After the Blue mountains, we'd decided that we'd had enough of Sydney, so we had the unenviable task of finding new tenants for the apartment, before we could leave early. After showing round maybe 20 people and many near signings, we eventually found some 'mugs' to set us FREEEE.

As Sarah has a cousin living near Melbourne, it seemed an obvious choice to head there. We had a few problems booking the greyound to Melbourne and it turned out that me and Lucy had to get a different coach to Sarah.

It certainly was an experience! - A 12 hour coach which funnily enough stopped at the only places I would've wanted to see between Sydney and Melbourne. CANBERRA & HOLBROOK!
We stopped in Canberra for around 10 minutes, which was more than enough to realise that there is NOTHING there. It resembled a modern age ghost town, with all the shops and malls etc but no people. - barely ONE pedestrian and 2 cars. Weird for 9pm. Holbrook was equally disappointing. As nice as I thought it might be, it was nothing more than a petrol garage and a restaurant - it also had a funny smell and a collection of very back-water and slightly creepy staff! After the break of about 30 mins we continued onto Melbourne.

After a short and not so pleasant experience of dragging my seemingly heavier than usual suitcase to the hostel, I realised that one of the wheels had MELTED!?!? thank you very much Tescos!! grrr. By the time we got to the hostel, Lucy were very hot, tired and feeling quite disgusting; so we paid slightly more for a private room in which to pass out.

In the evening we met up with Sarah and her friend Chris who was staying in the same hostel.

We also went out for a lovely Italian meal, on the way to which we passed by the Civic Theatre which was showing *WICKED*!! - upon further investigation, we found out that the theatre had a 'WICKED LOTTERY', which was drawn 2 hours before each performance. If your name is drawnm you have the opportunity to get up to 2 front row tickets for $30 each!! (rather than $200) - we tried 5 times and on the 5th time, Sarah's name was drawn!

Funnily enough, as it was when I saw Wicked in London, we saw the understudy in the role of Elphaba (wicked witch). She was INCREDIBLE! and again the same as in London, upon research on youtube, found that we MUCH preferred her to the main actress. It was a great show (of course) and was weird hearing Australians acting with an american accent!!


During this week we rented a car and visited the Street where they film Neighbours. It was even smaller than we'd heard - seemed more like a toy street.



After this, we drove to the great ocean road. Somewhere along the way, the GPS got very confused and we found ourselves (me) driving through a national park, which was little more than a dirt track through the *bush*. - quite a scary experience. The GPS was blank alot of the journey! - it simply was aware of the road we were on!

After eventually finding our way to the coastline, we travelled about an hour up the great ocean road - stopping off briefly at a beach - unfortunately it was VERY cold so we needed to get back in the car; which had to be back to rental company, so we travelled back.

During our time in Melbourne, we went to the Melbourne Gaol, an old jail that famously housed and hanged Ned Kelly and his gang.




After looking around the spooky jail, we went through to the courtroom for a re-enactment of the court cases involving Kelly. Several of the audience were roped in to read the various parts and it was very informative.


After this, we went through to the slightly more modern jail, which was used up to 1994 and experienced how prisoners were treated. - This involved being shouted at and locked in a pitch black cell for 2 minutes. ***definitely puts you off of brakin the law! - well, more than the relative luxury of today's standards!!


After a week of exploring Melbourne,


we decided on a road trip, travelling the whole way along the great ocean road and to stay a few days in Adelaide. Tune in soon for this.