Hello for the last time from Melbourne. Seems weird that we're about to leave. We (well Gem really) packed our backpacks this morning as its our last night in the apartment tonight, v sad!! We're going to stay with Jed and Amelia for our last couple of days here which will be brilliant.

We've had a really good week or so. We've both done about a million hours each at work so the bank balance is slowly recovering and we've found time to have a bit of fun. Last Sunday I rose to the challenge of captaining the Nomads hostel 5 a side team to victory in the first match of the Melboune inter-hostel league. It was a nice opportunity to vent some anger and dazzle the opposition, I've got a good touch for a big man!

On Tuesday, we met up with Geoff and Beryl Brown. It was great, they had a day to kill in Melbourne between flights so we met up and had lunch. Hoylake tennis club has gone global! 2 hours and several beers later we said bye and I staggered back to work, very surreal! However it wasn't long before they turned up at Pugg Mahones to sample the Guinness, brilliant!

We went down to the casino on Wednesday and amazingly both came out winners. Between us we walked away with over $3 profit. Watch out Las Vegas!!!! There was an amazing number of Japanese people in the casino consistently losing jaw dropping amounts of money which made for entertaining viewing.

Friday was a great day, I managed to wangle a free ticket to the Australia v England One Day International at the MCG. Gem was working so off I went with a few of the lads. The stadium was fantastic, the cricket was not. The majority of the crowd was more interested in smacking a beach ball around than watching the cricket, which is understandable. England were soul destroyingly dull and Australia cruised to victory. I then had to dash off to work for my last shift. Once the shift was over the party started and I cant be any more specific other than to say I think we all had fun.

Gems got her last shift at work tonight and I think we're having a bit of a farewell do with a load of the people at the hostel and at Gems pub so it looks like it could be a late night. Hope everyone is well. Speak to u in Sydney xxxxxxxxxxxxxx