Oi Oi Oi (read me first to catch up)

Once again, I find myself having to catch up with missed entries. I blame this completely on Australia's extortionate prices for internet use. A tip for any traveller is get a small, cheap laptop, like an ASUS EeePC and take advantage of all the free wireless internet. It has been available in every country I have visited thus far, but paying wasnt a problem until now. Anyway, enough of my moaning.

Im sat in Brisbanes Central Library taking advantage of a free internet access and tomorrow I climb aboard a plane to fly to Cairns. Thats another thing about Australia is there is no cheap way to travel it, in fact the flights are normally the best value. So anyway, in Cairns I hope to enjoy the Breat Barrier Reef but thats all ahead so I'll leave that and fill you in on what has been and gone.

We landed from New Zealand in Melbourne. I really enjoyed staying there, it wasnt too big a city but had all the good parts of a big city. Personally my favourite area is Federation Square which is a sort of cultural centre with a variety of Art Galleries and Exhibition spaces. In the Moving Image building there was an interactive exhibition charting the history of computer games, allowing you to play on all the classic arcade games you can imagine, whilst outside in the square on the big screen there was a Nintendo Wii Olympics tournament with kids battling it out on the tennis. One thing I picked up rather quickly via the TV in the hostel and the people on the street is how the Australians think that they are the best at everything, especially when it comes to sport. And with the Olympics coming up this became more and more prevalent. But before the Olympics could take hold of the Australian nations attention and ego, there was the imminent arrival of the Pope to deal with.

Thats right, every inch of Melbourne's centre appeared to be covered with 'Pilgrims'. World Youth Day was over a week away and hundreds of kilometers away (963 to be exact) but they were everywhere from every country, singing in the street. I didnt let this deter me from taking in the sights of Melbourne, including the obligatory Ramsay Street visit and a trip to the place Ned Kelly was hung. I very much enjoyed the whole week in this city before hating the cost again when hiring a car and choosing to head out along the Great Ocean Road.

Skirting along the South coast, heading West, we spent about 4 days seeing Kowalas and shipwrecks as well as doing various bush walks and camping. We then drove through the Australian Peterborough, stopped for the night before driving all the way back on ourselves, this time in about 4 hours not 4 days. We drove on past Melbourne and got caught by our first toll road (horrible sneaky things here) and spent the night at Phillip Island which in my humble opinion is overated. But it is from here we layed plans for our assault on Sydney with a target arrival date of the 28th if not before.

The nights in the tent appeared to be getting colder as the driving tour of South East Australia continued so one day upon the advice of an old lady we chatted with, we drove North into a National Park for an apparently stunning bridge walk. Next lesson: don't believe the Australians bold claims when they are reffering to an area local to them as, of course, in their mind, it is the best of the best, because its theirs. I would hate to be sat in a pub with an ozy arguing the merits of anything exisiting outside of this land. So the walk was rubbish but it sped up our move North, with our sights now set to Canberra via a stop off at the Buchan Caves. These turned out to be great for one main reason. The caves are set in an area of national park so we parked the car and started walking to the cave entrance. Happy with the spotting of Kowalas earlier and having seen many a native bird, I was still desperate to see Kangaroos ( I had only seen road kill so that does not count as a Kangaroo in its natural environment), but whats that, a thumping noise. As we walked to the cave about 20 Kangaroos just hopped right past us and off into the bush.

Once in Canberra it was immediately obvious that this place was completely purpose built, it was strange to enjoy the clean and tidy nature of it but miss the city feel of it and the variation you find whilst walking around most cities. a strange place mostly. Canberra also had what you could call a cutural centre and I would go on to learn that all the Australian cities have this focus on the government provided cultural buildings, Art Galleries, Libraries and Museums. Whilst staying in Canberra we drove a little way from the city to a village with a miniture model village, not sure why I was entering this place I was surprised and entertained by the fact that its main focus was on England and about 5 of the models were of Peterborough and surrounding area. It was funny to consider travelling to other side of the world to see models of Peterborough.