Well sure enough the promised crappy weather arrived just as Mum & Dad docked in their big fancy cruise ship in Sydney Harbour. They were back for their final week with us and whereas in Melbourne they were 40 mins away on the other side of the city here they were 10 doors down to road, I can see we’ll get no peace 
I had planned for Mum and I to do a coastal walk from Bondi to Clovelly. It didn’t look as though the rain would ease all week so we got our macs and off we went. The promise of a fish ‘n chip supper at the end kept us going and despite of the weather the walk there was beautiful and exhilarating. The walk back was cold and gave me stitch, so we took regular breaks to watch the crazy surfers out in the sea after a shark attack on Bondi only the previous day!
Dad hates the beach and especially sand between his toes so I was very impressed when he agreed to walk the length of Bondi beach. A few faces were pulled and mutterings under his breath, but he completed the challenge and was rewarded with breakfast in Speedo’s cafe, a Bondi institution.
The open-topped bus tour was another day’s adventure and thankfully we had a reprieve in the weather for this. We stopped off at Sydney’s institution of ‘Harry’s Cafe De Wheels’ for a lunch of pie, mash, peas & gravy…bloody lovely! These Aussie’s sure know how to bake a pie.
We have moved to Sydney’s world renowned Bondi Beach hoping to catch some surf and escape Melbourne’s intense heat. Unfortunately the heat seems to have followed us and it has slowly crept up from blissfully sunny to scorching during our first week. Poor BLT (Ben, Tan & Lillianna) came for a bit of reprieve from the Melbs heat only to touch down in Sydney’s hottest heatwave in decades. We have become the typical whinging poms complaining about this, but as soon as we heard rain was on it’s way in the coming weeks we couldn’t help ourselves but groaning at that prospect too!
Skank was quite the domestic goddess throwing a dinner party at hers for 9 people (plus Amanda’s bump) without batting an eyelash, I was very impressed. Ness & Rowan and Amanda & Jonny joined the rest of us for a scrumptious dinner of skank’s famous Connecticut Chicken.
The heat in Melbourne reached temperatures we have never experienced before, 3 consecutive days between 43-45 degrees! The powers-that-be decided they had to shut off the electricity to various sections of the city to save overloading the power supply. While poor Tan & Lillianna had to sit in their flat like two contestants in a wet T-shirt competition to cope with the heat, Mark and I escaped to the coast. The villages of Portsea and Sorrento were our destination and they were beautiful, great sea, sand and all importantly for me food. After tucking into the best salmon ceasar salad I’ve ever eaten we had a swim in the crystal clear water and saw an amazing sting ray.
Louby (Skank) came down from Sydney to stay with Tan, Ben and Lillianna for the Australia Day weekend. It was lovely to have a mini reunion of three of the five uni girls together again (Lis & Aims you were missed). We met a few times for drinks in town and brunch on Brunswick street, the bohemian arty area in the north of Melbs. Mark and I leave for Sydney on Saturday to live on Bondi Beach for a month. Our place is round the corner from Skank’s flat so I’m sure she’ll be appearing on many forthcoming blog posts.
My lovely colleagues from Cirencester College bought me a treatment at a spa in Melbourne as one of my leaving gifts. I managed to get mum booked in for the same treatment and off we went for some pampering while Dad was plane spotting. It started with a steam, followed by a foot bath and scrub then an entire body brush and massage. I can honestly say it was the best massage I’ve ever had and I didn’t want it to end. After it was over we lay on beds listening to chill-out music and drinking chamomile tea.
The navy top I am sporting was another gift from the team; and I have carried their photos emblazoned across my bosoms throughout Asia. Despite the 40+ degrees heat I thought I should bring them along on this particular day to be part of the pampering.
Thanks again guys it was fantastic and although it sounds very dodgy to admit, I did think of you all whilst I was being scrubbed and pummelled!
