After a night in Ceduna we head for Adelaide. It’s a long drive so we arrived there late in the evening but upon arrival made our way into the city for a look.

Adelaide is a well laid out city with a perfect grid formation in the city centre. There are lots of lovely old wooden buildings with large balconies on the second floor which are real colonial buildings! The pace in Adelaide seems really relaxed compared to other cities. There is a city circle tram that’s free so it is a really easy way to get around the city centre.

We decided to escape the heat from the city so we hopped on a tram to Glenelg beach only a few miles out of town. There are beautiful botanic gardens in Adelaide and at night you can head to the Moonlight cinema in the garden. You can rent bean bags and sit back, relax, and enjoy a movie in the great outdoors! I still haven’t got over the novelty of going to the cinema outside!

The next day we head out of Adelaide to yet another wine making region! We visited the famous wineries of Penfolds, Jacob’s Creek and Wolf Blass. Many of the men like Wolf Blass who set up these wineries came to Australia with nothing and started a small vineyard from which these global brands grew!

There was a lot of German influence in Adelaide during it’s foundation; the small town of Handorf is true example of this. From the houses to the shops it was like stepping into a quaint German town.

We left Adelaide for Melbourne but as the journey is about 1000km we stopped halfway at a town called Warrnabool on the coast for the night and continued to Melbourne the next day along the Great Ocean Road. This world class road has some of the most spectacular coastal sights every few km. We saw some amazing cliffs and rock formations such as London Bridge; which was a series of massive arches in the cliff-face reaching out into the sea before part of it collapsed due to erosion!

The amazing part about it collapsing was that there were two tourists on it at the time, luckily they weren’t on the part that collapsed but there were stuck on the outer part of the structure until they were rescued by helicopter! The views all the way along the road were fabulous, the twelve apostles, named after 12 sea stacks bunched closely together, was amazing to see too and one of the inlets along the way was called Loch Ard after a boat of the same name crashed into it full of immigrants. I wonder where that boat was from! We finally reach Melbourne late that night after all the stops on the Great Ocean Road; it turned out to be a long day!

Melbourne was worth the wait as it is a really fantastic, modern and beautiful city. There is a free city tram which takes you on a full lap of the city centre. A great way to familiarize yourself with the city. We also visited Eureka, an 88 floored building to get a view of Melbourne. The view from the top was pretty scary! The next day we visited the Old Melbourne Jail which was used until the early 90’s. Ned Kelly famously spent time and was hanged there. It is a cool but spooky place to visit. You get to see the death mask of those who were hanged there (they used to take a mould of their faces after they died).

As part of the experience you get arrested and charged, your mugshot taken and locked in a cell. Great experience when you know you’re getting out in 5 minutes!! We took a walk up to the Queen’s Markets where you could spend hours walking around the different stalls. We hopped on a tram out to St. Kilda; a seaside town near Melbourne. Some parts of St. Kilda are remnant of a place that thrived as a seaside town in the middle of the last century, but there is regeneration in the form of a new promenade with lots of shops, restaurants and seaweed baths on it. The jetty is a sight to behold too with an old fashioned building on the end of it with a café- the type of thing you expect to see in seaside town. We saw a little Penquin just off the jetty!

It would be wrong to leave Melbourne without heading to home of 'Neighbours'. So I headed to Ramsay Street which is really called Pine Oak Court. Actual people live there!! They have 24 hour security on the street! I spoke to the security guard who told me when 'Neighbours' originally started they thought it would only last 12 months so they decided to use a real street!

Over 20 years later they are still shooting on the same street. The people who live on the street are compensated for the interruption the shooting causes! They can’t drive in and out of their houses when the 'Neighbours' crew comes to shoot. They can film in their gardens and right up to their front doors! Imagine living in a road like that it would be crazy!

After Melbourne we stopped for a night in Albury and then continued onto the capital of Australia and a new Territory; the ‘Australian Capital Territory’ with Canberra as its capital. We headed straight for Parliament house which anybody can go into and have a stroll around. It is a magnificent building built only in 1988 with a great view of Canberra as it is perched on a hill above the city. It is hard to believe that over 300,000 people live in Canberra when there is so much green to be seen. We also took a trip to the War Memorial museum which is a museum dedicated to those who’ve died in wars. The museum was massive and full of interesting stories and old planes. You could see everything from food rations given to shoulders to first aid kits. There was so much to see there you would need to stay the day to see it all.

I’ll be hitting Sydney soon! I’ll let you know how Christmas and New Year's Eve goes Down Under!