Up and down

Well to be honest not a lot has happened this week which I suppose is a bit inevitable after a while plus there was a little bit of homesickness nothing too bad but we got some news from the Uk on Friday which I won't divulge but it made us realise how far away we actually are, but we came up with a plan, and that is to treat every weekend like a holiday and let the humdrum of weekdays (which will get better when were in the new house and have our stuff) look after itself.

So with this in mind and with Sue deciding she wants Ugg boots for her birthday we headed for Melbourne. After doing a bit of research online ( and me trying to get them as cheap as possible) it came to my attention that UGG australia (the ones everyone in the UK wears and pays a fortune for) aren't Australian at all they are owned by an American company and the boots are made in China. UGG is a style of boot nothing more. So the best make for australian UGG style boots is a company called EMU. Anyway I digress we went up to Melbourne on the train as it probably works out around about the same price as driving and we headed to an outlet mall. This took us straight past the ETIHAD stadium very impressive it looked a bit like the Everton Stadium at the kings dock was going to look (letting that go is probably Mr Kenwrights biggest cock up through his Everton Tenure). Then we found ourselves in Melbourne Docklands which has all been done up with restaurants and hotels etc and I have to say it is lovely and Harbour town the outlet village looks like a slightly older Liverpool one so much so that it made us think L1 might have been based on it. Anyway after traipsing around there for 3 hours we hadn't bought anything and headed back to the train station.

We were a bit early so we found another Mall that is built onto the station this was much more impressive and had plenty of shops that we recognised unfortunately we didn't have time to look around there as we had to get the train and we were knackered. So the upshot was we didn't buy anything.






This brings us onto Sunday, we promised last week that we would go looking for koalas and Kangaroos. So first off we headed down to Torquay to check the surf shops for EMU boots which we found so we bought them that was that done. We then headed of down the Great Ocean Road to a place call kennetts river where there were rumours of wild Koala's. I know I go on about this road a lot but it is quite simply stunning and gets better the more times we travel down it. The first stop was split point lighthouse. This light house was the place where legendary kids show Round the Twist was filmed so we saw that and took in some of the views from there. Beautiful.

Have you ever... ever felt like this (theme tune for round the twist)

View from the lighthouse

Start of the GOR

 We then carried on down the road towards Kennetts River and as we were driving we saw what we thought was a rotten palm leaf in the road... Then it started wriggling it turned out to be a 6ft eastern brown snake apparently the 2nd most venomous land snake in the world and it was big.

Not the actual snake just for illustration purposes

So we trundled down to kennetts river which is a small town of 100 people and turned off onto a dirt track that steeply rose into the bush forest ( I was suddenly glad we'd bought a 4 x 4) Then Sue spotted something in the tree tops. It turns out it was a Koala so we stopped and had a walk around and spotted a few more and took some pictures. which are displayed below:

Koala very unusual for them to be active during the day

In their normal pose they sleep 19 hours per day

We then headed back towards Geelong and had heard that Anglesea golf course had been a popular place for kangaroos so we stopped there on the way through and sure enough there they were so photo's again:

Finally proof they exist

It does have its ups and downs here homesickness will come and go I'm sure but I have to say that when its good its fantastic the landscape is just stunning and the people are great. When its bad its not too bad if you know what I mean you just feel a bit down and miss certain things and people.



Chris' Food Of The Week

This week its a bit boring but just look at the size of it:

Problem is it was shite but hey ho


Look after Yourselves

The Nuttalls