Finally I have made it out of Melbourne and to another part of Australia!

It is with a heavy heart that I am realising just how close to the end of my time in this country I now am. The realisation set in most forcefully when I was sat in Rainnie's house, working out what I still wanted to see before I leave: I quickly wrote out a day planner on a piece of paper, and there were only ten weeks to go!

So I've decided to make the most of each of them, starting with a fortnight in Queensland. My long-lost cousin Jack and his wife Val have very kindly invited me to use their house in Brisbane as a base for trips around the region, and that's just what I am doing.

Arriving in Brisbane was a shock to the system. Having left Melbourne behind on a sunny warm morning, I thought I was prepared for the heat further north. But oh no! It was quite something to step out of the plane and into the thick sub-tropical air that seeped in around the airbridge and filled the gangway into the terminal building.

I was met pretty much right off the plane by Jack. Thankfully he had described himself perfectly on the phone ("Look for a small old man with a white moustache") so even though I wasn't expecting him until after baggage reclaim I recognised him and paused in front of him. He shares many of the familiar Peters family traits: dark brown eyes, strong (some would say enormous) nose, olive Welsh skin and quick wit. He reminded me of my Uncle Charlie and my Uncle George.

We made our way to his car - he's 80 but he's still driving - and then quickly found ourselves in Everton Park, the inner suburb where he lives with his wife Val. Their two kids Lindy and Tim are both also in Brisbane. Val was born and raised in British India, and met Jack when he was stationed there with the RAF during the War. The pair of them are lovely, with so many stories and such a way of telling them!

Their house sits on the brow of a hill overlooking the city, and there are clear views across to the hills that rise west of Brisbane. Val pointed out the brown patches where recent bushfires have raged, and I can imagine the panic of the people in the housees at the foot of those hills: the flames stopped literally metres from their homes. We spent the afternoon and evening in conversation, and before I knew it my eyes were falling shut. The heat was bearable but still sapped my energy, so I retired reasonably early to the downstairs guest area and sank into a deep sleep.

I would like to say that I was woken the next morning by the happy chirruping of the rainbow lorekeets and galahs that were busily nibbling at the seed Jack & Val leave out for them. But it would be a lie; I was sleeping like a corpse, and only my alarm was loud enough to pierce my somnolence. Oh, and the birds were NOT happily chirruping anyway: they were in fact at war with one another and the racket was supposedly enough to wake the dead. I must have been very very dead then.

After breakfast Jack dropped me off at the local railway station and I took the train into the city. It was a 20-minute ride through suburbia that deposited me at Brisbane's Central station, just to the north of the CBD.

Brisbane was described to me by someone as a mini Melbourne, and I can see why they said that. Its centre is on a similar grid arrangement of streets, and there are smaller lanes as well as broader thoroughfares. But my overwhelming sense was of having arrived somewhere in Spain. Not only was this due to the Mediterranean climate (it was hot and sunny in a way that I'm sure Melbourne never is). Neither was it wholly due to the fact that I met a Spanish couple from Seville there. I think it was more because the place is overrun with German tourists! So if anything it's Melbourne in the Sun.

Amusingly, there is a pub/restaurant on the main pedestrianised shopping street (Queen Street) called the Pig & Whistle, which advertises itself as a Traditional English Pub. Nothing could be further from the truth! For a start, it's a pavement café with no indoors whatsoever, and on top of that it was serving salads, coffees and all sorts of other 'foreign muck' that would never in a month of Sundays be offered in a real English establishment. About the only English thing about the place was the pasty skin of many of the patrons - some of whom were no doubt Brits on tour.

I had a delicious lunch at a hare krishna vegetarian restaurant, and then I wandered over the Brisbane River to the south bank, where I visited the Queensland Art Gallery. It was a fantastic collection of old and new, Australian and international. I had a free guided tour and then walked through at my own pace. I've taken pictures of some of my favourite pictures; they'll make an appearance at some point on the main pages of my website. The most eye-catching work was a series of four huge canvases executed in deep red and black. They together formed some sort of nightscape of a city, with multiple viewpoints and a rush of emotions. I'm crap at describing art; you'll just have to go and see it or wait for the photo.

