Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We hope you are surviving the cold British winter. We had our first sunny Christmas which was weird, as was being away from our friends and family, but the Butlers/Shields families had an amazing BBQ and made us feel very welcome. Fi also worked her first Christmas Day with the whole department full of festive cheer. Fi made 3 children cry after stitching/gluing them back together after they had injured themselves on new toys or due to excessive Christmas Day excitement!

Boxing Day was a great day again with the Butlers and some of the Shields as we made our way to the mighty MCG to see England bowl out the Aussies before tea for 98 and saw Cook/Strauss reach half centuries each. The final score was 157 without loss for England. It was the best day of cricket we’d ever seen and made lots of records including the lowest score for Australia ever at the MCG and the lowest ever score for Australia on home soil for over 78 years! Even Gail stayed until almost then end, despite her facebook declaration 10 minutes into the test- ‘when is lunch’?!

Our pre-Christmas trips included a weekend trip to the Grampian mountains in North West Victoria. We stayed in goldmine town Ballarat on the Friday night and then on the Saturday and Sunday morning we did some walking to the Zumsteins and the Pinnacles. The views were incredible. The weekend before Christmas we did a day trip to the Mornington Peninsula to swim with Dolphins and sea lions. It was a great day and saw lots of dolphins and sea lions, preferring (surprisingly) the ungainly, playful sea lions. The same weekend we had Dave’s school friend, Rob, and his girlfriend, Kaisa, over for a BBQ in our back garden. It was our first sunny BBQ!

Dave had his last day at Fosters on Christmas Eve (including a compulsory visit to the staff bar!). Dave did well, coming home donning bottles of wine, a cookbook, a T-shirt, chocolates and good luck notes. Fi only has 4 more shifts in December, 4 in January and 4 in February as the rest is annual leave!

We are very excited about the rest of our trip as it is mainly travel and reunions with UK friends and family. We are heading to Sydney for NYE with Alex Hargreaves and are looking forward to staying with his Aunt and Uncle and yachting around Sydney with them. On the 5^th January Fi’s Mum is arriving as a last minute decision and we are very excited about seeing her! We are all journeying to Cairns for 5 days, after showing her around our Melbourne for 5 days, coinciding with Fi’s university friends, Liv and Izzy, arriving. We then travel to Darwin where we will greet Daniel Bennett to celebrate (hopefully!) the end of his PhD with trips to Kakadu National Park and Uluru.

We are coming home so soon but much excitement prior to that! We arrive home on the 25^th February via Japan and look forward to seeing you all again soon,

Happy New Year and look forward to seeing you in 2011,

Love from Dave and Fi

Summer finally here!

We had a long weekend last week in South Victoria, at a peninsula called Wilson’s Promontory. We went with Jon, Gail and new friends Neil and Claire. Fi actually managed to enjoy camping (mainly because she’d committed to buying a tent so decided that was that!) Gail organised an amazing overnight trek, where we walked about 45k in 2 days, through incredible landscape. It reminded us a lot of Tasmania. We had our tents, food and water on our back (although this didn’t last long due to the gruelling heat and possums eating our food overnight!) We saw some impressive wildlife as always in Australia- possums (grr!), wombats, wallabies, parrots, dolphins from afar, and a snake from up close (brown and massive, which slithered across our trail as we were walking) As Fi was the only medic she was quaking at the thought of being in charge of a friend being bitten by a snake with no phone reception and miles away from civilisation!!

The weather is so changeable at the moment. One minute it’s glorious sunshine in 30 degree heat, the next we’re awash with torrential rain. For example, we went to Melbourne’s ‘Derby Day’ at the end of October where we dressed up in our best only to get soaked! It’s horse races and the nation literally draws to a halt for a week, including a bank holiday. We won a combined total of $2.30 (Dave didn’t allow high bets!) It was good fun to be part of a Melbourne event, despite the downpour.

Dave’s also turned a year older since our last blog. On his birthday his work had a ‘team building’ day in Mornington at a winery. It basically involved a slap up lunch and cellar door wine tasting-he was happy! We also had a BBQ at our house to mark the event (with more impressive rain) where Fi made a slightly dodgy pavlova-come-trifle! Dave also had a flying lesson in the Yarra Valley as a present from Fi and was actually allowed to fly the plane which was awesome.

