Well, we thought the short flight from Singapore to Melbourne would be a doddle!!  No!  Were were really stressed as we checked in, worrying about the weight of our luggage and the girls had been acting up the whole way there in the cab so that wasn't helping.  When we checked them in, they were actually 1.8kg over, but considering we had a limit of 160 in total that's not too bad.  The lady at the desk was great and just smiled and said "that's OK".  We then had a spot of dinner and wandered to the gate with around 10 mins to spare before we were called to board.  The flight itself was fine but none of us really slept so when we landed at 5am we were all shattered.

 

Margaret was waiting for us at Arrivals with a big smile and a hug which was a lovely welcome.   We then collected our hire car and loaded it with all the cases.  The girls and I travelled with Margaret and Mike followed us to he house in the hire car (Mitsubishi 380 - VERY nice).  Poor Mike, I think he struggled with it a bit, but we got to Margaret's eventually all safe and sound.  Margaret and Hugh made us a coffee and toast and then Hugh drove us to the local Target (Like BigW) where we bought the girls a new booster seat each, and then we went to the local Safeways for essentials before driving to our temp accomodation.  The house turns out to be lovely.  It's really clean, and well appointed.  It's got everything we need including wireless internet (hence the blog updates).

 

After a light lunch, Hugh went home and we took the girls to the local shopping mall for a wander to keep them awake.  Por souls, theywere like the living dead.  We went into every toy shop (all the same toys as UK) just to keep them amused, and we bought them a new dual screen in car DVD and some new DVDs to watch so hopefully that'll keep them amused when the house hunting starts next week.

 

We finally came back home around 5.30 and the girls were asleep by 7pm with us following at 8pm!!

 

Our first thoughts on Melbourne were : OMG, it's huge!  Really huge. I was pretty overwhelmed by it, but as I said to Mike, I'm completely jetlagged and haven't had more than 5 hrs sleep in 2 days so what I feel today counts for nothing.