That evening I met Lindy, the eldest child of Jack & Val. She joined us for dinner. What a card! Again, a chip off the classic Peters block. She reminded me of my cousin Audrey and of my sister. We had a wonderful time watching the thunderstorm that broke halfway through dinner (it's been a ridiculously long time since there's been any decent rain here, so everyone was happy as larry when the rain didn't stop after ten minutes) and having a laugh and a chat about this and that.

I had a pleasant surprise after work on Thursday afternoon: Rainnie rang me to tell me that she & Claire had come to pick me up from work - in her new car! We drove into Richmond, and parked up on Victoria Street to do a spot of shopping in the many Asian shops that line the road. Then we found ourselves a little noodle restaurant and feasted on vegetarian fare, including the best spring rolls I've ever tasted. My belly was very full when I was dropped off at home.

At the weekend I had a funny thing happen: I met for the first time in Melbourne with people I'd met elsewhere in Australia (if you don't count my initial stay in South Yarra with Jackie, who I'd met in Canberra the week before). Johannes the Austrian guy I met in Sydney and his friend Tom were down in Melbourne for the weekend (Tom has family here). I haven't seen either of them for six months, and it was a little bit strange to see them out of context, as it were. Strange but lovely. We had a great time catching up on gossip and having a few beers on Friday night, and then again on Saturday night.

Another funny thing happened on the same weekend: I met for the first time in Australia with relatives of mine who live here. My cousin Sue and her husband Barry live in Adelaide, but Barry's family is in suburban Melbourne and they are over for his sister's 60th birthday. So we arranged to meet out in Berwick, east of the city. I met Sue & Barry at the railway station and was driven to his mum's house, where a big family party was in full swing. I meet a profusion of his relatives, mostly nephews & nieces and their progeny. Of course there was a barbie, and it's a while since I've seen such huge piles of meat. It was fabulous!

The next day (Sunday) I caught the train out again, and Sue, Barry & I spent the day driving through the Dandenong Hills. You only have to go a short distance out of Melbourne, and you find yourself in green rolling hills that are reminiscent for me of the West Country between Birmingham and Wales. And from the tops of the higher hills there are splendid views back towards the city. Admittedly, today the views were shrouded in haze, but nonetheless they were beautiful.

One of the highlights of the day was when we stopped to see the narrow-gauge steam railway pass over a tight U-shaped raised area of track. It afforded a wonderful angle for photographs, and there was something tropical about this old train emerging from the lush tree ferns and gum trees, and rumbling over the wooden viaduct away into the hills beyond.

We ended up driving all the way along the coast back into St Kilda, where we had fish & chips for dinner. Sadly it was a bit too cold to sit out on the beach, so instead we had a picnic in the car with a bottle of red wine in our beakers and the delightful aroma of grilled fish in our noses.

The following day, I once more set forth on a quest for adventure with Sue & Barry. This time we drove out into country Victoria, to the Sovereign Hill living gold mine museum just outside Ballarat. It was very well done, with staff in period costume to guide you and inform you as well as entertain. The recreated mine shaft was a tight squeeze which I couldn't imagine spending 15 minutes in, let alone 15 years prospecting for gold. There was excellent food in the form of a divine home-made steak & mushroom pie, and the weather was crisp & sunny. A great day out!

That evening we had dinner at Barry's mum's house. Even though the oven had the temerity to break down after roasting the lamb, the food was delicious (we finished the vegetables on the hob and in the microwave). And later that evening I caught a train back to the city.

Tuesday was my last full day in Melbourne for a little while, so I rushed about getting things ready for my trip to Queensland. Most importantly, I popped over to Rainnie's house to get the low-down on what to see in the Cairns area; Rainnie lived there for a year a little time ago.

I made time in the evening for a trip out to see Emily. We met at her art college and she showed me some of her work. Then we headed out to Altona to her house, where I cooked a paella (it's amazing how well it turned out, considering I've never done one, and I've only ever seen one done once, when I was living in Spain in '94) and we had a nice night chatting and sipping wine.

In typical fashion, I left the packing for the last minute on Wednesday morning. It was as much as I could do to get all my laundry done last thing on Tuesday night (I hope the neighbours - and my housemates for that matter - didn't mind the washing machine running until 1.30am). But travel isn't travel for me without a last-minute panic. That's just how it is.

And here concludes my desperate catching-up-with-myself. Briefer than usual - but that's probably a relief for you, isn't it, my dear readers.