Anyone for Tennis ?

One thing we have learnt in our eleven months in Melbourne is that above all states in Australia this oe is sports mad....with the Commonwealth Games, AFL, Grand Prix, World Swimming Championships coming soon, and of course the first tennis Grand Slam of the year. Given our desire to fully embrace life in Australia we took the boys and Ella to the tennis on Friday last week and were wise enough to go indoors to start with at the Vodafone arena as the heavens opened for part of the day.

We saw a couple of very enjoyable matches with Novak Djokovic (No 9 seed) and also Amelie Mauresmo (No2 seed) as well as having a good wander around all the outdoor areas. Having done wimbeldon a few time it was refreshing to see the space and lack of long queues even though there were 40,000 people there. The other thing we have learnt about sport in Victoria is that it is highly valued in society and priced to reflect that.....ground passes for the whole family in total amounted to £30 and you could simply walk up to the ticket office on the day if you wanted to buy...queue stretched for at least six yards....SO refreshing!!!!!!....maybe I was never a good queue inhabitant!!!

The boys walked away with two giant tennis balls to frame their first visit to a grand slam tennis tournament....Nikki walked away with a beach towel (make of that what you will) and Dad walked away with the bill for it all!!!!!

Anyway can thoroughly recommend for all you tennis fans tired of queueing / praying for Wimbledon tickets that you plan a trip down under to Melbourne.

Somers loving...had me a blast ( Travolta tribute)

We have just come back from a few days down on the Mornington Peninsula coast staying in the holiday home of Nikki's cousin. The weather was beautiful for most of the time (mid to high 30's) and we swam in the sea at Somers or Sorrento each day, with the boys also enjoying their boogie boards, rock pool investigating, sandcastle and trench building and a little beach cricket.

The Farren boys also managed an early morning round of golf at Cape Schanck ( see attached picture) and the boys also spent some time on a friends quad bike wizzing round their garden.

Only slight blot on the horizon was loss of set of keys on the beach so Tim had to make emergency trip back to Melbourne ( 1 Hour) to get spare set.

We were also swimming in the Western Port Channel until we were told that a 6m Great White had been sighted across the other side of the channel at Cowes so we stayed in slightly shallower water thereafter.

Ella survived the beach remarkably well in her Sun shaded tent although it was a feta of engineering to get it down again.

We returned late on Thursday evening to go to the Australian Open tennis on Friday ( see next post) and have had a quiet weekend here with much blessing in the form of a weekend of almost constant rain.........the whole of Victoria is cheering and praying for more.