Now down in the sunny town of Lorne, on the south coast of Victoria. One of the great things about Victoria is that its residents are Victorians, but none of them seem to be wearing bustles or starched collars - pretty much the opposite down here (which is much more entertaining in general). I've been driving around with Stephen and we've just gotten back from Ballarat, as mentioned in Oscar and Lucinda and home to much gold mining related tourism - the town's a bit dull, but the tourist-tastic goldmine town recreation was pretty amusing.

Just been getting lots of mails from people in New York and London about what's happening up north. New York is currently snowed in under a major blizzard, as well as taping up their windows in case of terrorist gas attack. London is just cold and grey and reeling under Ken's lovely congestion charge. Sigh. And as for the other major, English speaking white dominated country about to start world war three (ie, Australia) - it's hot and sunny and noone seems to have a care in the world, especially as a large number of the local peace protests seem to involve heaploads of nudity - bless. Should try some of that myself to get rid of these unsightly tanlines...

I'm about to head off from Sydney, having enjoyed a splendid $5 steak meal at the Forrester hotel last night, with Melbourne being my next destination. Plan to do the coast road for a bit then hang out in Melbourne before I head over to New Zealand. The trip is going way too fast and, to be honest, I really don't feel like heading back to the aforementioned cold armageddon stylings of the northern hemisphere. Meanwhile I checked out some of Tracey Emin's latest 'work' at the Art Gallery of NSW - complete shite. Now I'm sorry if I offended a whole pile of art experts here who understand where she comes from with what she does, but it really is un-inspiring unless you aspire to produce bollox. On the other hand a retrospective of David Moore, an Aussie photographer, was wonderful - as was a collection of aboriginal art.

Just got back to the Arts Factory hostel in Byron Bay after a second Surfari trip. This time I left from Byron Bay rather than Sydney, which meant that I got an extra day down at Plombers Point. I'd been a bit disorganised before this trip and had actually driven down to Coffs Harbour (3 hours south of Byron Bay) to visit an old friend who lived there. This meant I had to get up at 3.30am and drive back up to Byron, drop off the hire car, then catch the Surfari bus at 8pm back down past Coffs Harbour (about 8 hours after I'd left it). Ah well. Did mean I got to see some beautiful early morning scenary - mist covered fields and surfers out for sunrise breaks.

This Surfari trip was completely different from the first one. This was due to a combination of knowing more about how things worked and the weather being absolutely amazing - good, solid waves for learning and for some amazing demonstrations of surfing prowess from the instructors. My surfing has now progessed from occasional standing on white water to some spectacular wipeouts on waves that seemed to tower above me as I tried to get on them. I'm hoping Sheep (aka Steve Shearer) managed to get some good video footage that I'll see tonight at the finish party. Sheep is an extremely cool guy - very in to his yoga and surfing, as are all the instructors (Jack, Kurt, Rosco and Raine) - thanks to all of you for another great trip! Who knows, maybe I'll do another yet before I leave Oz. On which note I now need to go and work out what's next on the agenda...

Still currently holed up in Byron Bay, home of the Aussie east coast hippies. That's not strictly true anymore as Oz is a big place and so many smaller hippy communes have sprung up all over. One of particular note is Nimbin, a small commune inland from Byron Bay that is Australia's equivalent to Amsterdam - although with slightly fewer raucous English bachelor parties.

Byron has some of the best food I've had so far in Australia. A good mix of veggie fare and pizzas, with no Macdonalds in sight - the town voted not to allow them or KFC in, although a few smaller chains have arrived now. More importantly they have lots of pie (mmm, pie). I'm currently trying to get myself on a pie detox plan as I seem to have become slightly addicted to these wonderful pastry parcels in all their forms and this is not helping my surfer stylee six pack from developing.

Just finished a wonderful week surfing with Surfaris. This involved driving up from Sydney to Byron Bay on a coach, camping at various places to find some good surf. In fact the surf wasn't great, but good enough to get a lot better at standing up and to realise I have no upper body strength for paddling and so on!

More importantly met some really lovely people, saw some amazingly wonderful star filled skies and lots of wildlife (including scary MF spiders and a kangaroo with a joey in its pouch - I preferred the later). Now I'm hanging out in Byron Bay, a big hippy center just south of Brisbane. Reminds me a lot of the west coast of US - lots of surfer hippy folk and more dreads than you normally see in a year. Cool.