So, this is Melbourne. It's a lot colder than the other towns I've spent time in in Australia. But then again, it's a whole lot further south. I'm about on a level with Wellington in New Zealand here, I think. The screeching cockatoos have been replaced by silent pigeons, but I still hear the plaintive moan of the crows.

Melbourne is so BIG! Canberra feels like it would fit in one of Melbourne's lesser suburbs. Melbourne has 3 million inhabitants and is almost as spread out as Sydney. This I discovered when I went to pick up my contact lens (the one that needed to be corrected) from the lens factory out in Dandenong - incidentally Melbourne's drug pusher hotspot, I am told. It was an hour's train ride out from South Yarra, and then a twenty-minute bus ride from there. And I wasn't even half-way to the edge of Melbourne really.

Jackie lives with her sister Kate. They both have two jobs (what role models for me!) so I haven't seen too much of either of them. On my first night in Melbourne I joined Jackie at her second job, which is behind the bar in a pub/restaurant. This gave me excellent training on how to use the tram network, which is extensive but suffers from poor signage.

At the moment I am just travelling around different parts of town, trying to get a feel for the place overall and think where I might like to live. I'm not worrying about doing touristy things just yet; there's plenty of time for that (famous last words!) when I know what I'm doing.

Isn't it funny the way an insignificant act can set you off on a train of thought? The other evening, after walking around the Chapel Street area of South Yarra and soaking up the sun-drenched atmosphere, I decided to buy some flowers to brighten up Jackie's flat. It was something I did with little conscious effort: the florist had his wares on the street corner before Jackie's turnoff from Toorak Road, and my purchase was made in a jiffy. (Interestingly, he let me off a dollar on the price; is this because it was a sunny day, or because I had bothered to have a little chat about this & that with him?)

Anyway, as I walked up the road, flowers in hand, I was put in mind of two recent incidents in my travels involving flowers. The first was in Christchurch when I bought huge bunches for Amanda's sister Lynley and their mum Dorothy, to say thankyou for looking after me in the run-up to Christmas. I had to wait a while for the bus out to Dorothy's suburb, a beautiful arrangement of flowers cradled in each arm. It was raining lightly, and I remember tiny droplets that looked like dew forming on the rose petals. Then two old ladies at the bus stop told me how very impressed they were by my romantic gallantry, and assured me that 'my young lady' was sure to be pleased by my act of kindness. It was almost a shame to put them right.

The second incident was up in Northland, when I went to visit the oldest stone building in New Zealand near Paihia. There was a volunteer guide in the house, dressed in period costume. I came across her in the kitchen area preparing simple garden flowers for a vase. In fact, when I walked in I didn't see the lady straight away, but just the flowers thrown in a jumble on one of those very shallow wooden baskets that looks almost like a plate with a handle arching over the top. Initially I thought it was a bit of a period tableau; you know, a "this is what the lady of the house's kitchen will have looked like when she was arranging flowers" sort of thing. Anyway, I got chatting with the guide, and I must have connected with her somehow, because very quickly she confessed to me a thought that I share: she hated cut flowers, seeing them as symbols of death; she much preferred live plants as decoration, and was only putting the flowers into a vase because that's what all the other volunteer guides did!

So here I am with a bunch of flowers for Jackie & Kate, and am I being thoughtful, romantic, or evil? Answers on a postcard...

I met up with Rainnie, who I got to know on the live-aboard diving trip round the Similan Islands in Thailand about this time last year. It was so nice to see her again! We had good chats and will meet again soon.

On the evening of St Patrick's Day I decided it would be remiss of me not to go to an Irish pub and lift a few pints of the black gold. But the queue to get in! Thankfully, I got chatting with the girls around me in the queue: three Aussie lasses and two Irish girls who are working over here. They gave me a telephone number for casual hospitality work (serving food at big dinners, that sort of thing) which I will follow up.

Once we got in, some three quarters of an hour later, the Irish girls invited me to stick around with them and their mates, one of whom it transpires lives very close to my mate Lisa in Dublin's parents in Killiney. It is a small world! I spent a lovely couple of hours with that group and then decided to quit while I was ahead, getting home just after midnight.

Can I just say that I know of no other capital city in the world where a major central city square can boast a statue of a sheep, life-size, reclining on a chaise longue, legs akimbo, leering at passers-by as if to say "Come on, big boy, you know you want it". Cheltenham comes close in spirit with its enormous testicularly-blessed rabbit on a dining chair, but it's not the capital of anywhere. And let's not forget Prague's Trabant car with pendulous cock & balls that stands proud on the elephantine legs it has instead of wheels, but that's too fantastic to be of concern here. In this blatant revelling in sheep fetishism, as in so many other ways, Canberra is special.

