As we emerged from the airport at Melbourne we were enveloped by a blanket of 40ºC hot air. We had read that Melbourne weather can be extreme, but luckily temperatures for the rest of our stay were down in the more manageable 30s. We'd been invited to spend Christmas with Amanda's cousin Olwen, husband Don, their family and relations - we hadn't appreciated quite how many! We negotiated the dense rush-hour traffic out of Melbourne onto the quieter dual carriageway to their home at Mt. Martha on the Mornington Peninsular. Airlie Farm had once been a huge sheep station, and the house is a typical, generously proportioned bungalow of the colonial era - built in timber with a corrugated iron roof and veranda. The property still retains some pasture where Olwen and Don keep a few horses and cattle, and there is also a wetland area, orchards, woodland and wonderful views across an almost English landscape.

Olwen took us for a drive to see the surrounding areas including Arthur's Seat State Park and the some of the coastline of the 60km diameter Port Phillip Bay. We walked out to the sandy headland at Point Nepean overlooking the "Rip" - the narrow pass that connects to the Bass Strait. Next day, Amanda and I caught a metro train back into Melbourne where we took a tram ride round the centre, visited the Aboriginal Cultural Centre at the museum and ambled through the picturesque lanes and arcades of this cultured city.

We then took ourselves off on a two-day drive along the Great Ocean Road from the Sorrento Ferry across the Rip to Port Campbell and back. The scenic route starts behind the surfing beach at Torquay and passes through seaside resorts such as Apollo Bay, where we lunched on fish-and-chips on the quay on the way, and again on the way back because they were so good. The road was built to provide employment for returned servicemen of the First World War and completed in 1932. There are endless dramatic seascapes culminating in the "Twelve Apostles" - tall columns of rock just offshore, of which we only counted eight. We stopped off at a wild-life park to see some kangaroos, wombats, dingoes and emus, but more special were seeing a wallaby jump out of dense forest into the road ahead of the car and disappear the other side, and koalas lazing in the gum trees beside the road out to Cape Otway.

Christmas Eve saw us putting up decorations and setting up a long table and chairs in the old sheep-shearing shed. Among the thirty four family members next day were Olwen's brothers Nigel and Martin; the latter Amanda hadn't seen since he emigrated with his parents in childhood. With precision planning, everyone arrived with part of the meal - from turkey and ham to plum pudding and mince pies. It made for a fabulous Aussy Christmas that we shall always remember.