Australia

After a 3hr flight - where I watched Cemetary Junction for the first time and Baz Lurhman's Romeo and Juliet for the umteenth - we arrived in Melbourne at about 8am local time and fad to occupy ourselves without falling asleep. First job was to locate the US consulate which took next to no time compared to the waiting around Ben had to endure whilst he was there sorting his visa for camp! After 2hrs we finally got on a tram to get to our hostel - only to be told we had booked the wrong dates -a nightmare considering how tired we were! Luckily the girl on the desk was really nice and found us a place for the night. We stayed at Space in the city which was being done up. It'll be a really professional hostel when it's finished but wasn't much to my liking because you had to hire kitchen materials, there were four hob rings to service 4 floors in a tiny kitchen, no real communal area and you needed your card key to get into everywhere including the bathrooms. So we relocated to 'Home at the Mansion' for the next two nights - a much nicer hostel and the one we had intended to spend 4 nights at! The second night in Melbourne we went to an Aussie Rules match. Not being a great lover of football in the UK I had next to no idea what was going on! In my defence even Ben though the scoring was a bit fucked up! Haha! Our third day was spent on a tour of the Great Ocean Road - built by out-of-work ex-servicemen from WWI. It was miles of stunning ocean scenery and we got to see some Koalas and feed some parrots. The trip also took us to the Twelve Apostles, Loch Ard Gorge Beach and London Bridge - all eroded from the land and formed by the sea. Unfortunately it was too rainy to swim but we had a good time chatting to people on the bus. It's a bit like freshers' week travelling - you ask and answer the sane questions all the time - name, nationality, time spent travelling so far, countries visited and visiting - but it makes for easy ice-breakers!

Our fourth night we spent in St Kilda and had a few drinks in a bar by the beach! I am writing at the moment fro
a Maccy-D's at St Kilda - our 'beach day' on hiatus until the weather clears - Victoria has crazy changeable weather so we're hoping fir blue skies later - wish us luck!