After setting off so early from the Grampians on Sunday morning, we arrived at the Big 4 campsite in Melbourne at around 10:30 despite a very confusing network of motorways trying to slow us down! We checked in and set up camp before making our way to the nearest Seven Eleven to buy tram cards. This proved to be trickier than we had anticipated as the nearest outlet was a good 20 minute walk from the camp and in the entirely wrong direction to the tram! Eventually, we had our tickets and made our way to the tram stop, giving us the opportunity to check out the area. Getting the tram into the city was extremely easy as it goes directly to the city centre and only takes around 30 minutes. We hopped off and set off on the walking tour in Gareth's Lonely Planet guide.
 
It was a fairly comprehensive tour, showing us the city and taking us around the main areas and points of interest in the city centre, including Federation Square, Forum Theatre, Scots Church, St Michael's Uniting Church, Parliament House, Princess Theatre and a little alleyway where the walls were covered in spectacular graffiti . We took a slight detour from the suggested itinerary and made our way up to Chinatown and to the Old Melbourne Gaol to get information on the tours available there before heading back into the main part of the city centre. We decided on grabbing a KFC for dinner and then going on to the Kino Cinema as the boys were taking me to see Les Miserables as a treat for being so brave during my waterfall incident and tonight was our only available night to go. The cinema itself was a little trickier to find than we had anticipated as it was downstairs in a shopping centre and was cleverly disguised as a cafe/bar! When we bought the tickets, we we taken aback by how expensive they were and were a little confused by the number of people buying bottles of wine with their tickets?! It all became clear soon enough though as we walked into the room it was showing in and saw just 4 rows of seats with each seat being a big comfy arm chair! As the first ones in, we got the pick of where we wanted to sit and chose excellent seats in the centre at the back! This proved luckier than we'd thought as the people turning up late had to sit right on the front row which was so close to the screen it seemed silly it was even there . The film itself was fabulous, I cried of course and even the boys said how much they had enjoyed it! Gareth was always going to enjoy it as he's seen the stage show and owns the soundtrack but Matt, on the other hand, knew nothing about it at all. Afterwards, he said that although he found it strange seeing Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman sing he still found it better than he'd expected. It was made even better by the luxury we experienced it in, it was worth every penny!!
 
On Monday, we made our way back up to the Old Melbourne Gaol. We spent quite a long time walking around the various floors of the old prison, reading the stories of some of the inmates, including their most famous resident: Ned Kelly! In case you don't know Ned Kelly is Australia's most notorious criminal after he killed several people, stole lots of money and his gang all wore steel body armour and helmets so they were hard to kill. Stupidly though they didn't cover their legs so he was eventually caught by being shot in the leg stopping him in his tracks and making it easy to arrest him! We all found it fascinating to read his and many of the other convicts tales although some of the reasons for their imprisonment seemed rather harsh, for example, being homeless! It took us most of the day to explore the jail and take it all in so there was just time to have a quick look for the pub we were supposed to be going to that evening before heading back to the camp for dinner . As it turns out, it was a good job we did decide to do a rekkie for the pub as we were in the completely wrong part of Melbourne and would have missed the entertainment we had booked onto if we had gone there!!!! Once back at the camp, we set about cooking burgers on the BBQ during which time we got chatting to a lovely Swiss couple who come over to Australia regularly to travel around and explore the outback. Then it was time to get ourselves ready and get to the main event of our trip to Melbourne... Neighbours night!!! As usual we had got back to camp with hours to get ready but, after taking so long to cook and chat, we now had to rush around so we weren't late.
 
