New Territory....

Once my arm was wrapped up in a sling we headed out of Sydney (previously the furthest I had been down the coast) to start the journey to Melbourne. We spent that night in Merimbula in quite possibly the cleanest and most authoritarian guest house I have ever stayed in. We met a guy who was on a medical secondment for 3 months, I not sure he'll last the week without breaking numerous 'house rules' (laminated).

We have spent the past couple of days in Mallcoota, a small coastal town famous for its large lake and rainforests. On the way we visited another National Park and a walk to the notorious sounding Snake Bay (although saw no snakes, probably no bad thing as the brown snake bite will kill you in 30mins). A couple in the carpark had just come back from a walk and bemoaned the lack of kangaroos, although at the time we were photographing the brightly coloured parrots. We symapthised and headed off, within literally 3 minutes of our walk we found a group of about twenty sitting and lying on the grass. They we unfazed by our presence and we sat within about 6ft of them for about 20 minutes, it was a fantastic moment.....

We found a nice beach caravan park just outside Mallacoota town, whereby Tom and Roz assembled their tent and I booked myself into a cabin. Dinner was a choice between The Tides restaurant (which we later found was closed) and the pub, so pub it was. After what seems another huge meal we played some pool. Halfway through, Tom, realising it was his round and his shot at the same time threw me his wallet. Unfortunately for Tom I was standing by the corner pocket of the pool table, and failing to take what Ricky Ponting would've found a tough catch, only managed to deflect the wallet into the pocket. We then watched in almost slow motion as the wallet turned on its side and fell further into the table. Roz then helpfully pointed out at this point that given they had to leave their passports with the Indian embassy in Sydney, Tom's ONLY WAY of catching the flight from Melbourne to Sydney was his driving licence, in said wallet. Once the landlord had stopped laughing he unlocked the side of the table, and using the cue as a lever we managed to recover the wallet after 5mins minutes of worry and laughter in equal measure.....

Yesterday we hired a motorboat to explore the lake, and then BBQ'd some kangaroo for dinner (pretty nice) before some beers in the cabin as an enormous rain storm set in for the night.