Well, we said our farewells to Tim, Katie, Aspen and Paddy and, borrowing their tent and sleeping bags we took our hire car (a little white Toyota Corolla) on the two day road trip to get from Melbourne to Sydney. We were sad to be saying goodbye, but we knew that we would be meeting up again before leaving Australia for good and we were looking forward to seeing the Murphys again.

We had planned to spend about three days driving the 1000 kilometres, but the weather was appalling and didn't really lend itself to getting out of the car and exploring, and so we managed it in two. We stopped at a little town called Orbost for lunch, and then as it was getting dark we stopped in a place called Tathra, near Merimbula and found ourselves a campsite for the night. As a camping novice (I went once when I was thirteen, and occasionally camped in the back garden when I was little), I very helpfully held the torch as Simon pitched the tent. The campsite was fairly well equipped, with a swimming pool, kitchen, games room (we watched a little bit of tv before going to bed) but we didn't meet anyone to talk to as it was quite late when we arrived. We didn't have any bedrolls, and so we spent a fairly uncomfortable night (fell asleep to sounds of wildlife which was great) but the tent and the sleeping bags were brilliant, and when we got up in the morning we strolled across the road and had a paddle in the sea. We drove for a couple of hours before stopping at Narooma for breakfast - we found a great little cafe on the waterfront called the Quarterdeck (http://www.narooma.org.au/quarterdeck.html).

We arrived in Sydney at about half past four on the second day, and were greeted by the three Murphys - it was lovely to see them again, and we met Aaron for the first time too. Our next few weeks were spent happily walking (both with and without David and the baby), reading, knitting and drawing (me, not Simon), and generally having a lovely time. Linda also visited for a long weekend and we went to Taronga Zoo again (you can never get enough of fluffy animals) and spent a lovely afternoon picnicking in Watson's Bay. We also went along to an open day at the local community centre where we joined in a pottery class and made clay models to be part of a ceramic city which was brilliant fun. David and Victoria also lent us their car for a few days so that we could drive up into the Blue Mountains - more of which in the next blog...

On a separate note, all of our pictures to date are now on Windows Live, and you can look at them here:

http://cid-5d774445eca82dd2.photos.live.com/albums.aspx

Hope you are all well x