Melbourne

I flew from Alice Springs to Melbourne early Tuesday Morning. The journey itself was quite sobbering as we flew over some of the land affected by the bush fires - a huge area was covered in a slightly browny grey cloud layer (the Captain refered to it as mist!), it was also possiblet to see the remains of some of the settlements. There was a very strong wind from the north when we touched down (strong enough to make landing exciting) and there was a definate smell of smoke around the airport.

The wind has since changed direction and the smell of smoke has gone - it has however been replaced with very British rain adn cold weather! So I have spent the last week cramming in almost every Melbourne based tourist activity possible... Melbourne is such a lovely city, it is obviously much older than Perth and has a very European cafe culture feel to it. I've spent many an hour (mainly due to being lost - )wandering round the landways which have some fantastic independent designer shops, cafes and art galleries. I was initially lost because I forgot that the sun is in the North (school girl error but quite disorientating) and then when I finally realised that mistake I had changed maps and didn't notice for awhile that this map had south at the top of the page!! There are also quite a few colonial style buildings left in the city center alongside the very modern sky scrapers which give the city a very cosmopolitan feel. The city council (?) have put on a toursit bus that does a circuit of the city leaving various locations every 30 minutes, this has proved a brilliant way to get a feel for the city. And meant that I have visited locations that I would normally have dismissed as not my thing - including the Melbourne Cricket ground (this one was in honour of Ken!) which has also hosted the Olympic games and the Commenwealth games.

The University of Melbourne has its campus just behind the hostel where I am staying so I have also been for a wander around the campus which boasts lots of public art work. the University also has colleges attached to it in a simmilar way to Oxford and Cambridge. I don't think students have to be assosciated with a college, but many use them as halls of residence in their first year, the colleges also provide tutorials on certain subjects. I was fortunate enough to be invited to high table at St. Hildas college (Phils sister was a tutor here and so asked a friend to show me round :) ). It was quite a surreal experience as we had to wear gowns and the students all stood up as we enetered. High table aws very like that at any Oxford college - except just before desert the vice principal stood up with a microphone and made announcedments as to where to meet to organise tutorials and who to buy tickets for the pub crawl from! There is also a Queen's college which was founded in 1887 which I had a quick peep into the grounds... not at all like Queens in Oxford but it was quite interesting to compare.

Tomorrow I go to Philipps Island to visit a wildlife sanctuary and watch a Penguin parade. I then head out on the Great Ocean road for Adelaide. My new discovery ( I wish i had found it sooner) is WWOOF-ing or Willing Workers On Organic Farms, in return for 4-6 hours work each day (general farm work, gardening etc) participants are given free board and lodging. I now have a WWOOF-ing placement on a horse farm organised in the Blue Mountains (-2hrs from Sydney) for 2 weeks time. The 'work' I will be doing involves riding and taking care of horses all day - something I have willingly paid to do in the past! For the worrying types, all the hosts have police checks, the organisation provides its own insurance for participants and I can leave whenever I want.