Dave had to cancel his morning swim in the lake today, as we woke up to rain and grey skies. We had a lazy morning; got up late and sat watching TV for a while before heading into Mansfield to explore some more. We parked up and walked up the main street, stopping to browse in some shops. We'd noticed on the map that there were Botanic Gardens, but when we got there found it was more of a park, nothing much 'botanic' about it. We looked around for an internet ca...

An early start for us today as we're moving on to our second week of timeshare with Ray and Maria. We set off after breakfast, heading inland. A couple of hours into the journey, we stopped in a one-horse-town for a drink, kit-kat and toilet break, then kept going all the way to Mansfield, best described as a large 'small' town! We were too early to check in to the resort, so we stopped in the town for lunch - delicious huge burgers for me and Ray and chips that...

As today was our last day in Torquay, and as it was a hot and sunny day, we decided to go to the beach and have a swim in the Ocean. On the way, we drove to Bells Beach which is the famous surfing beach in Torquay where competitions are held. We parked in the car park at the top of the cliff and looked down at the surfers in the Ocean. In the car park there was a Backpacker Breezer van, so Mam and Dad had a closer look at the van we lived in for 3 months! We the...

This morning we had another trip to Melbourne planned, and headed off to the catch the train from Marshall after breakfast. Our first stop was going to be the Queen Victoria Market for some more souvenir shopping and lunch in the food court…but we didn't realise until we arrived that it's closed on Wednesdays (why?). Plan A scrapped, we moved straight onto lunch at a café next to the market. I tried the 'full breakfast' which was missing a hash brown and fried...

Our day trip today was to Sovereign Hill at Ballarat, which is like Beamish back home - an open-air museum of an old Goldrush town, which was on this site in the 1850s. But first, we had to make a stop at the Post Office in Torquay to send our Australia-themed Christmas cards! The drive to Ballarat took about an hour, and we were all pleased that the sun was shining. When we arrived, we paid our quite steep entry fee (well, Mam paid - thanks!) to get in and were...