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Melbourne for those of you without an atlas handy is on the south coast of Australia and is our first stop on our Aussie adventure. Arriving at 6am after only a couple of hours sleep is not to be recommended especially as we couldn't check in until 2pm but we passed the time adjusting to a non-Asian lifestyle by going to a cafe for toast and then having a sleep in the Royal Botanical Gardens under the warm sun. Our first impressions of Australia were of friendliness and comfort, everything seems so manicured in comparison to the well intentioned mayhem of Asia and with so many cultural similarities to the UK that we felt as if we had stepped off the plane back home. Of course the UK can't boast 30 degrees Celsius in the middle of December and the people here seem to be delighted to help you any way they can.
Of course every rule has an exception and unfortunately in this case the exception is our hostel. The staff consist entirely of what look to us like surly teenagers and the rest of the guests are pretty similar to the staff. I'm sure they were all 19-21 but they must have regressed as it felt like we were trapped in a high school where the kids have taken over and don't really know what they are doing. That said our room was pretty nice and we just used it as a base to explore the city so we chalked it down as another funny experience.
Most of the three days we spent there we just wandered around doing a bit of shopping, eating really good food and sneaking an occasional drink at the many pubs the city had to offer. Rachelle managed to meet up with her friend Ingrid from the Newcastle University careers service who was on holiday in Australia and catch upon all the gossip from back home and even got some more presents (many thanks from Rachelle to Ingrid, Karen & Jos she is always very excited to get presents). Ingrid's daughter who lives here also recommended we go to the casino so we popped in and wasted a few dollars and people watched for an hour including the strangest Christmas show we have ever seen with lots of animatronic animals and puppets turning on and off according an obscure master plan.
Overall since Melbourne is such a relaxed and livable city we didn't really do much tourist stuff but there was one exception. Melbourne itself is close to a region called the Yarra Valley which is famed for its wines so it would have been crazy not to go and have a look at a few wineries and taste their produce. To simplify things we signed up for a tour (which was paid for entirely by our friends in Manchester, Howard, Vicki, Angela and Mike - thanks guys we had a fantastic day with your leaving present). I have never been on a wine tour so I was very excited although the prospect of drinking wine at 11am didn't thrill me I went through the pain barrier and we had a blast learning how to look at the colour and legs of the wines, how to taste it and how to identify the different grapes by taste, why can't all education be this fun?
So now we are going to leave Melbourne but we will both hold a soft spot for it in our hearts. Maybe it is simply the relief of a familiar environment where we know how everything works after a couple of months of relative chaos but Australia has made a strong first impression on us, the next six weeks are going to be a lot of fun.
Lots of love
Antony & Rachelle
Ps.I am now 100% recovered, thanks for the concern everyone!
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