Melbourne

So a lot of our time in Melbourne seems a bit of a blur now (I'm writing this over three months later!). We got the airport bus into the city centre to find Enda waiting for us at the bus station, which was a very pleasant surprise. He had a long business lunch to go to that afternoon, but met us to give us detailed directions to his house, a spare set of keys and to set us on the right train. So we got to Enda's place no problem and kinda settled in straight away. Enda was off the next day up to Brisbane to spend the Christmas period with his wife Tracy and new babbie Flyn at Tracy's family home.

It was truly brilliant to have a place all to ourselves for a few days I have to say. I really loved the house itself, it was spotlessly modern and quite big really, and felt very homely to me after seven-and-a-half months on the road.

A couple of days later we moved across the city to Mikey and Steph's place, as we'd been very kindly invited to Christmas dinner. We actually went over to Sally and Baz's house on Christmas eve to watch the local street's production of the nativity, a tradition on the street for the past 49 years (and one in which Baz himself used to partake when he was only a wee nipper). Sally and Baz's two daughters, Maddie and Rachel, were both in the play and it was great to see the whole thing, with clearly quite a lot of work going into it. We spent the rest of the evening at Sally and Baz's, who have the most amazing back garden I've ever seen (giving even Mark Kane's back garden in Harare, and Ray O'Hagan's back garden in Wellington, a good run for their money!). It basically just bleeds into native forest, and has its very own creek running through the middle of it. We spotted a number of possums (my first ones after 3 visits to Oz), and a Powerful Owl chick - which is an endangered species.

The next day, Christmas Day, we had chrimbo dinner in Steph's with her family, and a fine feast it was too (beginning with a monster platter of huge, fresh prawns that Steph's mum had brought). We spent the whole day at the house, and had a great time getting to know Sally and Baz who were both fantastic to us throughout our stay in Melbourne.

We were back at Sally and Baz's again for New Years, were Baz put on a fine display of BBQ-brinkmanship, and included lots of great Greek food and more native fauna spotting.

Then it was back to meet up with Enda and Tracy for a weekend driving down the Great Ocean Road and staying in a gorgeous modern apartment in Apollo Bay (which we were blessed to get, as the town was jam packed and we'd left it very late to book anything, but Enda just persevered, kept ringing places and was eventually rewarded). On the drive down we passed a small group of wild koalas and obviously stopped to have a closer look - they really are as cute, and as spaced out, as they look on the telly. On the drive back to Melbourne we spotted another koala right beside the road, Tracy doing well not to run the poor guy over.

Our apartment was fantastic but we just couldn't get the baby cot for Flyn to open up properly, and after ages trying us guys finally relented and got the caretaker guy to have a look. But he couldn't fix it either, so we just had to make do with a semi-working cot, but Enda, being the cheeky chappie that he is, managed to wrangle a free nights accommodation out of the guy to compensate for the inconvenience - nice one!

After a lovely BBQ dinner on the rooftop terrace, the next day Enda took us for a drive further up the Great Ocean Road to the Twelve Apostles, the famous limestone sea stacks just off the coast, and to the gorgeous little seaside town of Port Campbell. I always had the impression that the whole road followed along the coast, but in fact it travels inland quite a bit, travelling through dense forest.

Over our time in Melbourne we also went driving in the nearby mountains (Mikey and I getting a tad lost at one stage), played squash (Baz beating us all), went indoor rock climbing
with Mikey, I cycled into the city a couple of times and generally just lazing around. I also had a mad long afternoon playing pool and meeting up with all of Enda's old drinking buddies - all English and Scottish guys who've settled in Oz.

We seemed to be bouncing quite a bit between Enda and Tracy's place and Mikey and Steph's, but luckily there was a pretty direct bus route between the two, although the fact that Melbourne sprawls quite a bit, the journey would still take well over an hour. But it really was a highlight of the trip so far to have caught up again with Enda, getting to know Tracy and Flyn (who is a model baby from what I can see, only one wee crying episode the whole time), catching up with Mikey and Steph again, who are getting along like they've been married for 30 years already (is that a good thing or a bad thing?!?), and meeting and getting to know Sally, Baz and their kids, and all the various cats and dogs.

Anyway, eventually it came time to move on from Melbourne, and hearing so many positive things about Tasmania, we decided we might as well check it out. On our last night in Melbourne, over dinner at Steph's place Sally casually mentions that she's had major problems with a software system she had commissioned years ago for her dog-care business. It seemed a bit unfortunate because if she'd mentioned it earlier in our stay I could easily have had a look at the problems, but as it was we flew out to Hobart the next day. Little did I know how it would all turn out though...