Sunset over the western skies as we say Goodbye to Nessie (flying back to NZ...) and to Melbourne (staying where it is...)



The star you can make out is a bit of the Southern Cross. Don't ask me which bit. Look it up.

Next Stop - Brisbane.

I haven't watched Neighbours since I was a student and everyone watched it.

Charlene, Scott, Clive Gibbons in his garish shorts leaping out of his Ute to perform an emergency tracheotomy on Lucy Robinson on the kitchen table with a bread knife lest she die of a bee sting.

Even when I did watch it, it was always the same episode. Helen Daniels had had a stroke and Jim Robinson was pacing up and down a hospital corridor wondering if she would be all right. Or Jim Robinson had had a heart attack and Helen Daniels was pacing up and down a hospital corridor wondering if he would be all right. Only not very fast, on account of her stroke.

Now it's got jazzed up theme music and widescreen titles. There are really no old people in it anymore, just Hollyoaks-style teenagers. It's not even on BBC1 and Bouncer, alas, has bounced his last.

And of course, no-one to speak of really watches it. Not least in Australia, where they never really did anyway.

But it carries on relentlessly and it's Christmas...



All the houses on Pin Oak Court...



...in Vermont South have the sort of naff blow-mould santas and snowmen and reindeer in their front gardens. They get paid a lot of money for their houses to be (ab)used in this way. They even have a security guard on duty 24 hours a day paid for by the TV company...



So many of them have made so much money that they don't actually live in the houses anymore, just rent them out and relax on their private beaches somewhere.

The Alistair Mc Gowan look-a-like guide gives you the run down of who lived and died where and you can grab the sign and have your photo taken with it.



Then it's round the corner to Lassiters...



...which looks so crap in real life! And to Lou and Harold's general store, which I'm pretty sure used to be Daphne's Coffee Shop.

Erinsborough High is just around the corner. The guide turns it in to Erinsborough High by the simple addition of a sign which he hangs on the railings...



And then you get to see Janelle in a meet'n'greet...



Janelle Timmins? You know...? Her? (Nope, means nothing to me either...) Anyhow, she happily signs autographs on her Sunday morning and chats about her happy, happy times on the show. I guess it's either that or Panto. And it's not really Christmas. Only in Erinsborough.

(Note: they do tell you that "Erinsborough" was so named because it's an anagram of "Neighbours" without the extra O and R. Which is a bit like saying "good" is an anagram of "crap", but with different letters.)

It was a slightly different cultural experience in the evening.

As I have mentioned, Melbourne is a very civilised city - the entertainment on offer is of the highest order. Just while we have been here, Paul Weller and Brian McFadden have been here recycling their back catalogues. Although what back catalogue Brian McFadden has I'd be interested to know. (Actually, I wouldn't.)

They weren't appearing together, I hasten to add. Tony Hadley (ex of Spandau Ballet) and Paul Young are around sometime next week and they are appearing on the same bill, this time recycling and reliving the 80s. I bill Tony Hadley (ex of Spandau Ballet) as ex of Spandau Ballet, not because I think you won't know who he is, but because that's how he is billed on the poster, just in case no-one else does. I notice Paul Young isn't billed as "ex Streetband, who did Toast, you know, a little bit of TOAST..."

Oh, and we just missed Sinead O'Connor. One can be thankful for small mercies.

In the musical theatre genre, they were holding casting sessions for Billy Elliot and the previously mentioned Shane Warne - The Musical opens soon. (Thanks to Tina and Chris who suggested its fictional similarity to "Shayne Ward - The Musical" which I guess, if it existed, would tell the embellished story of poor northern boy made X-Factor-Good. And would still be more entertaining than Brian McFadden.)

So we went to see Wicked...



...which was excellent on Broadway and was excellent here too.

In addition, here (because they're not Broadway, and the alternative was Brian McFadden) they had "Wickeded-up" the whole street with spectral green lighting in all the trees. Best of all was the "Ozmopolitan" - a sort of fluorescent green alcoholic slush puppie in a light-up plastic glass.

Of course I had one! I'm on holiday!

It's Saturday afternoon and it must be sport!

For some reason, this brings back memories of the Grandstand theme music (after Swap Shop) and Egg and Chips dinner.

Anyway, it's football, but not as we know it. First of all, it's played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (or MCG, not to be confused with McG, the film director).



This is explained away by the fact that the game of Aussie Rules Football arose out of an exercise routine for the cricket team, hence it still being played on a cricket oval.

It's quite good to go to your first match not having any idea of the rules, such that they are. This means you really have to pay attention to what's happening to work out what's going on, how the scoring works etc...



