Our stay in Melbourne started with Jo’s family get together with Aunties, Uncles, cousins and their families. Great day catching up on a lot of years and the girls loved playing with all their second cousins. Australia Day was spent with a few drinks enjoying the gorgeous weather. The next day we visited some old friends who live a few streets away from Pinoak court aka ‘Ramsey St’ so Tom couldn’t resist a photo. We also spent a day visiting Seaford and the houses Jo lived in, her first primary school (Seaford North) and got a photo of the church her parents were married in. Then the girls played and swam on Seaford beach. We even managed a drive past nearby Frankston Hospital where Jo was born. 
A trip into the city was on the cards and we chose the hottest day of the year (38C) and final day of the Australian open tennis. Saw beautiful Fitzroy gardens and Captain Cooks cottage as well as the botanical gardens where the girls played in the water park to cool off. Walked over the Yarra river to Flinders Street station with views of the MCG before catching the train home where Uncle Brian had bought another Alpaca called Tom much to the girls delight. More excitement was to come when we discovered a baby Alpaca in the paddock one morning and Daisy promptly named her Lily. We were also lucky enough to see all 6 of the others get shorn and finish up looking like stick insects. Daisy has also taken up mechanics and spent one morning with Brian under the car with spanners and plenty of grease!
Our last week was spent visiting a wildlife park where we saw wombats, cockatoos, emus, dingoes, wallabies, snakes, koalas and lizards. Daisy added more colourful feathers, seeds, and leaves to her collections which seem to be growing rapidly…..
We also did a day trip to the Mornington Peninsula where we spent the morning on the beach at beautiful Sorrento, one of the first settled colonies in Australia and now has one of the country’s most expensive postcodes. Fish and Chips in the shade on the beach followed a busy morning building sandcastles! We then travelled back via the ocean beaches.
Well we thought we would be in Melbourne for a week but Tom has been for numerous appointments and tests since we first arrived which has set us back 10/12 days. Thank you to Brian and Leah for putting us up for so long. Fingers crossed we shall be heading for the Great Ocean Road shortly!