Dave also had a weekend in Brisbane, with school friend Rob, as Fi was working. Dave went to Moreton Island where he did sand-boarding, snorkelling and had a few beers in the sun. That brings us up to date to this weekend, where we are having a quiet weekend watching the Ashes (Dave’s boss has noted that Dave pops out every time there’s a wicket, to watch the replay on the foyer TV!!) and Fi’s going to a work ‘spit roast’ out in the sticks, true Aussie-style. We can’t believe it’s almost December, we’ll be home before you know it!

Settling in month...

Firstly, a huge apology to our millions of followers - we have literally been inundated with tonnes of fan mail demanding when our next blog post will be. Wait no more!*

{*Please note: figures and weights may be exaggerated for effect.}

We spent a night in the Yarra Valley. the wine tasting region near Melbourne. Due to hangovers we missed out connection bus which meant that by mid afternoon we'd reached Lilydale, the end of suburbia - hardly wine country. We called a rain check on wine tasting that day due to sore heads and saved it for the next day. We visited two wineries and tried both their wine lists extensively. We did it 'Dave and Fi style' ie on foot and by bus-not recommendable!

Another weekend trip was to Tasmania. We flew to the capital, Hobart, on Friday night where upon we discovered our hire car had been given away as Fi had stated we were arriving at 9am not 9pm. We then arrived at our hostel to find it all locked up. After much hanging around we preyed upon some innocent backpackers to let us in-we kipped in their dormroom, only to find at check out that Fi had infact booked the room for the 8th of November, instead of the 8th October. Fortunately the owner found it funny, which is more than we can say for Dave!

Tasmania was incredible-unspoilt wilderness and wide sandy beaches. Tasmania is 1/3 national parks and about the size of Wales. We drove North to Freycinet National Park, home to 'Wine Glass Bay'. We had to hike a few hours to get there, but it was well worth it! The pictures don't really do it justice but give you an idea of how remote it was. We spent the night in a quiet sleepy beach town called Bicheno where we had fish and chips on the beach and watched some fairy penguins come in from sea.

Last weekend we stayed in Melbourne where we went out for a friend, Neil's, Birthday. Dave was the master of the dancefloor, much to everyone's surprise! Sunday was a slow start needless to say, but we all met up to dissect the night before and to enjoy Melbourne's first bit of sun in Albert Park. Dave has joined a 5 a side football team so he managed to be energetic on Sunday evening and do that!

That's our news for now. We can't believe how quickly time has gone, we are fast approaching half way into our adventure. This weekend we are off to Melbourne's Spring Races at Flemington Racecourse.

Hand-fed 'roos Anyone?

Greetings from Downunder! We have had a great 3 weeks with Dave's sister, Emma, to visit. We did some travelling with Emma including a long weekend in Sydney, where we got our first bit of sun! We saw all the sights and also met up with Fi's university friends Fi and Ally (and a band of other medics) and Dave's school friend Rob and his girlfriend Kaisa. We ended up at a random Australian house party on the Saturday night, where we drank strong alcoholic slush puppies (ingenious!) Dave was later caught on camera in our hostel looking rather worse for wear!

We also did a day trip from Melbourne to 'Phillip Island' which is famous for the 'Penguin Parade' where approximately 1000 penguins migrate home every evening. We upgraded to the 'penguin plus' experience which meant we were really close to the little penguins waddling past-it was really quite incredible! That same day we also went to the wildlife park which looked pretty run down and tragic on the outside, but turned out to be possibly the best thing we've done in Oz so far..We hand fed hundreds of kangaroos and wallabies in large areas of remote land. We had the whole park to ourselves and we were amazed at how gentle and tame the 'roos were!

We (embarrasingly to some!) went to the 'Neighbours Night' where we met some of the stars from Neighbours, including the characters 'Dr Karl Kennedy' 'Lucas' and Irish 'Connor'. It was awesome! We also paid a wee visit to 'Ramsay Street', site of where Neighbours is filmed. No filming sadly!

This weekend we sadly waved goodbye to Emma and then had a slow weekend of fine dining, coffees, a run in the park and some exploring to Yarra Bend Park and more of the Dandenongs with Gail and Jon. We found more wildlife and hand fed cockatoos and parrots (much to Jon's horror, he hates birds so watched from afar and took some pics for us!)

Dave has found an admin job with 'Fosters'. It's stress free, with nice people and has a free bar after work on Thursdays and Fridays! To note this event we went to our local steakhouse, enjoying a couple of medium-rare bits of cow, washed down with a bottle of Australia's finest red.