Big Things

No worries. Those were honestly the first words I heard on stepping off the plane at Melbourne. And we actually did have shrimp on the barbie a few nights back. All the cliches are true! And if you arrived in New South Wales at any point during the heatwave of the last week and a half you would assume that it really is exceptionally sunny every day.

But truth be told it hasn't been sunny all the time we've been here. And I don't think I've said "no worries" once (at least not intentionally. And we have eaten from the kitchen more than the barbeque (though I must point out that there are public berbeques for anyone to use in every single town we've been through, and the councils even employ someone to go around and clean them).

In Melbourne we were fortunate enough to stay with Lizzie, Trevor and their two dogs Cassie and Iggy. Lizzie is my Mum's cousin's daughter. Back when I was at work I was talking with my team as to what relative this family tree connection would be, second cousin, cousin once removed etc etc, but I can't remember what the outcome was or what we decided so I'll leave that one up to you. Whatever Rich was suggesting was probably the wrong one though.

Melbourne has load to see and do, including an ace museum, huge sporting arenas such as the MCG, and the Rod Laver arena which is probably being used right about now for the Australian open, and Botanical Gardens. Every city in the world, Australia especially, has Botanical Gardens. Some are good...and some are not so good, but always being free, they're quite often on our list. Melbourne and Sydney's are great, Brisbane's we weren't so bothered about, Adelaide's we didn't get to see and I think Canberra has replaced every tree in their parks with a memorial.

In 1964, someone selling Bananas in Coffs Harbour, NSW, came up with the idea of constructing a Big Banana outside the plantation to encourage people to stop and buy some. It worked. It also worked in encouraging over 150 more big things to be built, and idiots like me to become a little bit obsessed with seeing and photographing as many of them as possible. It started with Larry the Big Lobster in Kingston SE on the way to Adelaide; it will hopefully end (on this trip) with Big Captain Cook in Cairns.