I've just realised that I totally forgot an exciting bit of my flight from Sydney (see what happens when I don't have corroborating witnesses to help me remember what I've done): as I was waiting to board, I stood watching the baggage handlers load our bags into the plane. And I have to say, the guy nearest my window was positively desperate to break someone's bag!

There they were, all neatly piled on a trolley, and there was the mobile conveyor belt thingy to lift them into the hold, and there was he dragging the bags off the pile and dumping them as hard as he could onto the belt! It really seemed that he was putting more effort into lifting the bags just enough to give them a really good thud than it would have taken to pull the bag across gently.

The moral of this story is to make sure it doesn't matter if your bag falls off the back of a lorry - because even if it doesn't, it will have been battered and bruised on its way to and from your plane.

Anyway, enough about that and back to my flight from Adelaide to Melbourne's Avalon airport. The queue for check-in was horrendous! And then there was a massive queue to get through the X-ray machines and into departures. I haven't queued like that since I was last in Amsterdam's Schiphol on business about four years ago. The flight was very busy too, but I opted for a centre seat near the front (they have Ryanair-style free seating on Jetstar flights) so I got out pretty quickly at the other end.

Avalon airport is very much a second airport: it's basically a shed in a field somewhere near Geelong. The bus ride into the city was only 45 minutes though, and the driver was very amusing. I spoke with Fiona in my old house and she invited me to join her & her parents for dinner in Chinatown. Hurray!

When I got to the house I was greeted by Fiona, and met Mauricio the Peruvian again (who took my room) and Angelo (who took Kate's room) for the first time. He's from Venezuela and has been living outside Melbourne for nine months, and he's really excited about living in the centre of town at last. The four of us walked to Chinatown in the balmy evening air (what a change from Adelaide's heavy rain!) and met Fiona's mum Angela and her partner Peter there. The food was fantastic: king prawns in their shell, pipi in a chilli sauce, super tasty fried chicken and the most amazing pork spare ribs I have ever tasted.

On Friday Angelo & I went to put up Christmas decorations in Fiona's mum's restaurant (Mauricio was busy teaching fencing). Angela had bought a load of decorations, but needed tall people like me to come and put them up for her. She gave us a sumptuous lunch of chicken & sweetcorn soup, chicken & chilli, and sizzling beef, then let us get to work. By the end of the afternoon we had done all we could. It's looking very festive now.

In the evening I went for a few beers with Angelo (he doesn't know too many places to go yet), and I managed to meet up with Neil, Ian's friend who I met in Sydney, and my Welsh friend Stuart as well. It was very nice to see friendly familiar faces again, back in the city I love so much.

Saturday was a very nothingy kind of day during the day. It felt like one of those nondescript Sundays where you're in a kind of limbo, not really connecting with the world or the people around you. I was a bit depressed about leaving Australia (it's only eighteen days to go) and felt the need to ring a few friends and hear their voices.

Also, it's strange being in Melbourne again, after trying so hard to say goodbye to it before flying off to Sydney. Perhaps I shouldn't have done that. It was a bit premature of me; after all I'll have a few more days here before finally leaving. But it's very weird to be staying in the living room of the house I used to have a bedroom in. It's not my house any more, and it's full of new people. Luckily I have Fiona as an anchor point for my feelings about the place.

Saturday evening was such a contrast to the crapness of the day though! I caught up with Rainnie for Thai food and then we went on a bit of a pub crawl with her new housemate Lisa, who's a backpacker from England. What was going to be a quiet evening turned (as these things so often do) into a monster beer session.

One of the pubs we spent a lot of money at was one Rainnie used to spend a lot of time in. She recognised most of the people in there, even though she hasn't been for over six months, and she had some scary stories to tell about most of them! It's for the best that she doesn't hang out there any more, by the sound of things.

We had a cracker of a night there ourselves though, and in all the other bars we visited that night. Poor Rainnie managed to hurt herself falling off someone's push bike that she was attempting to ride while pissed - but that's the sort of thing that happens in those conditions. We got home at five in the morning and I crashed on Rainnie's sofabed with her cat Sammy.

Sunday was a short day - I didn't emerge from bed until after twelve - and my head wasn't up to much in the way of intellectual activity. I was online for a while at Rainnie's, then headed back to my old house and went for a walk with Mauricio and Angelo who was trying to find a spot in a nearby park where he could connect to the internet on his university wireless network.

Later that evening, I took Angelo for a walk through the streets of Melbourne by night. The two of us were snapping away with our cameras, because the city was just so photogenic in the fading light of the hot sunny day, and the streets were packed with people enjoying the evening. We had a drink in e55, one of my favourite bars here, and then headed back home to swap pictures on his laptop.

My last blog entry, you will have noticed, dear readers, was really rather full of detail in a way that I haven't managed in recent months. This blog enjoys the same level of chronological and factual accuracy, because I had the pleasure of Sue & Barry's company at one point to remember all that we had done in my week in South Australia. It took three of us to recall all the details! So enjoy, because in my advanced stage of elderliness I just can't get it all down in words on my own any more it seems.

On Sunday we headed up to Hahndorf, Australia's oldest German settlement. We had a big old German lunch in a restaurant that resembled a Munich beer hall - they even served Hofbrau beer in one litre glasses. It was a taster of what is to come for me over Christmas and New Year back in Bavaria. The countryside, even this close to Adelaide, is really picturesque and reminded me of my summer holidays in Austria as a child.

Later that afternoon, after we had let our meals digest somewhat and had made our way back to Adelaide, we popped in on Julie & Stuart in their house. What was going to be a quick visit turned into an evening of laughter and fun, first with the kids (we spent lots of time drawing with them and generally fooling about) and then just for the grown-ups (Ju & Stu have broadband and Google Earth, so we did a virtual world tour of lots of places). When Barry, Sue & I got home around midnight we had a feast of cheese & crackers - we hadn't eaten any dinner yet because lunch had been so filling.