Not that this strategy works because, after watching, I still have only a remote idea of what it was all about, beyond the fairly obvious bits involving two opposing teams wanting to get the ball between posts.

In normal invasion games, the teams start at different ends of the field, but in AFL, they can start where they like. The ball gets chucked up in the middle and then it's shifted around fairly randomly, some of it involving violence and tackling - even if the player doesn't have the ball. You can kick it, chuck it at other people and catch it and run with it (so long as you bounce it every so often).

It seems if you catch it when you're inside the arc markings near the posts, you can keep it and have a kick at the goal. Knowledgeable crowds wearing appropriately coloured scarves cheered when someone did this, so it must have been good.

Here is my action shot...



...which, if you've seen my ice hockey photos, you'll know is about as good as it gets.

We won (allying himself with Melbourne and adopting Mitchell and Webb "We won the football" phraseology) even though we weren't expected to, and that's another cultural opportunity ticked off the list.

Time for a bit of a lie-in today and then spent the morning in and around Melbourne.

In a recent poll, it is apparently Australia's most "liveable" city and it's easy to see why. There are lots of parks, wide streets and quite a bit of regeneration going on. The riverside is particularly nice, even though the Yarra River is very polluted and they are trying to clean it up.

At Federation Square, they have built some new piece of tessellation masquerading as an arts centre...



...and a steady stream of visitors was ambling through to (not) spend hours looking at the Danish Book Fair (or whatever it was - something akin...)

There is the obligatory bizarre pedestrian bridge (viz Gateshead, Berlin and, Kevin McCloud, Castleford)...



...and some big, non-descript sculptures...



We had time to take the tram to St Kilda...



...which is a bit seasidey: it has those shops where you can buy flip-flops (thongs), a jaunty hat with a slogan, kangaroo scrotum cigarette lighter...



...and it has Luna Park, which contains one of those rickety wooden rollercoasters which looks like it was bolted together in the late forties by prisoners of war and has maybe been checked over for safety purposes at least once every ten years since then.

Lots of excellent places for lunch though! (Of which we only had time, and the stomach, for one...)

It was now about 4pm and I may have given up listening to the iPod by now, but I imagine it had reached something along the lines of "The Wreck of the Sloop John B".

For this was Shipwreck Coast (®) and there are three major things to see here. For now, anyway. This is because the coastline is as it is because of massive erosion of the sandstone by the relentless Southern Ocean on a big exposed bit that doesn't have the luck to be protected by Tasmania.

And so you get these massive stack formations where bit of land have been left as the cliff had tumbled into the sea around them.

The most famous is The Twelve Apostles...



...and you can guess what's coming - there are now only eleven because one of them had the temerity to fall into the sea. But hey, they only changed the name from "The Sow and her Piglets" a few years ago so that they didn't have a tourist attraction named after farm animals and now they've had the sings done, the maps printed, the helicopters painted...

It can only be a matter of time before another huge chunk of cliff disappears, probably taking a few hundred tourists with it, and they can have twelve again...

Next westward is Loch Ard Gorge...



...two inlets, one of which is protected by this (near to collapse, I should guess) lump of red rock. Apparently it looks like a question mark from the air. There are two ways to check this. One is to pay $$$ and make Jeff another small percentage by going on the ludicrously short helicopter flight. And the other is Google Maps...



Handily, the Google Maps high resolution photography extends just shy of the question mark in question, so it's either the helicopter of take Jeff's word for it... It's the bit where the shipwreck was anyway. The most famous one anyway - there were 85 over something like 60 years. (It was definitely that way round 'cos he said "that's more than one a year...") This one had a Titanic style rich boy/poor girl/other way round possibly love story attached to it where one saved the other and wanted to get married but the other one went back to Ireland and they never saw each other again. I'm inclined not to believe some of the stories told by tour guides.

Finally, and the most south and west I'm going in Australia, is London Bridge - another rock formation which looks like this:



However, prior to 1990, it looked like this...



A couple had just walked over onto the right hand bit when the first arch collapsed. Someone telephoned the police to say that "London Bridge had fallen down" and understandably, the police thought they were hoaxers and took ages getting there. In the meantime, the TV network helicopters had picked up the information on short wave radio and there was a big race to get out there. Several arrived to get the first interview, but none of them could rescue them because they wouldn't have been covered for insurance purposes - the married couple had to wait for the official rescue helicopter.

Unfortunately, it transpired that the married couple weren't actually married to each other. They were away on a little illicit getaway - and they had also pulled sickies from work. Not good when you have the helicopters from several TV networks hovering above you...

