hey, we have just spent our first nite in the thing they call campervans... all i can say is its an experience. its actually as you can see from the pic not a half bad little thing, we do backpacking in style, but its still pretty hard to get washed and changed in a cold shower, with 3 girls and 1 boy!! poor keith i think he has had the biggest shock of his life, living with us.

Woke up in a car park this morning - we parked the campervan in a car park!!! there was some film getting made so we asked the security man if we could park in his area for the film crew for the nite... he was lovely about it.....

but before all that.. this week has been mental.. last hostel - pretty duclie was a nitemare.. we could hear the music as clear as day from the bar downstairs in our room at nite.. and the place was generally so noisely.. got no sleep for days!!! you can imagine the moods we were all in..

but ST paddy's day was great.. we went to a bar called PJ o'Briens which is in melbourne city... got there bout 11am.. good timing i think, and got a good old fry up for brekkie and 2 glasses of champange.. we were only meant to get one but we managed to sweet talk the bar man person and got two... that was us for the day.. the drink flowed and we got drunk!! think i managed to drink myself sober though. we met this guy from cork who is living over here for a while called Dave. god love him i dont think he realised what he had let himselve in for ... he tried to keep up with us but the poor guy just died.... it was such a cool day though. everyone was dressed up . they had irish music on all day...

Paula got more drunk surprise surprise than any of us and was hilarious when she came home..after nearly getting knocked down... but she paid for it at the Grand prix

Grand Prix

OMG the grand prix was great... The noise of those cars are unbelievable.. everyone told us you will need earplugs and they were not joking!!! we knew it would be loud as you could hear the cars for the past few days while out and about in the city.. so you can only imagine the noise of them up close.. Paula had a massive hangover so was sooooo much worse for her - ha ha

and the cars go at an unbelievable speed.. there is not much to say about it really . u just have to go sometime in your life..

And that brings me up to date really. tracy had to drive the campervan yesterday as keith not got his licence details yet.. we are so proud of her. she done an amazing job. her nerves were shattered though...

Neighbours

Went to the neighbours nite last nite at the elephant and wheelbarrow. we werent too sure about it at first but we didnt want to leave melbourne really without going but it turned out to be one of the better nites we have had in melbourne. We paid $35 in and then toadie, steph and Boyd came out onto the stage answered a few questions then they came round the tables to meet everyone.. we met boyd first.. he is a bit nice in real life... very musclely!! he was very sweet also.. got a picture of me and him of course.. then it was steph scully turn.. she was a little quietier but sweet.. she posed for a few pictures also. While this was going on there was a quiz on.. we were thick so the body guards for the neighbours stars were giving us most of the answers.... it took toadie ages to get to us, but when he did it was great.. he is lovley.. got loads of pictures of us!!

But the highlight of the nite was karl kennedy band.. we thought it was going to be rubbish and was going to leave but thank god we didnt. he was amazing!! sang all the recent songs etc and got the whole place going. we had an absolute ball and his band members were pretty darn nice tooooo.

Phone

My oz sim card is going a bit funny so im using my UK phone and oz phone so dont worry if i dont reply or you cant get through on one of them.. i'll get it eventually but my oz sim wont let me send or recieve messages from terry while he is back in thailand.. so have to use my UK card for that.. its a bit annoyin having to swop sim cards all the time...

So the plan now is travel to the great ocean road for a few days and take it from there.. we got the campervan for 2 months then im going to get a jop for a while then hopefully will be able to go to Darwin in july when MR nattawood (Terry) comes over for a while before going to new zealand and fiji...

hope you are all well and will get the st paddy days pics and neighbours ones uploaded soon.

love you all

Claire