Autumn in Melbourne

View of the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) from our seats in row Z! Our first game was the Geelong Cats v Collingwood Magpies, despite our allegience to the Magpies (of course!) the Cats won 65 to 62.


Martin enjoying a snag (sausage butty) and a VB beer before the walk along the Yarra to the MCG.


Melbourne is famous for it's 'street art' and here is a photo of my favourite piece. It's on the wall of Scotchmer Street in Fitzroy North and the cards are real! Melbourne street cleaners famously scrubbed off a Banksy piece so hopefully they'll be more careful from now on and this will survive a bit longer.


The view of the city take from Princes Bridge near Fed. Square and Flinders Street station. The Yarra river looks pretty dirty after torrential rain the week before!



Me standing in front of the footy pitch in Edinburgh Gardens after a gorgeous Sunday afternoon walk amongst the falling leaves!

The Great Ocean Road

This is one of the beautiful beaches on the stretch of road between Bells Beach and Lorne.


A view of the famous 12 Apostles that rise up out of the sea just after Apollo Bay. A gorgeous sigh but very windy. Warning: Ear muffs a must!


Me and Martin posing by the new sign that marks the start of the Great Ocean Road. This was originally erected to honour the hard work of men who built the road after returning from fighting in WWII only to find themselves unemployed and socially isolated.


A kookaburra enjoying the morning outside the window of our hotel


Don't try this on the M6!

Our Neighbourhood

The view of the city from Edinburgh Gardens
Our nearest park, about 5 minutes walk is the stunning Edinburgh Gardens where you'll find Melbourne's coolest residents hanging out on a Sunday afternoon. This photo is taken from Martin's favourite bench - mainly because of the amazing views of the city!

Our new home in Melbourne

Celebrating moving into our new home!
We moved into our own flat in Fitzroy North a week after arriving in Melbourne. We were celebrating the start of our 'new life' with a glass of red and spaghetti bolognaise! Fitzroy is a great place to be based, we're about 3 miles north of the city and amongst lots of bars, cafes and vintage shops.

Brisbane

Drinking in the Elephant and Wheelbarrow in Fortitude Valley with Tash and Moon.
Meeting up with John and Tash, our friends from Wigan made us feel homesick but hearing all about their lives in Oz made us excited for what was to come!

Saturday 19th March 2011, Gili Air, Lombok, Indonesia

Before leaving Trawangen we did two dives. We went to Manta Point and Shark Point where we saw our first shark, a baby white tipped reef shark - amazing. The diving was excellent despite some very strong currents and we both feel we are improving technically at diving. We have also dived from Gili Air, heading to Simon’s reef in the early morning. It is probably one of our favourite sites as the visibility is amazing - at least 50 metres and the diversity of the aquatic life was stunning.

After Trawangan we spent three nights on the smallest and quietest of the islands, Gili Meno. We spent our days exploring the island, snorkelling, swimming and sunbathing, after deciding that we needed to take it even easier before we go to Australia to find jobs!

Today is our third day on Gili Air, which is somewhere between the party island Trawangen and semi-deserted Meno. Again we continued our renewed attempts at taking it easy, snorkelling (which is phenomenal on all three islands) and generally sunning ourselves and honing our frisby skills on the white sand beaches.

Tomorrow we head to our final destination, Sengiggi which is on the west coast of Lombok. On 22rd March we begin our journey to Australia, flying to Brisbane via Darwin. When we arrive we’ve arranged to couch surf staying with an Australian guy who lives in the suburbs outside the city. We’ve met lots of travellers who’ve raved about couch surfing which is basically consists of a website where you can contact people around the world who are offering a couch to sleep on and arrange to stay with them. It’ll be a nice way to meet some locals on our arrival and do some cooking rather than eating out every meal, which sounds great but we’re really missing non-fried vegetables which are something very rare in S.E.Asia!

Thursday 10th March, Gili Trawangan, Lombok, Indonesia.

We travelled from Ubud to the Gili Islands in one long and very eventful day. The first hint that the day was not going to run as smooth as we’d hoped was when our mini bus ran over a puppy on the way to the harbour (fingers crossed for its survival). A few minutes after we arrived at Padang Bai harbour a speed boat exploded right before our eyes. The local people were in a frenzy, not really knowing what to do and worried for the one injured man who luckily dove into the sea from the boat as it exploded. He didn’t escape without some serious burns though and everyone was distressed as he came out the water screaming before being placed in a van and driven to the hospital. Once we got to Lombok, our bus broke down and we nearly missed the boat but we eventually arrived on the largest of the three Gili Islands; Gili Trawangan.

Our first impression was that it was much bigger and busier than we expected, although it is described in the travel bible as “the party island“! However we have been taking things easy generally relaxing on the beach by day and eating gorgeous food followed by a movie on the beach by night. The ocean is pristine and full or sea life and corals although the beach is a little stony and can lack the ’wow’ factor in places (the odd medicine bottle and flip flop doesn’t help but hey nowhere is perfect!).

We have had some adventures though, we rented bikes and cycled around the island on one day stopping off at various points to snorkel off the beach, where we saw two turtles feeding just before sunset amazing. Now we cant wait to go diving and hopefully swim with some sharks! Today we rented a surf board and practiced our surfing skills, although only a few dubious stand-ups, it was good fun. We have both been talking about what it will be like when we get to Australia now that it is getting really close. We’re nervous but excited about this next chapter, we can’t quite believe we’re going to have to get jobs though - how boring! :o)