Katie Here!! The time has now come to end our Australian adventure! : (Tonight we fly to Auckland in New Zealand at 5am!! So instead of staying in the hostel and paying for a nights accommodation we will be camping at the airport!! Not looking forward to it! So before we head off, we thought it was about time we updated the blog!!!

Carrying on from where Kate left off… We arrived for our Surfing lesson!! It was so much fun but really hard! Becky being Becky though, was amazing at it! Standing up first time and everything! Me and Kate on the other hand took a bit longer to master it! However I am pleased to report that we did manage to stand up towards the end! Woohoo!! We were only in Surf Camp for a day and we just had the one 3hour surf lesson! Felt like for ages we were in the sea, and towards the end we were feeling very battered and bruised from falling off and getting back on again!

From there we then headed to SYDNEY!!! Woohoo! We arrived quite late, and Oz Experience had reserved us a table at a bar where they gave us a FREE (yes free!!) dinner! Even better eh! So we stayed until the free dinner and drinks had stopped coming and went to bed, so we could fit in a good couple of days of sightseeing! We woke up in the morning to find that there had been some massive sandstorm! Something which hadn't happened in 40 years!! Can you believe it!! (we just thought it looked a bit foggy, apparently not!) I think the redness of it all happened really early in the morning when we were still in bed, so if you ask me it was just a lot of fuss about nothing! By the afternoon it had all cleared up as if nothing had happed!

We still managed to go to the Opera House and went for a nice tour round the building! For example did you know that there are 1 million, 56 thousand and 6 tiles on the roof.. (good pub quiz fact there for you!) We also went round a few other (free) museums about the history of Sydney etc. On our third day in Sydney Becky did a trip to the Blue Mountains (now I'm not really sure what they were/are but it involved a lot of walking/trekking so me and Kate decided to give this a miss and do some more touristy bits) so we went to the Harbor Bridge, we were tempted to climb it, but after finding out how much it actually cost to do, we decided to give it a miss and just climb on of the towers at a fraction of the price! We also took a visit to the maritime museum (which was also free!), where they had a replica of Captain Cook's ship, the Endeavour and a lovely exhibition on swimwear! On our final day in Sydney, we took a bus to Bondi Beach, which was so nice, got a bit sun burned… but as we were to later find out it, it's probably going to be one of our last hot beaches we will come across for a very long time! We also went to get our hair cut and then in the evening we went up the Sydney Tower, to see Sydney by night!

The following morning we had to get up early again….. to catch our bus to head to MELBOURNE that was going to take 3 days to get to!! We woke to find that there had been another sandstorm too! Crazy!! We boarded the bus and one of the stops along the way was Canberra, which for a capital city is very (very) dull! It was just like big industrial estate. While we were there we went to the Australian version of the Houses of Parliament and went to the Australia Museum… both not very interesting at all, still, it broke up the bus journey. May I also add that when we left Sydney it was lovely and sunny, so we were wearing shorts and flip flops…. Big mistake! As we were heading further south it was getting colder and colder! We were then told that for that evening we would be staying in a ski resort! But not just any ski resort a 4* ski resort!! So that got us a bit excited! We were told that Oz Experience can use it because it is now towards the end of the Australian ski season! (I did even know that it SNOWED in Australia!!!!) …. We arrived at this ski resort and it was snowing…! It was FREEZIN, we were in SHORTS and FLIP FLOPS!!! Seriously you would have thought someone would have told us!!!!We were not happy! We also found out the next morning that despite being the end of the ski season that night the area received the highest snowfall of the season!!! As a result though we were able to go tobogganing in the morning, whilst improvising on clothing and using socks as gloves!

The rest of the bus journey was quite uneventful, the second stop over was, what seemed, in the middle of no where, we then left there at 6.30am the next morning to head to Melbourne! At last! We only had one stop on the way this time, to go for a walk along a beach called Squeaky Beach, then it was back on the bus! The 3 of us were desperate to get to Melbourne because Monday's were Neighbors Night!!! We'd been told by various people that it was a really good night out and Dr Karl Kennedy would be there with his band and that 3 other cast members make an appearance and answer questions from the audience! Well ……we arrived… and Dr Karl was not there!!! We were told that he is currently in the UK!!!!! We couldn't believe it!!! Sad times! We went any way and there were two current cast members and one past cast member, and Paul Robinson performed with Dr Karl's band., it did turn out to be a good night despite the disappointment!

So in Melbourne we've been for a wonder round and saw what there is to see… which isn't a great deal, so we decided to hire a car and drive along the Great Ocean Road!! We could have gone on an organized trip and paid about 40 quid each, but for 10 quid each we could hire a car! Plus we thought it would be much more fun! We had had enough of coach trips for a while! On our travels at Surf Camp, we also met up with a girl called Amy who was travelling on her own so she came with us too!! She was from Luton, but it also turns out that she was best friends with someone who was on mine a Kate's course from uni!! Small world! So the 4 of usall had a bit of a drive in Suzy the Suzuki Swift! There was lots to see, a light houses, the 12 Apostles, lots of coast line, some more rainforests and we also packed a picnic! We picked the car up at 7.30 am and returned back to Melbourne at about 10pm that evening, so goodness knows how far we actually drove, but we didn't drive it all that's for sure!!

So that now brings us right up to the present moment! Becky sadly left us yesterday to head to Tasmania, where she will be doing conservation work for two weeks and then today we went on a little adventure to find Ramsey Street (but actually isn't called Ramsey Street at all, it's called Pin Oak Court) we tried to book onto the official tour to take us there, but it was fully booked!!!!! We were starting to think that someone out there was out to ruin our Neighbors experiences! Undeterred we caught a train and a bus to find it!!!!! And guess what.. we did!!!! Woohoo!!! Luckily they weren't filming and so we were allowed to take pictures in front of all the houses! !!!

So as I said before it's time to head to the airport soon for our flight! Not looking forward to it! Hope we can find somewhere to sleep for at least an hour or too! We'll keep you posted in our next blog!

For now it's Goodbye Australia… HELLO NEW ZEALAND!!!!

Lots of Love

Katie and Kate xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx