Melbourne: 1st-5th May.

Arriving late the first of May, we took the Skybus (which, sadly, doesn't actually go in the sky) part way to our new place of residence, Hotel Bakpak. Since the Skybus didn't take us to the door of the hostel, this involved an initial night-tour of the city before we got to see it in the harsh light of day. We were greeted at reception by a guy who clearly didn't have a clue what he was doing (hence the night-duty, probably), but we didn't complain as he gave us double the amount of free internet that he should have. The next morning we awoke bright and early /groggy, but just in time for the free breakfast. We did a bit of planning and went to the local STA (of which there seemed to be one on every corner) to buy our Greyhound passes, and were sneakily sold some student cards which we were very excited about and have been loving ever since-especially when paying admission to museums, tours and cinemas (oh yes!) We then took the free city circle tram to the dockland area where we strolled along New Quay Wharf and admired the sparkling new buildings and modern art, which included a square cow up a tree... After hopping back on the tram, we disembarked at Flinders Street Station, where we wandered around the shops for a while (Armelle got very excited by Tiffany's), before taking in the atmosphere at Federation Square.

The next day was an early one again, but very exciting as we were doing the official Neighbours tour. We got onto the 'amazingly decorated' (garish) bus and watched Scott and Sharlene's wedding on the way to Erinsborough High. Long gone are the days of Jason and Kylie!

We then found ourselves at Lou Carpenter's garage, opposite Grease Monkey's and the infamous bus stop (Max and Izzy's departures). Frazer was our Neighbours celebrity, Jess had no idea who he was, but we both smiled happily for a photo!

Then it was the grand finale- a visit to Pin Oak- aka Ramsay Street, where Armelle took at least 5 photos of every house. We were completely updated on the storylines, so we're now ahead of the game as far as Neighbours is concerned.

After our brush with the celebrity world we had a good look around the Queen Victoria Market back in Melbourne, where we treated ourselves to a small but gourmet lunch. We separated in the afternoon. Armelle went to Fitzroy (which she ran around in the rain), followed by the Melbourne museum, complete with living rainforest, creepy crawlies, a Neighbours kitchen, and a working wind turbine. She waited for the rain to stop before marching through Chinatown en route back to the hostel, slipping somewhat precariously in her Birkenstocks. Jess resolved to put an end to her camera fiasco that afternoon, which had been causing her so much grief. She made several calls to N.Z, decided she could not get her own camera back, wrote a strongly worded email to STA (that had to be edited somewhat so that she could save some fire for when the expected battle), and bought another camera. She was such a nervous wreck when she got back to the hostel (at having lost it in the first place, tried her hardest to find it, and then having spent so much on a new one), that she had to have a strong coffee and phone home to calm herself. That evening we did a few hours of blog and were in bed with a hop skip and a jump.

Friday we did a tour of the Great Ocean Road which we both really enjoyed and though was brilliant value for money, especially since the day was 15 hours long! On the way we stopped at Torquay and then Bell's Beach for a coffee. We also stopped at the Lighthouse from the following T.V show 'have you ever ever felt like this when strange things happen and your going Round the Twist'. On the way to Apollo Beach where we had lunch, we stopped to see some Koalas and some very friendly and colourful birds which ate grain out of our hands.

It was great to see Koalas in the wild only a metre or so away, and we were both surprised at how unconcerned they were. We also saw our first Kookaburras there, Jess had expected them to be a lot smaller.

On the way to the 12 Apostles we did a rainforest walk through the Eucalyptus trees, and saw a very big tree that the tour guide was quite excited about, although we weren't sure why!

The 12 Apostles were a shining example of textbook geography, though we got a little carried away taking photos (as it was very windy and we wanted one of us without our hair in our faces), so we were the last on the bus, much to our embarrassment. We then saw the rest of the Apostles from further down the road, where the colours were a lot more vivid, and there were less people around which allowed you to have time to appreciate them. The next stop was at Loch Ard Gorge, the site of a shipwreck during the 1870s in which only a young gentleman and a young lady survived after being washed through this narrow opening and onto the only beach for miles. To the disgust of the press of the day (and the gentleman!), a love story did not ensue (even though he saved her life) as she hot-footed it back to Ireland, despite having lost her entire family to the wreck. The next and final stop of the day contained another ironic love story. The collapse of a Sea Arch (also ironically called London Bridge) had led to the revelation of two affairs to the couple's spouses by an amused Australian media, when the cheating pair got caught on the stack as the arch collapsed. Driving back, we stopped at Colac (Neighbours reference- where the Timmons are from), which excited Armelle again, and we had delicious noodles that were practically an all-you-can-eat in a box (though we did in fact eat-it-all!)

Saturday morning we took the tram to St. Kilda, and after some photos outside Luna Park we were disappointed to find that we couldn't go on the historic rollercoaster because of the rain. We contented ourselves with sampling St Kilda's delicacies in their infamous cake shops that would satisfy the sweetest of tooths (even Jess' Dad's!).

Heading back into Melbourne we stopped again at Federation Square to take in the Jazz festival which was in full swing, before pegging it to the Imax to see Spiderman 3, which was the biggest cinema we've ever been to, and which was completely full.

Later that evening we got our first Greyhound to Sydney, departing at 8pm and arriving 12 hours later. The journey was a lot better than we had each thought-we slept for most of it mainly because we had 2 seats each, even though Jess thought she might get hypothermia (even wearing 3 vest tops, a thermal, a fleece and her coat). The driver was about as unhelpful as he could have been in this respect, but we had our doubts whether he could even drive the bus- he'd stalled twice before we had even left Melbourne and didn't check our tickets properly, so I suppose he had bigger fish to fry than minor air-conditioning/Antarctica issues.