Smellbourne, ARF.

So back to civilisation in St Kilda in Melbourne. We booked into our hostel and prepared to settle in for the longest stay of our trip! 2 weeks in one place, blimey!

Fist on the list was the sightseeing, which we performed with enthusiastic zeal.

Once we had finished the bland drudgery of seeing the city, we reached Fitzroy Park...

Here we are at Captain Cooks cottage, which they removed brick by brick from Yorkshire to be laid here in Melbourne. Here's Jen with some of Captain Cook's friends:

Matt as a sweet little girly

Matt and Captain Cook himself - he didn't move that much...

Next was the Model Village:

And Matt's favourite, the Fairy Tree:

We decided to check out the attractions of Melbourne's Gaol, where a man actually arrested us and locked us in the dark cells for 500 years...or 2 minutes, depending on who is telling the story.

They eventually let us out of the Gaol and we went down to explore St Kilda beach in the evening. There were penguins. No really!

Flashless penguin - they don't like the bright lights...

And then it was Christmas:

That took a little recovery! 3 days later we set out for the tour of our lives...

Yes Blog readers, you are NOT dreaming - that IS us outside Susan Kennedy's house in Ramsey Street, and here is the street itself:

After a neighbours viewing, lots of trivia and a bus tour round the filming locations of the show, we were greeted back at St Kilda by...

CONNOR!! He ISN'T dead after all!

Ah what a day - living the dream eh?

Obviously the next day was the 29th - let the celebrations commence for it is the birthday of Jenny. Hooray! First off we spent the night watching Top Gun with wine at the open air cinema in the botanical gardens. Obviously there isn't much to photograph here, but we did our best for you!

I liked it best when the audience sang along to 'You've lost that Lost that Loving Feeling', what about you Matt? Oh yes that bit was lovely.

The next day we spent a day picnicing and playing scrabble in the sunshine at the botanical gardens...

...before setting off for a terrifying evening at Dracula's Cabaret. Unfortunately we couldn't take any pictures, but again we managed a sneaky one just for you guys.

That leaves only New Years to celebrate in Melbourne. After a day spent in about 40 degree heat, the skies opened as we left our hostel and we brought in 2010 in a huge thunderstorm. The fireworks were very nice, but it was very wet indeed.

Onward Ho, to the Great Ocean Road we go!

In the Blue [ridge] Mountains of Australia, on the trail of the turpen-tine eee!

A 3 hour train ride (on a train with an upstairs, mind you) we reached Katoomba in Australia's famous Blue Mountains.

Matt and Jen upstairs on a train

We spent a few days here in a mountain lodge, relaxing in the calm atmosphere after the bustle of Sydney. We met some friendly Dutch people and they didn't know who Rolf Harris was!!!!!! However they HAD studied WWI poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon in school... After several glasses of wine and an unsuccessful Scrabble game, we met a drunk Australian called Angus who was obsessed with Rachmaninoff.

The next day we decided to head into the mountains themselves for a bit of light trekking round the Three Sisters. The 'light trek' ended with 900 steps up the cliff. Hmph!

Enough of this landscape malarkey...it's off to Melbourne we go now!

Can ya till wut it ees yit?

G'day from Down Under eh? So we are in Australia now and it's all rather hot and sunny while all of you back home are stuck under 20 ft of snow and what-have-you. Hah! First port of call is Sydney, so let's hop on the MattnJenny tour bus and see the sights :)

First up what trip to a major town/city would be complete without a visit to it's Maritime Museum?

Moving swiftly on we spent a little while exploring the Botanical Gardens overlooking Sydney Harbour.

We took a tour around the inside of the Opera house, but we weren't allowed to take any pictures, so we just had to make do with this one:

The next day took us up one of the Pylons on the side of the Harbour Bridge where there were plastic people (Jen's fave) and spectacular views of the city.

In the evening we decided to get into the Christmas spirit and went to Darling Harbour to gather around the Christmas tree and sing Christmas Carols. With Sway. They were rubbish, but we had hot chocolate and it was all very Christmassy. It even rained!

Darling Harbour

The highly talented accapella group Sway

We travelled up to spend a night in Newtown; a little suburb of Sydney with lots of cafes and bookshops and we visited the biggest and most chaotic bookshop in the whole wide world.

And then Jenny met Gandalf and a talking dog.