Australia//Mebourne

G'd day MATES!!
While we were ready to be picked up by my friends dad, we first had to be sniffed by a very cute dog which sniffs if you have drugs, plants/seeds, or food with you..

Finally we arrived at Loeke's house and we both were very excited and made many plans for the 10days we would be in Melbourne:  surfing, shopping, seeing Kangaroos & Koala's etc. Loeke was my first friend who I met in South Africa in playschool. She lived there with her 2 sisters (Wietske now 11years and Rinske = 6 years), mom and dad. Then they moved to Holland where they lived for 5 years and now they are staying in Australia. Wauw SOoooo EXCITED !!

Loeke and I taking surfing lessons

Easter holiday had started and the next morning we went out of Melbourne, 9 of us split up in 2 cars. We drove along the bay of Melbourne and had a 'braai' for lunch, visited Point Nepean where the immigrant arrived in the 19th century and took a very to the other side. The cars stayed in the 'garage' and we went up to the decks and saw beautiful dolphins swimming with the ship.  We finally arrived in our first cottage, beautiful with enough bedrooms for all of us. The next day we first had school, but now with 2 more students, Loeke and Wietske. After school we went to the beach where Mirjam organised  real SURFING lessons. It was sooo much fun!! The whole family was trying to stay on the boards until we were very tired after 2 hours. (yaaay)

We also went to see the Great Ocean Road and visited the 12 Apostles. Funny that the Australians also have 12 Apostles, like in Cape Town. When we were driving to next cottage we spotted Koalas and we saw a dead Kangaroo which was run over by a car. We stayed in Halls Gap in the Grampions National Park with KANGAROOS all around the cottages - all alive !. We saw deer, but not as many as the kangaroos.We went to Ballarat (in the state of Victoria, Australia) a open air museum/fun museum where there used to be gold mining. There was a whole village around the gold mines, but the village burned down in 1860 and the history got lost. In 1970 they built it again for tourists to learn about how the miners lived there. In the Open Air Museum ,there were many activities, shows, performances, you could see how they made candy in the old days and how the people lived long ago. We also could do gold panning as well like they used to do. They made a little creek and put little pebbles and sand in it and every morning they put little pieces of gold in the creek so people could find something.

With Easter we were back in Melbourne again and of course we had to find big Easter eggs. Loeke and I made a luxury dinner with starters, main and traditional Rocky Road for desert. (chocolate with marshmallows, mars, smarties). During the dinner we had our school presentation we prepared about Australia, showed our movie we made during the trip and Tjeerd Pieter had a nice surprise.... He showed us photos from long time ago when we met in Cape Town.
Loeke and I also -of course- went shopping and bought a few nice cool things!!(just a few otherwise it won't fit in my suitcase)
We saw the main shopping streets of Melbourne and we went to a FOOTY game (a sort of rugby game, but with different rules). It was very busy and fun, but we were very cold because of the rain and wind. After the game we watched Crocodile Dundee (Australian movie about crocodiles) on our last everning in Ozzieland!
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Wauw the days past so fast! Now we have to say goodbye again! Our trip will go back to Singapore and then on to China - Shanghai and Beijing.

At school in Soveirgn Hill.

Blog written by: Loeke and Loes!!

                        Thanx MATE

(Next in China)

Found Gold

Finding Gold