We were all looking forward to the Neighbours night but for very different reasons: me because I just love Neighbours and watch it all the time back home, Gareth because Dr Karl Kennedy and his band 'Waiting Room' were billed to be performing and Matt because of Dr Karl and because he had a crush on Steph Scully when he was younger and she was one of the stars making an appearance! After thinking we were going to be late and dashing from the tram stop, we actually arrived in plenty of time and were able to grab a drink before joining the queue to go into the function room at The Elephant and Wheelbarrow Pub . As we chatted with people in the queue it was clear we weren't the only ones who weren't going to be able to answer much on the quiz, thankfully. As we walked through, we were greeted by a man who assigned us a table where 3 other people were already sitting. We spent a while chatting and getting to know them: they were 2 sisters and 1 of their husbands all from England originally but now the couple live in Australia and the sister was out on holiday. It was obvious it was the sisters' idea to be there as the husband didn't hide the fact he didn't want to be there at all. A bit later we were joined by another girl who was there on her own. While we were waiting for everyone to arrive, we were given some slips of paper on which we could write questions to the stars and they would then answer them during the Q&A session, we also had to come up with a team name for the quiz! Once everyone had arrived, the compere for the night introduced himself, he was a crazy Aussie ranger?!, who very quickly made everyone sing the theme tune and loved saying the word Neighbours in a very excited manner . He found out that pretty much everyone in the room was British (as you'd expect) and reeled off lots of cheesy banter then the first round of the quiz began! It turned out the quiz was actually more general knowledge than Neighbours trivia which was lucky for us but even luckier the people on our table were actually pretty clever and knew most of the answers so only needed a little help from us! After the first round, there was a short break so we could get drinks and then the second round started! This was in the same format as the first round and again our teammates had it covered with just a couple of offerings from us! 
 
Once all the quiz sheets were handed in, the Q&A session with the stars started! The stars we would be meeting were: Steph Scully, Stingray and Irish Connor! They each came out, introduced themselves and told a few little stories about their time on the show and what they have been up to since! It was all very cringeworthy but so funny!!! They then read out some of the questions people had written down and, of course, one of Matt's came up! If we are being totally honest, it wasn't actually Matt's question but I didn't want my name read out and he didn't care so it became his! It was whether they like English soaps and if so which is their favourite? Stingray answered and said Eastenders because when he did pantomime in England, he worked with the actor who played Nasty Nick and became good friends with him so basically adopted Eastenders because of him! Once all the questions were finished, the stars began their tour of the audience, chatting, having photos taken and signing autographs! While this was happening, the compere hosted 3 competitions: a kissing one, a dance off and a singing competition! As you can imagine we steered well clear of these . Even though they were cheesy games, they actually came with very good prizes, including a trip to New Zealand! We had a good laugh watching those who did enter as they made idiots of themselves.
 
It was very surreal meeting the 3 actors but they were all really friendly, chatting to us for a while, signing beermats and having photos taken. Unfortunately for Matt, Steph didn't look anywhere near as attractive as she did in the show, she now has dark hair instead of blonde, is tiny and has had a lot of work done on her face so she looks quite fake! He was quite disappointed but I was secretly relieved as it meant he wouldn't be swapping me for her!! Haha! She still found it funny when we told her he fancied her!
 
With the meet and greets and the competitions over, they started to read out the results of the quiz. We thought we must have done fairly well and when they said the winner won with 36 out of 50 we were surprised as we thought we actually did better than that. We sat slightly puzzled as they went through the teams on reverse order and our team name didn't get called out, much to our surprise that was because it turned out we had actually won!!!! It was hilarious as we all cheered and got clapped by everyone else . We're more used to coming pretty much last in quizzes not winning so this proves that all you just need a couple of clever people to do it all for you. Even more surprisingly we had won a free Neighbours tour of Ramsey Street. This was the exact same tour we were only today going to pay $50 each for, so we couldn't believe our luck! The only thing left was the band, so the boys were getting excited! We had heard Stefan Dennis, who plays Paul Robinson, was also going to be performing with Waiting Room but what actually transpired was he was performing rather than Dr Karl!!!! We were not impressed!!! And once he started singing, we definitely weren't as he doesn't have the best voice and he kept forgetting the words to the songs he was singing! Not good! We stayed for a while before deciding enough was enough and making our way to catch the tram, via the pizza shop! Even though it was a very cheesy and quite cringeworthy night it was actually really good fun and we had lots of laughs with the people we had met. 
 
