A sunny Sunday afternoon in St Kilda

Last Sunday afternoon we headed down to St Kilda...  there was meant to be the St Kilda festival on but it was not really that interesting... So we went to the arts and crafts market which is always work a look and we took a load of photos. The weather was great so I thought I would upload them here for people to see......  St Kilda always has something going on - it is a bit Bohemian and touristy but is good fun! 

We took some good ones down at the beach - looking out to the pier and looking back at the city...  Lots of people were out on the beach and on the bay having a fab Sunday afternoon in the sunshine....

We then headed up towards Acland St going passed Luna Park and the Palais Theatre on the way...  Luna Park is good fun but it is most definately not Blackpool Pleasure Beach!!!!

We continued up Acland St and saw a few interesting things (which is pretty normal for St Kilda!).  This included this interesting camper van as well as the decorations above a couple of shops which I just think are kinda cool!!!

Never thought I would say this about a game of cricket!

It was awesome!  A few of us went to see the twenty/20 Australia vs Pakistan cricket match at the MCG last Friday....  Cricket has never been a game that interested me but I went along anyway...  We had fab seats in the bottom of tier and had a few beers whilst we were waiting for the game to start.....  Once it started, I was amazed by how fast and exciting the game was!  Lots of Mexican waves, music and fireworks - everytime someone hit a 4 or a 6 or was out!  The game itself was close - Australia really didn't look like they would win it but they did by a couple of runs!   The other interesting thing was watching people being thrown out the MCG!  We were sitting close to the notorious Bay 13 but for the most part we could not work out what they had done which was soooo bad!  Bring on The Ashes - Go Australia!

Tears for Murray

Chris and I were fortunate enough to get tickets for the tennis Men's final at the Australian Open.  We had been to the tennis the week before and seen Murray play on the Margaret Court Arena and we were hoping that he would get through to the final...  When he did there was lots of celebrating in our house followed by a shopping trip for blue and white face paint!

On the day of the final, I painted a couple of Saltire flags on my face - I had planned on going for the full Braveheart look but it was way too warm to do that! So I settled with a couple of small flags and the Lion Rampant wrapped round my shoulders....  We also took a Saltire to wave....

We went and saw the mixed doubles final before the men's final....  This game was ok - nice and quick - just the best of 3 sets...

And then it was onto the main spectacle! Luckily we were surrounded by lots of other Scots so there was lots of shouting and support for Murray and only a few for Feds.....The atmosphere was fab and lots of people were hoping that Murray would finally win his first Grand Slam...

 Disappointingly this was not the case - this time!  He has really came on as a player though so hopefully it will be soon.....  He also endeared himself to the crowd with a wee bit of a cry when he had to give his speech...  fingers crossed for next time Andy!

A belated update on The Prom

Hmmm it has been a wee while since I updated on here - guess that is a good sign that we have been busy!!!  Anyway, thought it was about time I wrote about our trip to Wilsons Promontory (or "The Prom" to Melbourne folk) in November.  This is somewhere Chris and I had wanted to go for a wee while....  However, there is not a lot of accommodation down there so we had to camp...  We did not bring a lot of our camping kit with us due to AQIS regulations so we had to wait until we had bought a bit of stuff...  So equipped with our 30 buck tent from Rays' Outdoors, our BBQ and Eski in the boot we set off for The Prom on a sunny November Saturday morning.  We had decided not to go down on the Friday night as we decided trying to put the tent up for the first time in the dark would be a recipe for an argument!!!!!!
It took us 3 hours to drive to the campsite in the Prom from our house in Melbourne.  The drive down was really chilled out and good fun - completely different from trying to drive 3 h out of the SE of England!!!!  We arrived about 11 am and pitched our tent...  We quickly had tent envy as we saw all the trailer tents etc which were already pitched there - our little dome tent looked tiny in comparison...  Some of the other tents were bigger than my 1 bed house in Stevenage and had better cooking facilities!!!!!!  We got excited about seeing parrots etc wandering across our pitch and quickly realised how much stuff we had forgotten to buy/bring....  chairs, picnic rug etc....  oh well lucky there was a big log at the edge of our site - shame about the 1 inch long ants which were walking up and down it!!!!

We got the free shuttle bus from Tidal River Campsite to the bottom of Mount Oberon and walked up it - this gave us amazing views over the Prom.  This walk was pretty steep and it was kinda warm but the views were definately a fab reward!!!!

We then headed back to the campsite and walked around the boardwalk which took us to the beach closest to the campsite...  On the walk we passed some huge rocks and a few parts of the river which are really good for swimming in. After a cool down and a paddle in the sea we built sandcastles and relaxed on the beach....

Then it was back to the campsite for dinner - to be cooked on our new BBQ.  Our Eski had kept our food nice and cool and we really enjoyed our dinner and some beers..  It was then essential to clear up any left over food from our tent as we had been warned the wombats would rip the tents to get to it!  After that we headed down to the beach to see the sunset with a few beers - awesome!

Then it was back to the tent and some more beers.....  When I went to the toilet block I came face to face with a wombat - very glad we did not have one of them trying to get in our tent in the middle of the night looking for left over food as they are huge!!!!!

After a surprisingly good night's sleep, we decided to walk down the beach to Squeaky Beach (so called because it squeaks when you walk on it!).  This beach is lovely - really white sands...  On the way we went to Pillar Point and got some good views of the area.

We walked along Squeaky Beach and headed onto Picnic Bay...  Again another really lovely beach.

We then headed back to the campsite and after lunch decided to head home.  We were worried about leaving at dusk as we had seen a lot of dead animals on the road on the way in and did not know how the Focus would fare against some of the Australian marsupials but we thought we would probably come off worse!