Melbourne

Melbourne is HOT! Wow it is hot. It's been as high as 40 degrees centigrade over the last few days - I think it's time for somewhere colder next :-)

So after we got here, we made a big list of all the stuff we wanted to do in Melbourne and have been gradually getting through it. We have also managed to take in some impromptu events that we only found out about when we got here too.

Here's what we've been up to:

- City Tour

We have spent a certain amount of time looking around the city itself. There are many parks and public spaces in Melbourne and I think that we've covered most of them by now.

- Further travel planning

We've managed to arrange tours and travel to get to Adelaide in Southern Australia. This means that when we get kicked out of our current digs at the end of the week, we'll have somewhere to go!

- Sustainability festival

We found that there was a "Sustainable Living"festival happening on our doorstep in Federation (or "Fed") Square. Aside from having cool ideas to save energy, live music and delicious curry, they also offered free unlimited internet acces, although I may have mentioned this earlier?

- Veg curry

We have managed to find LOADS of places which serve veg curry - from small local places to larger, fancier places, including a large restaurant on St Kilda beach.

- St Kilda

St Kilda is a small suburb of Melbourne with a lovely beach. We went down there for a day on the tram and dipped our toes in the ocean. We also looked around the local cafes and shops - very chilled!


- Wildlife (Zoo & Wild)

Melbourne Zoo is a really nice place with Indian elephants, orang-utans and some very energetic and mischievious tiger cubs. They also have a pretty full compliment of Aussie wildlife including both types of monotremes [the spikey echidna and the oddly shaped, venomous - but incredibly cute - platypus], various macropods [kangaroo and wallabies mainly], koalas, wombats and the velociraptor-esque cassowary.

We have also seen WILD swamp wallabies. This is not really anything to write home about as such as they are common as muck over here :-) Ah well...

- Observatory (Saturn, Betelgeuse, Jewel Box, Alpha Centauri)

While in the botanic gardens, we found a night-time observatory tour. We were shown around the observatory and gardens and got to look at Saturn, and various nearby stars in the night sky - though a telescope installed specially for the transit of Venus in the 1800s.

I'll give you a detailed description of our latest trip to Phillip Island soon, but in the meantime we are off for a tour of the "Great Ocean Road". Unfortunately we only got a couple of hours sleep last night :-)

Hang on in there!