After a little bit of a lay in on Tuesday morning, we caught the tram up to Brunswick Road as we had heard this was a particularly good area for shopping and was quite a quirky street . After all the hype, we were pretty disappointed to find a really run down looking street with mostly phone shops, take aways and alternative clothing stores, not really the sorts of places we wanted to shop in or spend our money! After a quick team talk we decided to hop back on the tram to the city centre where we called into Ripcurl to stock up on thongs as we were all in need of some and they were 2 for $30 instead of $20 each so I kindly offered to go halves with both Matt and Gareth so they could have a new pair each and I got 2 pairs, oh and I treated myself to a baseball cap too! All fully kitted out with our new shoes and our old ones deposited in the bin conveniently located outside, we made our way to the Quayside where the Melbourne Stadium is located as Matt was keen to have a look and get some photos of it. Realising it was getting late and we had a dinner reservation at 8pm, we dashed back to the tram station and hopped on the next tram to the camp. We were all very tired so just wanted a rest and possibly a little shut eye but we got chatting to a very friendly man named Parker . It turned out he was a very chatty man indeed and on top of that he was going all the way back to the same stop as us so we talked the entire way back and learnt a lot about his family and background. He has traced his ancestors back to the UK so was very keen to hear about England and Norfolk, not that he had heard of Norfolk, and enjoyed looking on Google maps to see where we live and our part of the world! We all got off the tram at our stop and walked with him to his house before continuing on towards the campsite. No sooner had we been saying how much of a lovely man he was, to our surprise a car pulled up beside us with Parker behind the wheel insisting we get in and he would give us a lift to the campsite. This is partly because we had mentioned to him we were in a rush to get ready and back on the tram as we were going out for dinner but mostly because he was a lovely, kind gentleman who had got in and seen his wife was on the phone so straight away turned round to come give us a lift as he had nothing better to do . It's not very often you seen generosity like that from a complete stranger so we were all a bit taken back by it.
 
We didn't have long to get ready so we quickly showered and changed before making our way back to the tram and back into the city! We made it back in really good time, enough time in fact to call into a Belgian beer house just opposite the restaurant where I enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine while the boys tried out some of the different beers on offer. At just before 8pm, we made our way over to Rare Steakhouse.
 
If you remember back to the Brisbane blog we said about going out for a nice meal as a special treat from my parents for dealing with the whole crashing Sonic and getting Keo situation. Well although this is now quite a while later, this is actually that meal we had been promised. After looking around online at different restaurants this looked like a really nice one and we weren't wrong. As soon as we arrived, we felt a little out of place as it seemed very posh. Matt and I shared a bottle of wine and Gareth had another beer as we looked through the menu . We had been told to have 3 courses if we wanted so Matt ordered garlic mushrooms for starter whilst Gareth and I went for a selection of oysters as we'd never tried them before. This was quite brave of us as we could quite easily not like them but we thought we'd give it ago. They came in 4 different flavours: natural, Chinese spices, tomato and basil and bacon. They were all very nice actually except the natural flavour which just tasted very salty and of sea water. Matt and I ordered 10oz fillet steaks with a peppercorn sauce for me and a blue cheese sauce for Matt, whilst Gareth went for a Porterhouse steak with garlic butter. To say these steaks were amazing is an understatement! They were possibly the best steaks we had ever eaten. The meat was so beautifully cooked and tasted so good that Matt and I didn't even bother to put our sauce on it as it was too good to cover in sauce. Even the chips and the salad were delicious with us having to dip our chips in our steak sauces to make use of them. This was becoming more of a treat than we had imagined, it was almost a sad moment when we finished our mains as we never wanted it to end! We all then ordered chocolate fudge cake and ice cream for dessert as it would be rude not to judging by how good the rest of the meal had been! It did not disappoint either as it was a lovely big slice of the most delicious chocolate cake, it was so hard to finish it but it was way too good to leave any . We had no trouble at all leaving a nice tip as the waitress had been so helpful and friendly chatting to us every time she came to the table. Feeling very full and pleased with our meal we headed for the tram before they stopped running as we had to be up at about 6am for the tour of Ramsey Street. We all can't thank my Mum and Dad enough for this absolutely wonderful meal, all the stress we had for those 2 days was worth every bit of that beautiful meal! Also if anyone who reads this ever goes to Melbourne you absolutely must look this place up and try it. 
 
