Melbourne

We left home right on 7am Friday. I pushed Gibbo to the side and ran to be sure to beat him into the car so as to not be blamed if we were running late to the airport. In the process of acting like a child, I tweaked my left upper leg. Duh. Karma.

We made it to the airport on time and printed our own boarding passes at the self check-in kiosk. We then walked to the self check-in baggage area where Gibbo checked his bag in and off it went. He then proceeded to press nearly every button in rapid succession to try to check my bag in, using his ticket barcode and electronic baggage tag. We had a small difference of opinion at this point (yes, unusual I know) and I told him to step away from the machine. I then calmly scanned my boarding pass, put the bag on the scales with the electronic tag clearly pointing toward the scanner - and off the bag sailed down the chute, headed for Melbourne. I don't know what comes over him in an airport - he appears to go into a mild panic, wants to rush the whole process, starts pressing lots of buttons (he once pressed the Yes button to the question "Are you carrying dangerous or flammable goods?") and REALLY stresses me out.

We didn't manage to get seats together but that was ok. I was sandwiched in between two men; one was correcting a paper on "the effect of energy waves in drilling machines" or something equally as riveting-I couldn't make head nor tail of it-and a young athletic looking man with nice skin and a bald head. He had the rather annoying habit of occasionally jiggling his left leg. Those people close to me know that a jiggling leg or toe causes an immediate reaction in me - I tend to call out STOP JIGGLING at regular intervals. Of course this wasn't appropriate behaviour to display on a plane full of people; I had thought, momentarily, of grabbing his left leg just above the knee so as to stop the movement but I thought that this also might not be appropriate behaviour to display on a plane (or anywhere else for that matter). He may have thought I was letting my inner cougar loose. So I just sat there and tried to concentrate on reading the paper, eating my sandwich, drinking my cup of tea and resting.

We landed in Melbourne and, once clear of the terminal, were accosted by Dodgy Bros Inc who I'm sure ran some sort of scam to divert unwary (or in our case, gullible) travellers away from the regular taxi service and into their own small fleet of unmarked taxis. They saw Gibbo coming a mile away. We were with two other people who work for a company known to wear pink shirts so the four of us climbed in and headed for our hotel opposite the MCG.

We booked in and headed to our room on the 20th (top) floor. Gibbo went to meetings, I walked to the city centre and spent a couple of hours wandering, taking photos and soaking up the atmosphere.

I spent a large amount of time in a 200m stretch where there were 8 or 9 camping/outdoor shops. After checking out the range of shoes in every shop I went back to Paddy Palins and bought a new pair of walking shoes - the Merrell Siren Sport Gore-Tex XCR. They have turned out to be a very comfortable shoe.

I made my way back to the hotel where we had a few stressful moments when Gibbo's presentation wouldn't open on the laptop. Eventually, everything worked out. We headed to the cocktail party which lived up to it's usual standard and when it finished we went downstairs for a couple of drinks then headed off to bed.

I walked to the Yarra on Saturday morning and watched the rowers row. There was a pooch having a wonderful time chasing ducks on his own until a new friend came along. They had a wonderful time together and I stood and watched them for ages.

I intended heading back to the camping stores to buy a new beanie but on the way I walked through an arcade and saw a sign on a hairdresser window that said "no appointment necessary". As it's been nine months since I had a haircut I thought I'd take the time to get a trim. Mario, my stylist, was a very polite man. He sat me in the chair, looked at my hair ends, said my hair was far too long for my face shape (my hair should sit just under my chinline) and sent me off to the basin for a shampoo. Ninety-two dollars later I felt and looked like a new and younger woman (Mario agreed, politely again). I then went next door and had an eyebrow wax just to finish off the transformation. I didn't end up buying a new beanie - didn't want to ruin my new look.

On the way back to the hotel I passed the jeans shop where I buy the only brand of jeans I really like; so in I went and walked out ten minutes later with a new pair of Riders Bumsters. New jeans, new walking shoes and a new look; what more did I need?

I soaked in the bath when I got back then had a little sleep before getting ready for the dinner. I became official photographer during the evening and traipsed around all the tables with Gibbo taking photos of different groups as well as the guest speaker. One of the pics was used on a beef news website on Tuesday morning.

Next morning we drove with S&A to a fullblood wagyu operation two hours north of Melbourne where we had morning tea, a farm walk/talk and lunch. Then we left with J&R and drove to another smaller fullblood operation, then on to Echuca. We had a quick look at the river and paddleboats then went to our motel; we had a delicious dinner at a local restaurant at the port. R and I had the pork; J had the fish and Gibbo had the duck.........not a piece of beef in sight..........almost a first I'd say.