melbourne: final days and farewells!

our final few days in melbourne were spent seeing some things that we'd had recommended to us. naturally, our first priority was the cookie bar for frozen daiquiris.

jo, jam and i went to rickitt's point where jo and i went snorkelling. whilst under the water i saw eleven-armed starfish, zebra fish, sea urchin, anchovies and a five-armed pink starfish. what a shame i haven't got an underwater camera! unfortunately i scratched my knee on a rock but otherwise it was a very pleasurable experience!

on the way home we went to brighton where we saw the brightly coloured beach huts and had tea at the sea baths. the beach huts apparently cost silly money but jam pretended that he owned this one.

we went to the weekly night market at st kilda which was buzzing with stalls, food, tight-rope walking and various other forms of circus entertainment! the atmosphere was amazing.

jam fulfilled a month-long ambition by riding on the luna park rollercoaster, the oldest wooden-structured rollercoaster in the world. at 101 years old it still has to be hand-cranked by a woman standing up in the middle! jam describes it as one of the more bumpy experiences of his life.

we headed down to the end of the pier in the hope of seeing some of the local fairy penguins. they only come out at night and can only be seen when the volunteers are shining protective red lights onto them, as they're generally hidden amongst the rocks. we only saw five or six as most of them have now flown the nest but if we had gone a month earlier we would have apparently seen tens more.

on our last evening with jo and jurgen, we went to a local vietnamese restaurant called saigon sally for a bon voyage meal, as the next day we were to head to pastures new; new zealand, where the climate is much more jam friendly!

bye bye australia and bye bye to my lovely auntie and uncle! thanks for everything!