Well, g'day mate! We're going on an overseas holiday with Grandma and Grandad. This time it's an Australia holiday to Melbourne, which will also be William's first time on a plane! Uh oh, hope he's more relaxed about the flight than Daddy.
I'd been counting down the days on the calendar in my room for weeks, and at last the holiday day arrived. We went out to the airport super early, and I spent most of the flight playing Angry Birds on the little TV screens.
When we were coming in to land in Australia, one of the flight attendants asked me to be the official lolly helper, handing out lollies to everyone on the flight. Even better, I got to keep all the lollies left over at the end! Looks like I won't be needing dinner tonight then...
As soon as we got to Melbourne, we left it behind and drove off to a place called Ballarat. We went all the way there just to visit this old gold-mining town called Sovereign Hill. It was pretty cool - the whole town looked really old, with wooden buildings and people wearing funny old clothes. Luckily there was also a pretty new-looking playground as well.
We went underground to see two gold mines. One of them needed a train ride to get far enough underground, and in another of them I saw a huge piece of gold locked in an underground safe. Later on, I also went on a horse and carriage ride with Grandad, which was a wobbly ride around the streets of Sovereign Hill.
The next day we headed back to Melbourne. We were staying in a place called St Kilda, which was great because not only did it have a pool, but Grandma and Grandad were only a couple of rooms away from us, so we could race down the hallway to their room and knock on their door continually until they woke up, got up and opened the door to let us in.
Another of my favourite things about staying there was starting every day watching a morning kids cartoon show called Giggle and Hoot. Something about owls I think, but it gave me something fun to watch while the adults planned where they were going to take me and William that day.
One thing Melbourne city has that Auckland doesn't is trams, so one day we took a tram ride into and around the city centre. It was pretty fun being on a tram in between the cars on the road. In fact, it was tram-endous!
That picture isn't a tram though. It's actually the Puffing Billy Railway - a steam train we went for a ride on one day. It made a loud "toot-toot" whenever the driver blew the whistle, and everyone outside was waving at us from the roadside as we passed. On the ride we passed through some forest and a couple of small towns. It was super cold though; Dad was joking that the driver was going to announce "Next stop: Hypothermia".
We couldn't go all the way to Australia without seeing some proper Aussie animals, so on another day we went to a place called Moonlit Sanctuary. It was a bit like an open zoo without all the cages, and we were able to walk around the paths feeding and patting all the kangaroos and wallabies. I even stroked a snake and saw a koala pooing. Oops, hope William doesn't step in that one!
It was Grandma's birthday while we were away, so for a nice birthday lunch we drove way way out into the countryside to a vineyard in the Yarra Valley. It was a beautiful sunny day but quite a lot of driving just so the adults could drink wine and get pestered by wasps. Those buzzy things might explain the face Mummy's pulling in the photo.
Nearby there was a chocolate and ice cream factory, and I filled my hands with free chocolate samples. Not as many times as that greedy Daddy though. If the factory had toys as well, I could have spent the whole holiday there!
After ten days on our Melbourne holiday it was time to go back to the airport, and back to New Zealand. I did get quite sad at the airport when we got home, but Dad promised we'll start planning another holiday very soon. I wonder where it'll be next time...?
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