The next morning our early alarms went off and with us feeling slightly hungover and very tired we dragged ourselves up as it was a rather cold cloudy morning. Getting up slightly later than planned we didn't even get time to have showers as we dashed back down to the tram station. The tour started at 8am so we couldn't afford to miss the tram at 7ish. Luckily we made it so we got to the city 20 minutes early in the end. Unfortunately for us not only was it cloudy today but it was actually freezing cold and we all only had shorts, t shirts and thongs on! After getting a cuppa from the cafe next door to the tour office, we were soon on the bus and greeted by a very excitable Irish tour guide who either really loves his job or has gone slightly insane from doing it too many times . He was a very funny tour guide which made it really enjoyable as he talked lots about Neighbours: things that have happened in it, characters who have been killed off, demonstrated just how twisted all the story lines are and how as soon as someone gets married one of them always dies except for Karl and Susan Kennedy, he even went on to point out how much of a bad mother the beloved Susan is and constantly pointed out how it's all fake and not real, it was so funny! He was so knowledgable about Neighbours it was ridiculous but he openly took the mick out of himself for spending most of his uni life watching it.
 
He stopped at a local school to show where certain scenes were filmed on the basketball courts, on the steps and at the entrance as they used to use this everyday school to film at once the kids had finished for the day. We then headed to the studio where most of the filming is done, he took great pleasure in telling us about how much the producers are cheap skates and the sets are nothing special at all it's just lots of clever camera work and angles that make it look good . There's a big canteen that the staff there use and on the outside it's just a plain black modern looking building with big darkened glass windows. We learnt that this becomes the hospital, funeral directors, the police station and other things, all they do is stick a few signs outside of it, make the first scene someone walking past the sign and it instantly looks like what they want it it look like, easy! It's all because as viewers we just become stupid and gullible apparently! Next up was a small area where there were the sets for the mechanics' garage, Grease monkeys burger bar, a small shop from years ago, Kyle's handiman yard and a big billboard advertising a new housing venture near Lassiter's. From the road they all look quite good but, apart from the garage, once up close they're nothing special at all. Even the police station jail was just an exit door from the canteen which they painted the walls either side and stuck some bars on the window; rubbish really but as gullible viewers you don't notice it. If you can remember when Paul Robinson was pushed off the balcony on the roof at Lassiter's then it looked quite fancy but its far from it, it's just a small tower building where each side you look at it is a different building . If he had fallen off slightly to the side of where he did, he would of landed in a completely different part of Erinsborough. How funny! We also saw Lucas's work van and some steps which Dr Karl used to train for a marathon!
 
After the studio visit, we had just a short drive to Ramsey Street. Ramsey Street is in actual fact a real life cul-de-sac which real people live on and it's not even called Ramsey Street, it's actually called Pin Oak Court!! They also adapted the house numbers by adding digits in front or behind which are removed again after filming. They made these changes so people would never be able to find it or know where it was filmed but as soon as the Internet was invented, it was leaked very quickly so now they have 24 hour security and do tours, so things have changed a bit. As it's still a normal everyday residential street, they pay the residents money to film there. They only ever film outside the houses, either in the gardens or out the front in the street or on the driveways. This is to keep the residents' privacy and the inside of the houses are sets back at the studio .
 
We had quite a long time there taking photos of each of the houses and holding the Ramsay Street sign only having to stop whenever a resident went in or out of their house. The producers have bought one of the houses on the street and use it to store equipment and as a base when they are filming in the street so when it started to rain we were able to run for shelter in the garage! It was so surreal actually being on the street and remembering back to episodes where they have stood where we were, especially the opening credits where they are playing cricket there! Our time on Ramsay Street came to an end just as the weather made a real turn for the worse so, with us all back on the coach, we made our way back to the city centre with an old episode on the DVD player: Dee & Toadie's wedding where, at the end of episode, Dee dies! See it's true, once you are happily married, one of you must die!!!!
 
The final part of the tour took place back at the cafe next to the tour office as it was the meet and greet with one of the stars and our star was ... Libby Kennedy!!! Just like Steph Scully, she looked completely different to how we remember her from the show but unlike Steph she looked bigger, much older and had very puffy eyes! She was quick to clear up the 'usual questions' before we were able to ask any, including the fact that she has no plans to return to the show any time soon as she is now a full time mum to her daughter having just been granted solo custody after a messy divorce from her crazy, psycho, bigamist husband! She was very frank and honest taking about her battle with drink and drugs but has now been sober for a while and has her life back in track! I don't know about the rest if the people on the tour but they definitely weren't questions we were thinking of asking! Once all the questions were out of the way, we were able to have photos taken with her and get her autograph and then our Neighbours experience was over!
 
