Back to Melbourne

Day 1 – Last Look at Ayers Rock

Due to the urge to check out Alice Springs (pointless that it was) we had to get up very early as we had a 4 hour drive back to Ularu airport.

After an hour or so we stopped for petrol, a cup of coffee and a sandwich at one of the very few garages along the drive through the outback. Also quite interestingly they had an emu farm attached to the garage!!

We spent our time learning a bit of Spanish on our newly acquired language tape in preparation for South America. Donna can now order a cup of coffee in Spanish, even though she has no intention of going to a Spanish speaking country (sorry Donna). Also along the drive we had a chance to have one last chance to see Ayers Rock and The Olga’s before dropping off the car and checking in to our flight back to Melbourne.

The flight back was around 3 hours and then Donna drove us back to her house where we spent the evening chilling out catching up on some of Donna’s junk TV, Married at first sight, Australian Survivor and The Batchelor whilst quaffing some wine before heading off for bed.

Day 2 – Band Night

As we had a pretty hectic last few days and I was suffering with a cold, Shell and I decided to have a relaxing day catching up on our washing, doing some blogging and doing a bit of research on our next destination, New Zealand.

In the evening Donna and Tracy took us out to a bar where a band that their friend was in were playing.   We got there around 8ish and we met some of Donna’s friends including Lydia (who was very lively!) and watched the first band that were doing stadium classics and weren’t too bad.

The beers were flowing and soon the next band were on, they were another cover band doing a number of classics. We watched them until closing time then got a taxi back to Donna’s.

When we got back we continued to party with some red wine for a while before hitting the sack.

Day 3 – Walking Tour

Waking up late, we realised that we had missed the morning Melbourne walking tour that we had planned on doing so we relaxed for a bit before catching a train into town to catch the afternoon tour.

Donna came along as she had not done a walking tour before and was interested to check it out.  When we got to town we went to a nearby shopping mall where we picked up some lunch before going to the meeting point.

The tour started at 2.00 from outside the Melbourne library and Donna was surprised when she was greeted by the tour guide saying ‘Hello Donna, it’s nice to see you again’.  It turned out that one of the guides was one of her friend’s sons.

As usual the walking tour was very interesting and took us around the city to places such as the prison where Ned Kelley was executed, the Melbourne lanes where there was tonnes of good street art and the river area where you got good views of the city.

After the tour finished I was keen to check out the Cherry bar in AC/DC Lane as I had read it was quite a good rock bar.  So Donna showed us the way and we were soon stood in AC/DC lane where once again they had some pretty cool AC/DC themed street art.

Cherry bar had a band on but the lady on the door said she would not charge us an entrance fee as they were just finishing off.  The bar was pretty cool but as it was late afternoon it was quite empty so we just had one beer before catching the train back to Donna’s.

Once again we spent the evening watching bad TV, eating a lot of cheese, pate and biscuits whilst drinks yet more red wine until we went to bed.

Day 4 – Final Day in Oz!

Donna was at work today and the weather outside was pretty miserable so after getting up we spent most of the morning and early afternoon catching up with the blog and doing more research and bookings for New Zealand.

In the afternoon we popped down to the local shopping area to pick up a gift for Donna as a thank you for putting us up (or putting up with us!) for our time in Melbourne.  Thanks once again Donna!!

The evening was again dominated by bad TV, eating and drinking before having an early night as we had to get up at 2.30 in the morning to get to the airport.

After 3 months (we had only planned 2) in Australia we were finally moving country again.   We must admit we have been totally surprised how much we under-estimated and enjoyed Australia and the very generous people we have met here.