When we arrived back in Melbourne we parked up in our home away from home, Addison St, and were relieved to see the interceptor where we left it, sitting there laud and proud. Although when we were sat relaxing by the van a local resident asked if we knew who owned the car. Apparently he was about to report it as abandoned and assumed it had been ditched by it’s owner. What on earth was he thinking? Nobody would abandon a fine machine like the that!

When we first visited Melbourne Carolyn’s friend had given us a pretty simple list of things to do. Out of the nine I think I managed one. This time we were going to make more of an effort to see what Melbourne had to offer. But then we realised that the international poker tournament, Aussie Millions was in town. What’s more it was at my favorite casino of all time, Crown Casino. Needless to say, poker dominated the remainder of our stay. Neither Ash or I entered the actual tournament, but spent a lot of time in the cash games that surrounded it, and enjoyed taking in the general atmosphere of a major tournament. We didn’t become poker millionaires, but both did pretty well over the week, and I was even able to buy a laptop from my winnings!

On the list of things to do I only managed one more, which was to visit Rooftop Bar. I also spent a little bit of time watching the tennis in Federation Square and said goodbye to the Tobster, as he stayed in Melbourne to find work, while we headed for the East Coast to find some surf.

We started the 12 hour drive about midnight, after a session at the Crown Casino. The plan was to drive for a few hours, stop somewhere to sleep and complete the drive the next day. Hopefully arriving in Sydney for a late evening surf. What actually happened was I rather stupidly drove for a massive seven hours, stopped in a field somewhere to sleep, where Ash took over and did another huge five and a half straight hours. We arrived in Sydney just after lunch time.