The echuca tower

The echuca tower is the largest building in Australia so we went upto the observation floor at the top. The lift up there took is at 9 m/s and your ears were popping before you knew it. There were some great views up there.

Sir is that a professional camera?

This is what a security guard asked me last weekend when we were at the MCG watching Richmond play Esserdon play AFL, great game with Richmond winning by 5 points.

This is what 2 months of robinvale does to you (beard)

Vines vines and more vines

Every morning we get the mini bus to work
Everyone is wide awake and very cheerful as you can see in the photo
This is Henry, he drives the van most mornings to work
The 20km dirt track to work from the main road
This is the start of the vine yard
We've seen a few roo's on the way to work
This is Thomas and he's from Germany
This is Micheal, he's Irish and holds a world record for the largest eyebrows
Micheal, Sam and Thomas

Sam and Thomas
We cut the vines to about 30cm then box them
There are 26 of us working here 2 Irish guys 1 German 3 English, a few Afghanistan's and the rest are from Cambodia
A row can hold 125 vines with 1.5kg of grapes to produce a bottle of wine
There are lots of rows here
These vines continue for 16km to the road
More vines

Mountain biking on Easter Monday

Up and out this morning to try and catch a lift to Mount Buller. Waited for about an hour listening to a Chris Molyes podcast. I honestly didn't think I would get there, then a guy picked me up and arrived at the resort about 10am. Went into the shop to hire a bike for the day but they had lent them all out. He said to come back an hour later to see if I could have one if someone hadn't picked the rental ones up. So I went for a walk around then back to the shop where I hired a Kona Stinky freeride bike. Got about 10 runs in in the day and was totally zzzzzed afterwards and was great going up the ski lift. I managed to fall off acouple of times but i'll put that down to needing a grippyer front tyre.

The temperature was fantastic all day with great views as well of the great dividing range. Plus with it been the last day of the season there wasn't many people around and the lifts were dear quiet which was great. Got a lifk back from a father and son and flopped into bed when I got back after an amazing day

Mansfield

Over Easter I went to the mountains 2 hours north of Melbourne called the alpine country. Here there are loads of vine yards and it is the area that was affected by the forest fires in February. Driving through was amazing to see the size of the devastation.

Arrived at the hostel and got my own room which was great, went to the tourist information to find out about some buses to the Mt Buller mountain resort where there is mountian biking but there wasn't any available during the summer season and it was 50km away. This is the area where people in Australia would come skiing in the winter so there were plenty of hire shops which was interesting because it was 25 degrees here.

On Easter Sunday I hitchhiked to the Mansfield zoo to meet up with Dave and Virginia from uni, spent the whole day there and got a lift back with them at the end. When I was there they showed me around all the animals. Then there was feeding time where Virginia talked to the crowd about all the animals whilst me and Dave chatted and tried to make Virginia laugh. There was lions to feed as well as dingos and kangaroos that you could hand feed because they weren't in any cages.

Friday 13th

Way back in the middle of march I went to the Melbourne zoo to have a look around. Took me a while to get there as i got on the wrong train but after 2 hours I was in! It was quiet with it been in the week and out of holiday times but there were a few tourists and families there. The zoo was quite small as I'd imagined it to be bigger but animals can only take up so much space and my previous trips to zoos would have been when I was much younger and everything would have seemed bigger then.

I got my map and looked for the nearest big animal with teeth. That's the gorilla then! Had a good trek around and saw all of the native Australian animals including the duck billed platypus.

The weather was nice and hot today and the first time in about a month that i needed to put suncream on.