By the time the tour finished, we were all starving so, after agreeing we probably shouldn't go back to Rare for lunch, we walked round to Pie Face! We all wanted to pick up a few more souvenirs and Gareth needed to pack ahead of his flight so we went our separate ways in an attempt to speed things up . After exhausting the city and having enough of being so cold, Matt and I got the tram back to Brunswick Street, a shopping street in Fitzroy not far from the campsite. We think this might actually have been the Brunswick Street we should have gone to yesterday instead of the rubbish one we did visit. I was pleased as I was able to cash in my Christmas present from Gaz and get my eyebrows threaded! By the time we got back to camp, Gareth was pretty much organised so we set about cooking dinner. We were going to have chicken curry but the chicken had gone off so we had to settle for vegetable curry! Cooking dinner wasn't without the now obligatory silliness as we tried to communicate to Matt all the things we had forgotten to bring to the cooking area without shouting to him across the camp site, instead we tried to use our bodies to spell the items making letters like in the YMCA song, this wasn't hugely successful though, for example he thought we were spelling rite when we were actually spelling rice!, so we still ended up having to shout anyway, completely defeating the object of the game! Once we did have all the ingredients we needed and the cooking was underway, a man from Adelaide came over to cook his family's dinner and we got chatting to him . He was a lovely man who has done a lot of travelling around Australia as well so we compared stories and chatted about each others' lives. 
 
For once we had actually managed to do all our jobs in good time of when we needed to leave for the airport so I suggested rather than just sitting around the campsite, maybe we would be better off going to the airport and getting Gareth checked in, that way if there were any problems with his flight or baggage, we had plenty of time to sort it out - I've watched enough episodes of Border Control Australia & New Zealand to know it's not always that easy to get in or out of those countries! - and if not then we would just have to sit around the airport instead of the campsite, so we would be no worse off! As it happened, unfortunately I was right about New Zealand being awkward and as Gareth checked in, he was asked to produce his flight details for leaving New Zealand?! At this point he didn't have a flight booked out as he hadn't decided quite how long he was going to stay and whether he was going to hop around the South Pacific islands before returning to Australia or not as they have recently had bad cyclones! Despite explaining all of this, the rules are you cannot enter New Zealand without a valid ticket for your departure back out! This meant we had to dash off and search the Internet for a reasonably priced ticket back to Australia! To make matters worse, Gareth's Australian Visa was due to expire on the 4th February (he was planning on applying for his next 3 month Visa while he was in NZ) so his flight back into Australia had to be for before then or it wouldn't be valid and they still wouldn't let him in!!! This meant we only had a couple of weeks to look at and as they were so soon they were all pretty pricey! Eventually we found a reasonable one with Emirates which allowed you to amend the dates and flight details free of charge so he could either move it back once he got his Visa sorted or change it completely and use it for his flight back to England at the end of his whole trip! With a disastrous situation averted, we made our way back to the check in desk and got him checked in! The next drama was then the weight of his baggage! All of his camping gear took him overweight by 9kg which was going to cost nearly $80 in excess baggage, this was quickly resolved though as we offered to hold onto it for him and sort out later where he would collect it for his next camping trip! After what felt like hours we were able to see Gareth through and onto his flight: our trio had just become a duo and after 3 months together we were really going to miss him!
 
It felt really strange on Thursday morning with just the 2 of us on the campsite. We packed everything back into the van and set off for Sydney feeling very much like we had forgotten something, or someone! This was the 3rd and final time we would do the 9 hour drive between Melbourne and Sydney and with just the 2 of us we would have a lot more driving to do each, well Matt certainly would anyway! He he!
 
We were looking forward to exploring Sydney properly but, as many people say normally if you like Melbourne you won't like Sydney (and vice versa) we were unsure what to expect as we had really enjoyed our time in Melbourne!