Strewth!

Hi All, we're now back in the state of New South Wales at a place called Eden, just on the coast. It's pi$$ing down and is now our 2nd day of rain, we are even back to full clothing, i.e jeans and t-shirts!!

We left Mount Gambier all Ozzied out, but since then we have mellowed a bit, I think the blog helped us vent our spleen and we both feel much better for it. That said we do still walk around with a permanent scowl just to put people off talking to us, it's helping although it doesn't deter everybody.

After Mt Gambier we drove to a place called Ballarat, which is just outside of Melbourne and is a famous old gold mining town, there are some quite old buildings by Ozzie standards, dating back to the 1800's, one of them was an old weighing house were the miners used to take their gold to be measured, they also had a rather palatial cinema there so we indulged ourselves and went to see Elizabeth (with the Ozzie actress Cate Blanchett) The film wasn't much cop to be fair, but the cinema itself was like I would imagine the rooms at Buckingham Palace to look like. It was really grand and ornate and really luxurious. At AU$28 though I suppose that's what you would expect?!

We stayed in Ballarat for a couple of days, the weather was glorious so we spent the next day being idle, we're getting really good at it. After Ballarat we headed past Melbourne and down to a place called Waratah Bay, as we were heading onto the Wilsons Promontry(?) National Park the next day. There wasn't a great deal to do there and it was a maftingly (is that a word?) hot day, which meant there were 1000's of flies, nightmare! We did have direct access to the beach there though which stretched for miles, with hardly anybody about. In the evening we went down to watch the sunset and there was a couple of guys fishing. One of the fellas had a seagull taffled up in his fishing wire, so Matt being the good Samaritan that he is went and gave him a hand and managed to free the seagull who had become quite distressed.

So the next day we headed to the National Park, it was probably our hottest day in Oz so far, 30c+ there wasn't a cloud in the sky and Matt was insisting we do a 3k hike to see Squeaky Beach (it squeaks when you walk on it) I wasn't happy to say the least and I was like a sulking child getting my things ready, tying my shoe laces etc (my parents will be familiar with the scenario!) We had had the A/C on in the van on the way down so didn't have any real concept of just how hot it was, it almost stole the air from our lungs when we jumped out the van. So caked in SPF15 with 3 bottles of water we headed off for Squeaky Beach, with me squeaking about how unhappy I was about it. We were covered in flies the whole time, there was hardly any shade at all and the whole hike was a real effort. I have to say though when we climbed the hill and eventually saw the beach and the sea it was definitely worth while. The only thing was we couldn't sit down on the beach long enough to truly appreciate it due to the lack of shade and the flies. We dipped our toes in and made our way back to the comfort of our A/C van, luxury! (Pics of Squeaky Beach not on the blog yet)

After Squeaky Beach we hit the road again and headed to a small town called Lakes Entrance, again there was nothing much to do here it was more a stopping off and resting place, we stayed for 2 days before getting to Eden this lunch time.

I know I have mentioned the flies previously but believe me when I say they are now even worse, even the locals are complaining about them and have said they have never been this bad before. We have given up on the fly swatter and have invested in some heavy duty fly spray. Swatting them usually results in instant death, where as fly spray is a long slow and painful death for them, and when you have been plagued by them like we have then it seems like a small victory seeing them wriggle around helplessly, awaiting their doooooom!!!
God only knows where the saying comes from "I wouldn't hurt a fly" well I bloody would and will be hurting a lot more before I depart in 2 weeks.

As we left Ballarat we had to drive into Melbourne to get to Wilsons Prom, we were about 70k (approx 45 miles) outside of the city and we could see their impressive sky line. It kind of puts NYC to shame.

So the rain is due for another day I think before we can carry on enjoying the typical Ozzie blue skies and sunshine. I know we complain about the rain but Oz really do need some, the land is really parched and in some places there is no greenery at all it is so dry. They also suffer extreme water restrictions when there is a drought and prices of fresh produce like fruit and veg shoot up in the super markets as a result. It has a big impact on the wine business too as the vineyards suffer. We do what we can though and are buying up as much as we can, you've got to do your bit haven't you!!!

It's the General Election over here this weekend and voting is compulsory (not for tourists luckily) so we have been listening to the radio and all the fighting talk from Johnny Howard and the opposition leader Kevin Rudd. It looks like JH is probably going to get back in, one thing the Ozzies do love to bitch about is their government and immigration.

Any road that's about it for now, we leave Oz 2 weeks tomorrow for Singapore, we then have 7 weeks left of our trip to see Asia. As Muse sang "Our time is running out"