In Melbourne

Hello.

It's been some time since my last update, so here's one fresh from Oz.

We arrived in Melbourne yesterdaynight (11/12) after a trip of about ten days that took us from Canberra, via Wagga Wagga (aka Wogga, aka "place of many crows" in aboriginal tongue) and Alburry, to Melbourne. The busride from Canberra to Melbourne would of taken us more than 10 hours, so we decided to make the trip more enjoyable by taking some extra stops on the way.

We spent a few days on a campingsite in Wagga Wagga (which literaly translated means "crow crow"). The campingsite was right next to "Wogga Beach", a mini beach along the Murrumbidgee River. The atmosphere was nice and relaxed and the town itself was ok (nothing special, the largest inland city in Australia but not a lot to see or do). On our second night we got woken up by nightly visitors... A small local family of possums had discovered a loaf of bread that we had left in the vestibule area (the outertentpart where you can store bagage and other stuff... including food... NOT a good idea...). They managed to dig into 4 loafs of bread before we got our bread to safety in our innertent. Another lesson well learnt :) The nights after that the possums mostly left us alone, not counting the evening two of them visited us during our barbeque begging for food. Curious creatures... They just showed up attracted by the smell of food and didn't seem to take too much notice of us... We couldn't work out whether they were partially blind or just couldn't give a toss about us trying to drive them away by making noise and gestures. Even when Evy actually gave them a piece of bread out of her hand, they just took it and ignored her and us for the rest... That showed us what our place was.

After Wogga we left for Alburry in the hope we could rent a car there to drive to the Snowy Mountains and Mt Kosciuszko (highest peak in Australia). That didn't work out though, so our plan to see the Snowy Mountains has been put on hold for the moment. Alburry was a bit like Wogga, but then greener and without the possums. There was a small pool on the campingground, which came in handy 'cause the weather's been hot and sunny the last few weeks. We stayed in Alburry for 3 days and then left to Melbourne... First impression is it's a city full of life, night and day. Lot of stuff going on and plenty of things to do. We'll be here for atleast a week. After that we're not sure yet what we'll do. We're considering doing some work first, before we leave for Tasmania... We'll see how things go.

In short not a lot happened recently... Saw a lot of urban and suburban australia... enough to last us the next 8 months. Hopefully we can get to see some more of Australia's national parks in the near future, that's where Australia's true beauty lies... and for the moment we're seeing too little of it. But i'm sure that will change in the near future.

I'm afraid that's it for now... internetcafe is closing... but i'll try and get another post online tomorrow or the day after with a bit more info.

O yeah, our tent is fixed and almost as good as new again after working on it today :)