Ballarat

Another lovely day here! Just a short update to tell you what I've been doing. Had a lot of rain at the weekend, which most people around here was delighted about! The drought has been really bad and they are saying that the price of fruit and veg is going to sky-rocket shortly.

We went out to Ballarat on Sunday and although it rained all the way from Melbourne to Ballarat by the time we got off the train it had stopped and stayed away all day which was very lucky! Ballarat is a city inland in Victoria. It was build for all the gold diggers who came looking for gold! We went to see Sovereign Hill which is an open air museum set in the middle 1800's. It was really good and there was lots to see there - we went to a Gold Pouring demonstration, Sweet Making demonstration and got to tour two underground gold mines. I had a go at panning for gold but didn't find any unfortunately!

Pouring gold into a mould. $80,000 Australian Dollars worth!

Yesterday I went a walk from St Kilda beach to Brighton Beach, which is one of the big beaches around here. The walking and cycling paths around here are excellent, you are totally detached from the road and they usually even have separate paths, bridges etc for cyclists and walkers!

From Elwood Beach looking towards Melbourne

I'm still on the lookout for a job. There's another public holiday tomorrow (ANZAC Day- a holiday to remember Australia and New Zealand War Veterans) so I think all offices, shops will be closed.

Must dash as this internet cafe is quite expensive!

Puffing Billy

Puffing Billy Steamtrain

Been a lovely weekend out here, very warm. Had a bit of a shock last week when I lost my job on Thursday! They were taking on more (permanent) staff, and they didn't have enough computers, phones, etc for all of them and me! So back to the job hunting this week. At least now I've got some experience in Data Entry should be easier to get another job.

We went out to Dandenong Mountains on Sunday, and went on an old steam train called "Puffing Billy". It was pretty good, very impressive how much work has gone into preserving it all. I'm uploading some photos from it now. We stopped off in a little village called Lakeside and had lunch.

Not been much else happening over the weekend. Still got a few places to go to when we're in Melbourne - Ballarat and Bendigo we're looking into. Probably going to go to Tasmania when our flat lease runs out (towards the end of May).

I've added a counter to the bottom of the blog so I know how popular the page is!

Phillip Island

That's us back from Phillip Island, just enjoying Easter Monday before I go back to work tomorrow. Had a great weekend. We got the bus out to Cowes - the main town on Phillip Island and stayed there on Saturday night. Easter weekend was incredibly busy there and apparently there were 16,000 tourists (the population is about 3,000 I'm told!) We had a look around Cowes on Saturday and in the afternoon we hired a Peddle-boat and went a little bit out from the beach in it. On Saturday night we went to the penguin parade - it was excellent, there was lots of penguins around and we seemed to be in the right place as they walked right past us. We weren't allowed to take photos though.

Us with our bikes!

On Sunday we hired bikes and went to the Koala Reserve and the Phillip Island GP Circuit. It's a great place for bikes as theres cycle tracks all over, and we got really good bikes so that was a lot of fun. We were pretty tired by the end of it though! I've put some photos up on flickr but haven't had time to sort through them yet so some of them might be the wrong way around etc!

Koala at the Koala Reserve - we could get really close to them!

Easter

Hello! All is going well here. Another week at work done - got today (Easter Friday) and Monday off so it seems to have gone pretty fast. I've gotten moved into working on some different projects as the data entry stuff I was doing has all finished. At the moment I'm phoning people (around 6000 customers!) trying to get them to move their domain name to the people I'm working for.

Went out to Pin Oak Court today, which is where they film Neighbours (Ramsay Street!). It was really good. Just got the train out to Glen Waverley and walked. Its much smaller than it seems on TV. As you can see from the photo, its been a really nice day. I've got lots more photos on flickr of it.

Me outside The Bishops House!

Going to Phillip Island tomorrow, which is an island right on the south coast. Planning to stay in a hostel there on Saturday night and come back on Sunday. There's no public transport so I think we're going to be hiring bikes! It's not too big so should be fine. We'll head to the Penguin Parade tomorrow night as lots of Penguins come back to land at sunset from being out fishing all day. There's also a Koala Reserve so we're hoping the weather stays nice and we can get the most out of it.

Easter seems to be a big thing out here and all the big supermarkets, shops etc are closed today and Monday. Anyway I'll leave you with another photo I took today!