Hi all,

We have had such a great time over the last few days. We left Tanya & Ryan on Saturday just after lunch and drove for about 6 hours to Port Macquarrie. Luckily G had phoned ahead to book accommodation, as there was a tri-athlon on Sunday am and all the accommodation places were full.

We had a pleasant meal out - B had a VERY unusual pizza with prawns & mashed potato?! G had "Sparkling Wine" and Oysters.... very reasonable!!

On Sunday morning we drove through to the Hunter Valley - driving through a town called "Greta" - what are the chances!

We had a great few days with our good friends Pete & Mandy and their lovely kids. B got involved in the 2 day leadership programme Pete was running for a large mining firm whilst G and Mandy did day trips with the Luke, Chelsea and Ben (a lot of fun).

Yesterday we drove to Sydney - dropped off our rental car at the airport and put our enormous suitcase into overnight storage. We caught a cab into the city centre for some retail therapy - and B sat in a quiet establishment to look after our remaining bags. We spent the night with Dave & Sarah in Manly - so caught the ferry from town and met up with them and Mark & Helen for dinner. Great to catch up again since their wedding in Hobart.

We've woken up this morning to a pretty rainy day - it is wet wet wet out there. Will hopefully get in a bit of sightseeing a bit later. We fly back to Melbourne tonight and will be there the rest of the week.

Our flight to China is on Sunday AM - starting to get excited, but will definitely miss Australia... a GREAT place to be!

Anyway, should sign off. Hope all is well where you are.

x B&G