Melbourne...

All the more beautiful this time for being a little familiar - but not familiar enough to calm my parched brain, which woke me persistently after three hours sleep demanding that I unstick my weary eyelids, prise my leaden tongue from the roof of my mouth and get up NOW NOW NOW, even though the others are hours away from waking. So many new things this time - theatre and comedy and hidden corners and great swathes of the Ocean Road and a glorious, glorious day of freedom and singing at the top of my lungs on the Mornington Peninsula (see above) where for the very first time I felt like an adult because they gave me a car and for some foolish reason assumed I'd bring it back in one piece in the evening. Somehow I did.

The crash turned out to be physical rather than mechanical - as I pulled into the airport to meet my departing flight I gave in to a great shudder and became a giant sneeze for the next five days. I dripped home and found I'd gone out in sympathy with my adopted family - GP, who'd succumbed to a crippling bout of tonsillitis, and Ziggy, who'd tried to leap through a fence and left one of his back paws behind - both prescribed the same antibiotics and confined to the couch.

As I sniffled up the Great Dividing Range the cart arrived and I gratefully accepted a cup of tea. The boy in the aisle to my window seat declined until I took my boots off and then called them back from the end of the cabin to order an award-winningly pungent cup of coffee to stave off the socks I'd tramped around in all week. We dawdled over our drinks, he systematically unravelling the lip of his cardboard cup and me watching slivers of moonlight jump from dam to dam below like a slippery silver fish. Suddenly the cart reappeared and we both realised we were landing and our cups were still half full - we executed a synchronised scull and cup stuff that would've put an Olympic squad to shame and a synchronised grin that cheered my diseased sinuses and reminded me I still had my photos to look forward to. Here's one of them.