We had slightly underestimated the drive from Canberra down to the Mornington Peninsula, which is the other side of Melbourne. We arrived to stay with Adam, a chef Tom had worked with in Rhodes 24 in London – as it was getting dark! It didn’t seem to matter, his girls Liva and Anna getting on immediately with MoJo. The four of them played together for hours all being fans of frozen princesses!

It was lucky we were there on a night off for the two chefs. They both work at ’10 by tractor’ a local restaurant set in a vineyard. We had a selection of amazing vegetables and steak cooked by Adam, Marie treated us to a beautiful berry tart.

We enjoyed time at the peninsula the following morning, me running along the coast to a pier and lighthouse and all of us driving up to Arthur’s Seat viewpoint.

We realised the best way to get to the Great Ocean Road from there was to avoid central Melbourne and take a ferry from Sorrento to Queenscliff. It was a fun journey with pretty views. We had a nice lunch in a pie and sandwich place in Queenscliff (gluten-free bread, yey!) and bought some more nit treatment!

It was then a short drive on to Bells Beach where we admired the surfers, then to Aireys Inlet split point lighthouse and onto the Great Ocean Road. The drive is seriously breath-taking, every turn warrants an Instagram post.

We stopped for the night at Apollo Bay, sampling Kangaroo steak at the Apollo Bay Brewhouse and enjoyed a lovely breakfast at Bayleaf cafe.

The next morning we went first to Cape Otway Lightstation, Australia’s most significant lighthouse.

We spent most of our time on the headland at a Bush Tucker Talk in the Aboriginal Talking Hut led by Brad, learning about how to fend for yourself in the bush with only natural resources.

The road down and back from the lighthouse was prime Koala spotting territory – we saw some up in the trees driving in both directions.

After Princeton and Port Campbell National Park you reach the Twelve Apostles, London Bridge and the Bay of Islands – all stunning, ever-evolving feats of nature. It was much more of a tourist destination than Tom remembered from twenty years ago, with scenic helicopter flights taking off over the Twelve Apostles every five minutes.

The colossal rocks at the quieter locations were almost more spectacular than the over-popular Twelve Apostles. It was then that we suddenly noticed hundreds of cyclists coming in the other direction – there was a big ride between Adelaide and Melbourne, we were thankful we were traveling the other way!

Our second night’s stay and final stop on the Great Ocean Road was at Port Fairy, another place we really warmed to. The scenery was beautiful, an idyllic marina, wavy beach and Griffiths Island where a kangaroo hopped across my path on a run.

We found an unusual but great pizza dinner at Coffin Sally’s, formerly a coffin maker – who not only had gluten free pizza but also gluten free beer!

Tower Hill was on route back to Melbourne, a crater of a dormant volcano that is home to all sorts of wildlife. We enjoyed finding several emus on a walk through the reserve round a lake.

It was to be our final rural idyll in Australia, as we had a rude arrival in Melbourne finding the traffic a nightmare (understandable on a Friday evening) and having a very difficult time accessing our apartment and struggling to get our hire car back in time. We had booked to stay very centrally in Victoria One close to Queen Victoria Market. What the reservation didn’t say was that we were on the 39^th floor of a 70 plus floor building – a bit too high for me but the views were great.

For our first night we made the most of the Juicy car rental drop-off spot being near St Kilda to explore that part of town, where Tom had lived twenty years ago. Unlike in Sydney, the place where he lived here had been redeveloped.

We headed to the pier and had a delicious dinner there, before braving it outside to see the penguin colony that have called it home for decades. It was incredible watching the small blue penguins swim home and come in off the beach after a day out feeding.

We spotted others bedding down under the wooden jetty. We had to get the girls a hot chocolate as it was so cold and windy!

We hit up the usual tourist spots in Melbourne, taking a ride on the tram, having lunch in Queen Victoria Market, going into St Philips Cathedral, admiring the layer upon layer of graffiti in Hosier Lane and enjoying the Birrarung Marr Playground and rowers on the river.

We had a good contemporary Asian meal at Chin Chin and I met up with a Dubai friend Mehnaz for a drink along the river. We both had runs through Fitzroy Gardens, Yarra Park, round the Tan and along the riverside to Docklands.

We took Sunday as our weekend, going to meet another chef buddy of Toms Andy, along with his wife Lauren and their baby Penelope for a brewery brunch at Stomping Ground, walking through trendy Fitzroy to reach up-and-coming Collingwood. After that we surprised the girls with a cinema outing to see Frozen II.

Then suddenly it was December and we saw three of the girls favourite old people all together: Grandma, Grandad and Santa!

Yes it was incredible that pretty last minute, Tom’s parents booked to fly to Melbourne and onto Christchurch to join us for part of our world tour. Peter’s friend from university, Hywell is based in Melbourne and had been inviting them to stay for years. With us in that part of the world, it seemed the perfect opportunity. We met outside bustling Flinders Street station.

There was a Christmas market on in Federation Square, hence the Santa meet and greet, which was perfect as we could deliver the girls Christmas letters to his elves directly.

Family Egerton (plus Grandparents) managed to tackle the two branches of the National Gallery of Victoria, the Ian Potter Centre, Gallery of Australian Art and then the Museum of Art, Gallery of Melbourne across the river. At the Ian Potter Centre we spent most time in the permanent collections, enjoying looking at paintings of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane pre-cars, when horses and boats were the primary means of transport.

We were wowed by the waterwall entrance to the National Gallery of Victoria. It had been covered in a reimagined artwork by Keith Haring, similar to one painted by him there in 1984.

The girls were rather taken with the giant pop-sculpture by KAWS (Brian Donnelly) in the lobby: both Haring and KAWS were subject to major temporary exhibitions in the museum.

It was nice to see Nadim Karam’s sculptures over the river on the walk back to our apartment.

Peter and Margaret had another couple of days in Melbourne, but we were due to fly to Christchurch to begin our New Zealand adventures.

We were shocked to see how bad the bushfires had become when we flew in and out of Sydney on route to Christchurch, we were able to smell the smoke from inside the plane and could see the devastation below us.