovely place to live otherwise.    That evening we drove to Phillip Island for three nights.  Our campsite is very nice and they even have a resident cat called Mindy and she’s lovely just like my Mindy.

Our first full day was quite busy.  We drove to the Phillip Island race circuit and went on a tour which gave us access to paddocks, media centre and gave us 90% views off the bikes racing round the circuit.  The World Super-bikes were there only last weekend and they were still packing up unfortunately we didn’t’ get to rub shoulders with any of the racers.  Our intention is to return in October for the Moto GP’s but we will see.

We then drove down southwest of the island to the ‘Nobbies’ which wasn’t terribly enthralling as it was pretty much what we’ve seen on the Great Ocean Road.  We did however walk down a steep incline to one of the beaches nearby where some of the penguins live.  Knowing the penguins are out to see in the day catching fish, we were not expecting to see any however we were lucky to see a baby penguin wondering about and looking rather flustered when it noticed us.  Unfortunately we didn’t get a picture though.  The actual reason for walking to the beach was to get closer to the sea crashing against the rocks and Lee got a bit too close and got completely soaked! lol.  I with my photographic skills managed to capture a picture (see pics) but of course lee wanted a better and closer one but I didn’t oblige.

That evening we went to see the famous Penguin Parade.  http://www.penguins.org.au/content.asp?pg=54  As we were walking down the boardwalk towards our viewing point, we could see the baby penguins had come out of their burrows and were waiting for the return of their parents from sea.  At about 8.20pm the little darlings gradually started to appear out of the water in little groups of about 10-20 at a time.  I overhead the ranger saying there are approximately 6000 penguins that live in that particular area.  It lasted about an hour before we were moved on so they could turn the lights off and allow the final few to venture into land.  It was such an amazing experience and paid a little extra for better viewing which was well worth it.  Some of these little penguins walk from anything to 100m to 1km to find their burrows.  With regards to your question Ian, they don’t allow any photography of the penguin parade at all which you can understand.

We’re going out for a meal tonight to celebrate our anniversary – looking forward to it!

Congratulations to our friends Darren & Laura on the safe arrival of a baby boy.  Anybody know a name yet?

Catch ya later xxx

Monday 5th March

Saturday we drove into Melbourne Shitty (oops) City Centre.  Unfortunately it was not a great day out in the city that we were expecting.  It was nothing like Adelaide and certainly not as lovely as Perth.  In fact, you could compare it more with London.  We were warned about the mad drivers here in Melbourne and it didn’t take long before we were witnessing irate drivers. 

We took the free shuttle bus round the city and also paid to go up onto the viewing deck in the observation tower which is one of the cities tallest buildings.  Other than that, we were fairly relieved to leave the city by mid afternoon.  The rest of the afternoon we parked down on the coast in our campervan and drowned our sorrows with tea and cake and our friends from the Netherlands joined us. 

Yesterday we drove to the very busy St Kilda.  A suburb also on the coast, south of Melbourne and very popular with city dwellers at the weekends.  A very nice area.

Last night and tonight we’re based north east of Melbourne in a campsite in bush settings which is always much more pleasant.  We’re visiting Lee’s great uncle and auntie this evening which will be nice.

Friday 2nd May

We arrived in Melbourne two days ago and have been staying in a campsite north of the city & have been busy running erandes so haven’t venturered into the CBD yet.  Today we moved south west of the city to a town called Williamstown which is situated on the harbour and has quite a view of the towering high rise buildings.  We’ll be heading into the centre tomorrow though for a bit of shopping and some touristy stuff.  Yipee!

Gotta go…this ultra quiet library is freaking me out!