The Heart of Victoria

And so we're here in Melbourne. Been here for 4 days actually and have finally gotten round to catching 5 minutes to write something and get some pictures up.

They have  big thing for art and all that here. We've seen some cool museums on movie and film, and there are a number of alleyways smothered in brightly coloured graffiti.

It also turns out that the little Yorkshire cottage where the mighty James Cook was born and raised has been relocated to one of the parks here in the city, under the new title "THE OLDEST BUILDING IN AUSTRALIA"...obviously because at the time it was built there were absolutely no building in Australia...

Apparently an Australian bloke heard it was being auctioned back in the early 1900's and bought it for just 800 quid...That's right - no Englishman was prepared to pay more than 800 quid for captain cooks family home...shame on us.

He then had it dismantled bit by bit, shipped to OZ and rebuilt in the park! Amazing. Obviously I took advantage of the opportunity to try on the dress of the era.

For some reason I had always thought that Captain Cooked eventually met his end in Hawaii where he was caught and eaten by a local tribe on a place ironically called "Sandwich Island". Apparently this isn't true. Whilst he was killed by natives in Hawaii following a dispute he wasn't chopped up, placed in a baguette with lettuce and cheese then eaten on sandwich island...

We had the car for the first few days so explored the wider areas of the Dandenongs (easier to called it Dandelions), a beautiful little national park to the north east of the city. On our return we were told about how we have continued to spread our good fortune to all the places we've visited. It seems that just as we leave an area something disastrous happens. Turns out that the Grampians, where we climbed a few mountains the other week, have just suffered a nasty bushfire closing most of the park.

People of Melbourne, we leave in 2 days - you have been warned!!

 

We're staying with a friend who we used to work with in Looe nearly 6 years ago. He's a Melbournite and took us to his home suburb of Frankston and despite its unfair reputation we got out with all our arms and legs still attached so no idea what all the fuss is about..

They did have on display a huge sand sculpture exhibition which was epic. Some are more than 10 feet tall and built from the top down by packing a cube of sand very tightly then chipping away.

Catching our flight out of here back to NZ tomorrow for a week at mum and dads before heading on to some snow in Canada. Australia's been a REAL adventure - looking back at all the stories we've written its almost unbelievable how much has happened in the just the 8 weeks we've been here.

We're both looking forward to a week where we can just relax, might sound stupid - and I've said it before - but this traveling lark takes a lot out on you!