Back to Melbourne

After the bumpy four-by-four fun bump ride, we picnicked at the bottom of the mountain by the obligatory babbling brook, in the shade of a big tree of uncertain provenance.

Ros's missing shoes called for Adam to drive back up the mountain to see where they'd been dropped, only for John's shoes to show up on the back of the ute where they'd been left... Ros's shoes were under the tarp on the ute all the time...

Then back to Melbourne via a little town called Yea and the greatest Lamington shop on Earth... they were down to one Lamington left.

Then a quiet evening in in Melbourne. Pasta. Big TV.

Next day John and Ros were catching a plane back to Blighty. Nicole, Eloise and I caught a tram in the City and wandered around a bit, snaffling ice cream and coffee before encountering cute horses pulling stagecoaches and submitting to pester power.

We hopped into the carriage and we were trotted around for a while. People took pictures of us. I tried to give them the finger in a surreptitiously humourous way - Nicole objected for some reason.

I broke the habit of a lifetime and tried a glass of wine in the evening, primarily to make a half-hearted attempt to understand wine-wankery. The French plonk was kind of smooth... at least that was the best I could come up with.

I don't predict a headlong dive into antiabstemiousness. If that's a word... though I didn't have a hangover.

We flew back the next day, back to sunny and not-too-hot Brisbane, where we picked up some dogs who were pleased to see us and went for a walk on the beach, where the water was warm.