Chris has a lovely two-bedroom flat in a very recent development at the southern edge of the city, in a suburb called Narrabundah. From his spacious balcony he has views over almost pristine bush and farmland. The only concession to modernity is the fast road that cuts across the fields away down the hill, but this is thankfully neither an eyesore nor a strain on the ears.

Inside, the flat is beautiful, with lovely leather seating, wooden furnishings and delicately coloured walls & floor. The kitchen is immaculate, with all mod cons. My bathroom is also generously proportioned (Chris has an en suite). It's quite a show home, to be honest! Not a bad place at all to spend some time getting well.

I woke up on Saturday morning and had a spot of breakfast with Chris on his lovely verandah, listening to the gentle swish of traffic go by and watching the light breeze ruffle the leaves of the gum trees. Then Chris dropped me off in town for a spot of sightseeing - yes, there are still things I haven't seen in Canberra!

My first stop was the National Film & Sound Archive, which is housed in a lovely old building in the campus of the Australian National University, just to the west of Civic (which is what they call their town centre). They have clips of films from throughout Australia's cinematographic history, stretching over 100 years.

Just to keep it interesting, I thought I'd try something that wasn't "national" for a change: I visited the Canberra Museum & Gallery. This was quite a small affair, with its emphasis on supporting local talent rather than showcasing an important collection. But nonetheless it had some good pieces, including a collection of Hands of Fatima by an Iranian Canberran and a 4m x 3m collage of Post-It notes protesting the Iraq War by a Colombian Canberran.

All this art quite wore me out, so Saturday afternoon was all about recuperation, involving vegging in front of the telly and reading my book. The only excitement was when I went with Chris in his lovely Lancia Flavia to the car wash, where we saw heaps of other classic Italian cars sprucing up for tomorrow's car show.

Sunday was the big day of the car show. Chris asked me to drive his normal car while he drove the Lancia. This was so that he wouldn't have to leave his display place in the show (down by the north shore of Lake Burley-Griffin) to pop out at lunchtime; he could use his Astra instead, which I parked in the visitors' parking area (in a field off a main road in the east of town).

We met Johannes and his friend Mark at the show. Johannes still wasn't feeling 100%, so he grabbed a lift down from Sydney in Mark's Maserati for the day. He was in his element: surrounded by nice cars and bikes, and catching up with loads of people he knew from other car events. Mark & Chris were similarly engaged. I have to say, I enjoyed the show more than I thought I might. Some of the cars really are lovely - especially a 1948 Ferrari that just oozed class.

I left the others at lunchtime, and drove Chris' Astra back home for him (he wasn't going to need it after all). There I went back into veg mode. My throat is much better now, but the rest of me still feels fluey. Perhaps I've got tonsilitis AND the flu, rather than a tonsilitis with flu-like symptoms. Oh how I suffer in this life (flounce, flounce)!!!

Chris got back in the afternoon and we spent a little time in the swimming pool in his housing complex. Apparently this was the first time Chris has used the pool since moving into the flat five years ago! It was nice and warm, but somehow its relatively small size, coupled with the prohibition on loud noise and (by extension) any kind of fun, made it a little soulless. I couldn't help finding it wanting when I compared it in my head to the pool at Eduardo's place in Aranjuez. Admittedly, there's no way you could ever enforce a ban on noise in Spain, but I've got a feeling that's a good thing.

In the evening I cooked Chris a pasta meal. As both of us are on antibiotics we accompanied the meal with water instead of red wine, but no matter. It was tasty.

My last day in Canberra was a bit weird. Finally, I was feeling well enough to start thinking about things other than my illness. My mind naturally turned to the big change that was about to happen to me: I am finally going to a place where I Will Return To Work. Really This Time.

I pottered about in town, using the internet and getting a haircut, that sort of thing. My book (World's End by TC Boyle, which I can thoroughly recommend) was getting more and more gripping, which took my mind off Melbourne for a while. But at the end of the day (figuratively and literally) I had to pack my things and go.

Chris was kind enough to bring me to the bus station at 11pm, in time for my night bus. We said our farewells and then I got chatting to two other people who were waiting for the same bus. When the bus pulled in from Sydney, it was thankfully not full to the rafters. I had two seats to myself, which meant some sort of rest was possible. But to call it sleep would be stretching the truth. Still, it was cheap.

I was met at the Melbourne bus station by Jackie, the girl I met wakeboarding the other week at Batemans Bay. She kindly offered me a spare bed in her flat for my first nights in town. She was on her way to work, so she gave me her doorkeys and directions to her house in South Yarra, then left. I jumped on a tram, dropped my bags, and collapsed into blissful sleep on the spare bed.

A few hours later, I woke up to the realisation that I'm in Melbourne! I mean, here I was, in a pleasant suburb of Australia's second city, already having ridden on an iconic tram (no other city has as extensive a network), and poised to become a resident of the place! Whoa. It's going to take some getting used to, that thought.