Melbournians are an interesting bunch. They are brash, outgoing, friendly; tall, big-boned, and barrel-chested. They say things like "How are you going?" and "Ta" for thank you; if they like something, it's always "quite nice", "brilliant", "lovely", or even "gorgeous". They really do say "no worries" a lot, but we haven't heard that many "g'day"s.

We had a brilliant excursion the other day. It was a tour we booked through Autopia, and it started at a wildlife attraction where we got to hold a baby wombat, and hand-feed kangaroos. Next we visited a coal mine in Wonthaggi, which was quite interesting. This place marked the southernmost either of us has ever been, and I think we were 60 meters underground at the time! Then it was on to Phillip Island, where we took a brief stop at a lookout point before moving on to the "penguin parade", where huge crowds of people gather every night as the penguins come up the beach after a day of fishing. It was cold, so we only watched a few dozen little waddlers before heading back to the van. It all ended with a pizza dinner, and was all in all a quite lovely brilliant gorgeous tour. Met lots of folks from all over too.

Last night we wandered into a pub that was having a lively trivia night and serving Harp (well, they were out of it). Just as we were joking that we'd found our place, they played a Pogues song. Brilliant!