Monday was a surprisingly sunny day after the weekend's cloudy skies. I maximised my tanning time by spending most of the day lying by the pool, interrupted only by lunch (tuna, sardines & cheese on yummy bread). The evening was dedicated to beer: I went into town with Ju & Stu, and we went to the Belgian Beer Cafe to enjoy a variety of that country's marvellous liquid offerings. Then we had a few Aussie beers at a pub charmingly known as the Nostril. Stuart's parents (who were babysitting) dropped me back home in their classic Peugeot, and then I climbed into bed.

On Tuesday we had a big outing to Victor Harbor. Don't ask me why the Australians, who normally spell harbour perfectly well, suddenly had a seizure when naming this town. But nomenclature aside, it's a charming little seaside place with a large penguin colony. Until yesterday, it had been overrun by 'schoolies', this year's school leavers, who have a reputation for partying hard and getting a bit out of hand. As a consequence, all the locals have buggered off on holiday elsewhere. So with the schoolies gone, we pretty much had the town to ourselves!

But I have to mention something we heard on the radio as we were setting off for Victor. Barry wanted to keep up to date with the cricket scores around Australia, and when the studio cut to their man in Melbourne he came out with a hum-dinger of a weather announcement: "well, there's a wind that would blow a dog off a chain here in Melbourne this morning..." How we laughed!! What made it special was that all three of us, having lived there, could totally picture the weather he was talking about too.

Our first port of call was the fish shop, where we picked up some whiting and some flake and a monster pile of chips. These we ate in the scorching sun by the seaside. Then we went for a long walk, first out onto Granite Island where the penguins live, then through town to find a dinner option to our liking. We ended up chatting with a Scots couple outside one restaurant, and as luck would have it they've been living round the corner from Barry's mum for thirty years! The husband was taciturn, rarely raising his head from looking at his feet, but this was understandable given the prolixity of his diminutive wife: even Sue could barely get a word in edgeways!

We opted for a fish restaurant, and what a great choice! Sue & I both had the most delicious swordfish steaks, served with asparagus tips and a hollandaise sauce and salad. The fish was so perfect! It made my teeth squeak to bite down on the moist, tender chunks of that delicately perfumed flesh. Barry's Thai chicken curry was also outstanding. Skipping dessert, we headed back to Granite Island for a quick walk around the top before settling in for the night's entertainment: the penguins.

In the first hour after nightfall, the fairy penguins that live here come back from fishing in the sea and clamber back to their nests. At this time of year they have hatchlings to feed and care for, and so there was a lot of action. We were part of a guided group of about 15 people, including a most amusing 2 year old boy who was such a chatterbox and spoke so well! The guide was also amusing, and pointed out penguins with his red torch beam (they don't like white light) in a variety of poses, including one pair that were 'getting friendly' right below our feet! I've never seen penguins at it before, and so the male's predilection for slapping the female's sides with his wings whilst getting jiggy on her back was a surprising novelty.

The night was beautifully calm and clear, with plenty of stars on display as we walked back across the causeway to the mainland. Then it was a short hour & a half's drive back home to Adelaide. A lovely day was had by all, and my tan has been well topped up by the heat of the sun down here.

Wednesday was my final full day in Adelaide. The weather was promising to turn super hot, so I was hoping to head out to the pool all day, but then it didn't really turn out that way. Instead, there was cloud and even a quick shower. None of this was unpleasant though, because it was still scorching hot. In fact, it was a perfect day to watch the two tilers who have come to put tiles down in Sue & Barry's living room and kitchen/dining room. It is such a pleasure to watch skilled workers! They made the tiling seem like child's play, with easy strokes of the scrapey edgy thing (see, I know all the jargon) to spread the adhesive and millimetre-precise laying of tile after tile.

In the evening we went over to Dave & Amanda's house, where we had a delicious barbie. Sue & I made a bunch of salads, while Dave did the grilling. Barry was occupied with little Sammy, and Amanda & her friend Bonnie was busy looking after little Ellie who was ill. The sun set beautifully over the horizon while we sucked on beers and stuffed our faces with yummy food. We had fruit salad with delicious ice creams and sat chatting for hours, before finally leaving Dave & Amanda to get some sleep.

Back at the ranch, we scanned in a bunch of photos from Barry & Sue's wedding, because my sister was one of their bridesmaids and she looked so cute in her little four-year-old's dress that we couldn't resist giving her copies of the pictures! I was sorely tempted to go for a midnight swim as well, but in the end I opted not to because I was just too tired. What a lame excuse!

My final day in Adelaide was cool, not only in weather terms but also in coolness terms, because Sue's elder son Martin arrived from the UK with his Austrian girlfriend Michaela and their daughter Maja. I had one day of overlap with them, thanks to a last-minute change of my flight plans, and I made the most of this, their jetlag permitting.

We spent the late morning and early afternoon getting to know each other and playing with Maja. It was beautiful to watch the moment when Mart saw his kid brother Dave for the first time in four years. It really made me miss my brother & sister actually. But I don't have long to wait before I see them again, just a few weeks now.

In the evening we all headed over to Ju & Stu's house for a massive family feast. Sadly, my flight time meant that I could only stay a short time there. It was long enough to play with Callum & Elise for a while and enjoy Julie's wonderful North African stew. The weather had turned cold and wet, so the warming food was really good. And then Barry & Sue drove me to the airport for my flight back to Melbourne. Farewell lovely cousins, and see you again one of these days!