After a wonderful night's sleep, we said goodbye to Pam and Rob and, after arranging to meet them at their town house in Mornington on the way back from the road trip (we were staying there for two nights at the end of the week) we set off to pick up the hire car! What a nice one it was too - a brand new Ford Focus Automatic. From there we set out on the journey to Ballarat, the famous Gold Rush Town and our first stop on the journey to the Great Ocean Road. ...

God, what a funny night last night - although remarkably Emma looked rather well this morning and we all managed to make it out for breakfast reasonably early! We spent quite a while at the cafe and then Xenia, Stu and I set off for a trip to Lilydale and the Dandenong Ranges which is out where Xenia's parents live. We did quite a bit: went to Sky High (a viewing point across Melbourne), visited a couple of little villages and stopped for Devonshire Teas! One ...

Well, what can I say today was interesting a real day of ups and downs emotionally. Down's: Wales out of RWC Up's: One of the funniest nights of the trip so far So, first a bit of background, today we were meant to just chill out a bit and get ready for Xenia's friend Emma's 30th birthday party at a hotel tonight (which I was very kindly allowed to go to) the only problem is, the theme is Op Shop formal (charity shop formal to you and me!) and as didn't have...

I arrived in Melbourne! Hurrah! I also managed to safely arrive at my hotel after making it through customs (I got pulled over - no surprise there then!) the only downfall was that my room was a smoking room (!?) which I didn't realise you could even get anymore! I tried to put up with it but it lasted all of 3 minutes before I went downstairs and asked if there were any non-smoking rooms that I could be moved to. The woman at the reception had a look and the...