Leaving Tassie

On Tuesday we visited the third oldest city in Australia, Launceston, and its surrounds. Just 10 minutes outside the city is the Cataract Gorge which is where two smaller rivers come together to form the larger Tamar River. Having been to Low Head and seen the end of the Tamar it was only fitting that we went to Cataract Gorge to see the start! It was a gorgeous day and the gorge looked beautiful, especially now as the leaves are all turning amazing colours and just about falling off. Autumn is definitely a good time of year here. We went for a walk around the gorge and across the very wobbly suspension bridge, an odd experience! We then took a chairlift ride across the water to see the view from on high. It was so nice, also really silent, a great way to see the Tasmanian nature. This chairlift is also the worlds longest single span chairlift, i.e: the longest gap between two supporting poles, so that's pretty cool too! When we left here we had a quick look around Launceston but there wasn't a great deal there to interest us, except Australia's oldest sweet shop! You can easily tell that the buildings are very old if you look up but down at street-level they've all been made into normal shops with no regard to the heritage of the building, a shame really.

On Wednesday and Thursday we just chilled out and packed our bags before our Thursday flight. Thursday was really foggy in the morning and it delayed a lot of flights, but luckily not ours! The flight that was meant to leave 2.5 hours before us ended up leaving after us instead!

Once we were back in Melbourne we made our way into the city and found the 'Greenhouse Backpackers' where we were booked. It is a pretty big hostel with good communal areas but the rooms are very basic. The only really bad thing is that the walls are really thin (earplugs essential!) and there is no window in our room meaning that you don't wake up slowly with the light coming in. If I left Megan she'd probably sleep all day its so dark! We spent Thursday afternoon getting our bearings and sorting ourselves out with food for the entire time we're here.

Yesterday, Friday, saw us get stuck into what Melbourne is good for, shopping!! We walked a long way round the city, taking in big department stores, small independent stores and other in between before eventually getting to a Melbourne institution, the Queen Victoria Markets. These were massive and had pretty much everything you could imagine. There were all varieties of cooked foods and deli goods through to amazing fruit and veg stalls ending up with the rows upon rows of general retail. They were selling everything from tacky souvenirs to designer goods. This kept us out of trouble for a couple of hours before we carried on our trek of the city to go to the DFO which is the Direct Factory Outlet to continue our Melbourne shopping experience! We walked a fair few miles around town which definitely can't be bad for us.

Today is our day of sport, we are going to the famous MCG to watch some AFL and then going to the 'Turf Bar' (where we have actually been the last 2 nights) to watch Portsmouth vs Cardiff in the FA Cup Final which kicks off at midnight! Unfortunately I've just looked outside and its grey, horrible and hacking down with rain, not good to be sitting outside and watching sport!!