This was Jeff's story, so it could have had embellishment, although he did say that several weeks earlier, BMW had hired the land and their new range was lined up along London Bridge and shot from the air for a new advertising campaign. Trucks and cars and support vehicles had been driven over, parked, driven back again. Three weeks later, the arch collapsed...

As you head up into the trees, it's a quick stop to see where the koala (not bears) are causing environmental havoc by killing all of them. Apparently there are 537 types of Eucalyptus tree but koalas only eat three of them. (Or something like that, Jeff and Norm argued the point earlier...)

We saw plenty of koalas, but most of them had the good sense to keep just far enough back from the track so that tourists had to use the dodgy zoom feature of their digital cameras. Which is why what you see below might actually be a koala and might actually be a cuddly toy which someone put on a branch to fool Americans...



No, it seriously is a real life living koala and you can see more of my portfolio collection for the BBC HD Natural History Unit on flickr.

They had kookaburras and parrots too, but nobody was much bothered by them...



Back in the bus, we learned that for tourism and branding purposes, the Great Ocean Road is divided into three parts:

• Surf Coast
  
• Green Coast and
  
• Shipwreck Coast

By the time the iPod had reached "Weather with You", the rain had started on cue to remind us that we were high up in the rainforest. It was at this point that Jeff turned into one of those enthusiastic people off "Lost Land of the Jaguar" - sort of a cross between Steve Irwin (in fleece'n'shorts appearance...) and Scrappy Doo (in relentless enthusiasm...)

So, down the track at Mait's Rest...



Lots of ferns and unidentified noises, sunlight peering through high trees and things dripping on you. A babbling stream threaded its way downhill, unseen under the undergrowth. Many of the trees are 700 years old and the rainforest in this gully has only survived because a major forest fire jumped the gully many years ago.

It's like The Eden Project...



...but real.

If ever you're in Melbourne and you have a day spare, you should Go West and tour the Great Ocean Road...



The road is long... 243km and so is the tour. We were picked up at 7.25am and dropped off 14 hours later, so it's very good value. The first stop is the aforementioned Aboriginal Cultural Centre, then straight onto the Surf Coast...



At this point you begin to realise that the iPod linked up to the coach PA system is going to do more than play light background music. "Let's have some surfing songs!!!" enthuses Jeff, our driver. I will leave you guess what came next...

Anyway, onto the memorial for the men who built the road. It's apparently the world's largest war memorial, built in memory of the Australians who died in WWI.



In the photo below, you can see exactly how the road clings to the cliffside on this part of the road. Jeff seemed not to worry about operating the playlist on his iPod at the same time as (not) keeping his eyes on the road in order to play us...



...well, you would think "The Long and Winding Road", but Jeff is not that obvious... Any guesses?

First stop on the Great Ocean Road tour was before we even got onto the Great Ocean Road, near the very industrial city of Geelong.

The Narana Creations Cultural Centre is a shop by any other name. Yes, you can have a demo of a digeridoo. Ditto Boomerang and spears and emu callers. Then you get ushered through the shop and it's heavily suggested that you might take any/all of these things back home as souvenirs.



The fact that there's probably some percentage deal going on between the shop and the tour company to process a certain number of customers per day doesn't make me want to buy anything. Although didn't feel as pressurised as in the jewellery factory in HK. You could get Norm's CD if you wanted...



His obvious talent with the instrument cannot disguise the fact that there is no tune...

Advance, Australia Fair!



If you can spot what's odd about the photo of the flag, you win a kangaroo.

Yes, I'm finally here and - Damn! - four months early to see this cultural spectacle...



Never mind, just have to make do with the views from the Rialto Melbourne 360° Viewing Deck...



Not quite the tallest building in Melbourne anymore - that's the Eureka Tower which you can see in the photo above - but still best for all-round views of the city and as far out as Port Philip and the sea one way and the Great Dividing Range the other. As always when I have my camera and I'm up a tall building, I took what seemed to be hundreds of photos, so if you have half an hour, they are on flickr.

Spent the day exploring the city, riding the free tram...



...looking at the modern buildings and arty street sculptures down in the regenerated Docklands area...



...getting locked up (by an actor, not a real policeman) at the Old Melbourne Gaol (spelled in ye olde way)...

...and drinking coffee.

I have only been here 24 hours and I love Melbourne.

It's a really modern, vibrant city, which still feels provincial. It has an easily walkable city centre grid of streets, great facilities, lots of places to eat and drink, fantastic public transport. It's clean and seems very safe (even after dark, which it is by 6.30pm).

People have said Sydney is slightly tacky by comparison. Will let you know.

By the way, if you get a postcard, it was posted here...



...55 floors up.