The peace and quiet was broken on 20th Jan when the olds arrived from cold England via Singapore. It was really great to see them after 5 months and I had planned a week of activities to keep them busy and out of mischief. I allowed them the first day off to recover but then we hit the ground running. We started the week with a free walking tour of the city with a local volunteer, followed by a free bus tour…well they are pensioners after all. We had to balance the interests out so one day Dad got to go to an Australian airbase to see his beloved planes and the following day Mum treated us all to an evening at the Australian Open Tennis. It was really great and we got to see, in person Nadal continually pulling at his wedgies; most entertaining. Our local outdoor pool was another great place to while away a few hours and Mum and Dad made a trip up to The Edge; a scary glass bottomed viewing platform in Melbourne’s highest building. On Sunday we took them on a surprise trip to Philip Island to see the world’s smallest penguins coming into nest from the sea. They were very relieved as they suspected we might be putting them into an old folks home! We visited a Koala sanctuary, great beaches and dad’s third aviation museum of the week. Their final day with us in Melbourne was Australia day, a public holiday so we meandered through the parks looking at vintage cars and a flypast of 3 M18 planes. We had the last supper at their hotel, full of very fit looking tennis players and then returned to the city for the fireworks display.
It has been a brilliant week and we have loved having them here. We have 2 weeks to recover now before we see them again in Sydney. They called this morning to say they had boarded their cruise ship, heading for New Zeland and an upgraded cabin had gone down well with a view of the Sydney Opera house! Pleased to know my inheritance is being put to a good cause
The Great Ocean Road is the stretch of highway to the west of Melbourne, in the direction of Adelaide that hugs the coastline and has some spectacular scenery. We took ourselves off in our little Toyota Corolla hire car and had a very leisurely drive along all the tourist hot spots. We passed many beautiful and deserted beaches, cute seaside villages and magnificent cliff top views. We even saw our first wild Koala sleeping lazily in a tree and the lighthouse where ‘Round The Twist‘ was filmed!
We stayed overnight in the Paradise B&B and it really lived up to it’s name. The self-contained cottage was perched over a idyllic duck pond in beautiful grounds in the Otway Ranges. It was surrounded by hills and trees full of singing kookaburras by day and glow worms at night which made it look like fairy lights had been draped everywhere. We found it very hard to drag ourselves away from the view, jacuzzi hot-tub, sumptuous bed and home cooked bread for breakfast.
The remaining part of the drive took us to the 12 apostles, and London Bridge, all eroded coastline formations that stood majestically amongst the crashing surf. It was a fantastic weekend away and another of my trip highlights!
We’ve really settled into life in Melbourne and had lots of fun with new and old friends. Kez, a fellow backpacker who we met in Laos kindly invited us along to her News Year’s day outing to the country horse racing. She had a large group of friends who were all lovely and made us feel really welcome. It was a great experience with beers being consumed pretty much non-stop. We even won $90 in our syndicate betting which meant we were able to enjoy more booze when back in the city. The hangovers we experienced here are even worse than back home as in addition to all the booze consumption you have to factor in a mild degree of sun stroke too – not pleasant, but still it was all worth it and a really fun day.
We’ve also got to spend lots of time with my uni flat mate Tan, Ben and their 15 month old daughter Lillianna. We had a great New Year’s eve meal with them before going to town for the fireworks display which was very impressive. We’ve also had snags on the barbie with them and yesterday they drove us out to a fab beach for some games of beach cricket and body boarding in the sea.
Our friends from home Craig (David) and Kay also came out for a week in Melbs. We mooched around the city and also had a day on St. Kilda beach before the brave couple came around to our flat to experience our cooking.
After flying north from KL to Bangkok we caught a much cheaper flight back down across KL to Melbourne. Thanks to on-demand movies the 10 hours went quite quickly and we arrived to a warm climate but much less oppressive that the Asian heat. Our flat is fantastic and it feels like home already, especially since we added some Christmas decorations and stocked the fridge full of good food and booze. While all the locals feasted on seafood and BBQs they thought us nuts for roasting a bird and having all the traditional English trimmings. It was delicious though and a real taste of home. The TV is rubbish here in comparison to the UK but we got to watch the queen’s speech and National Lampoons so with the AC cranked up to cold it felt very familiar.
A Melbourne tradition is to go to the Boxing Day test at the MCG (cricket for those of you like us who didn’t know what that meant). We got tickets mainly to turn Jacq and dad a shade of green and went along although we knew non of the rules, deciding we’d just cheer and boo in line with the locals. It was actually a really great day with superb atmosphere and the highest beer glass towers we’ve ever seen, until the police came and confiscated them (boo!)
We’re really enjoying having the bags unpacked for a while and recharging our batteries for the next leg of our trip, planned for March.
We wish you all a Happy New Year and thanks for all the comments during our trip, please keep them coming.
