I'm not from Australia, but I got to visit the same area in 2002 (in May). I was with my daughter and part of a bus tour, so didn't have the freedom to go where we wanted, but got away for some fun. A long drive west of Melbourne is the Twelve Apostles, which was one of the scenery highlights of the trip. (Google it along with Great Ocean Road). Not sure if you will be able to get away that far, but sure worth it.
Melbourne is a city that I would love to return to. I'd call it the San Francisco of Australia. Like San Francisco they didn't rip out their street car system which is neat. Very artsy city. (Example, while Sydney's Opera House gets all the press for it's architecture, the Melbourne Opera House surpasses it in acoustics, being built underground (several stories into bedrock, with something like 20 feet of rock between each of the performance theaters). There is also a great open air market in Melbourne. Sydney is a friendly city, considering its size. You can climb the famous Sydney bridge (to the top), take boat tours around the Harbor, etc. The highlight of the trip (for me) was a visit to the historic Sydney Observatory. We were fortunate enough to have clear skies the night we went and I got to observe Omega Centauri (the best globular cluster in our sky and seen only from the Southern Hemisphere) in the historic original refractor still housed in one of the domes. The southern hemisphere has a whole different night sky, if you are into the stars at all. North of Sydney a bit, is the famous Blue Mountains region. May will provide you some autumn colors and mild temps. A great time to visit. Enjoy! Darren Addy Kearney, Nebraska -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
