Australia day in Melbourne is slightly different than Sydney's - no best dressed boat competition for one - but they do have the same type of parade



The parade included Jillaroos as well as the obligatory pipe band and Chinese dragon dancers



They also do a duck race where a few thousand ducks are let loose at one end of the Yarra and the owner of the first duck fished out by Grant Hackett (he is a TV sport presenter here) - the "race" really tested the commentator as there was no wind that day and there isn't a very strong current on the Yarra.

(our first day was spent house hunting - laser focused effort  - looked at 4 liked 3 but only two enough to actually want to live there)

Day two in Melbourne was spent  . . . . at the ZOOOOOOOO (have you noticed a recurring theme in our activities?!)

Not much to tell apart from lots of animals - a few more "traditional" cages for the animals but I think they are replacing them with more open enclosures. They do have a fab monkey exhibition with loads of different types of monkeys - half of which I had never heard of.  They also had a butterfly walkthough which was so much fun