Our aim was for Melbourne Zoo ( we joined Adelaide Zoo – for the Pandas and we are baby sitting Ella and Ethan much more this year – so we have free entry). On the way we walked through town to William St to get the 55 tram. It was really interesting. We discovered some of the famous Melbourne Alley/Laneway Graffiti Art ( many of the art works had tags on them, which spoilt them, but they were still very good ) and we were able to see up close many of the old building within Melbourne city. We have learnt on our travels to look up as you walk around the streets of a city, it’s amazing what treasures and unusual sights you see. Melbourne was no different, with many street level shops hiding beneath the  beautiful facades of buildings of many years ago.

The Zoo was an easy tram ride, about 20 mins, and entry was a breeze with our Adelaide Zoo Member Passes, we managed to avoid the queues of peoples wanting to get in. Melbourne Zoo had an Asiatic Elephant born on 16 January. It weighed in at 110kg and the mother was in labour for about 3 days. After giving birth, the mother accidently trod on the baby, so they are watching the baby very closely to make sure all is well with it. They hope the baby will be out on display in a few weeks.

The zoo itself is very green and the enclosures the animals are kept in, in the main, are very good and offer the animals good space and habitat to live in. They have just opened a new seal and penguin display. It was very good, you could see the seal and penguins swimming underwater through glass walls and they also had an area of surging water and swim outs for the seals.

Our first call was to the giraffes, Debs favourite. We got there just in time to hear the end of a talk by one of the zoo keepers. While we were up and around the elephant area, we saw the head elephant keeper interviewed for TV. We stood behind the camera and listened to the interview and found out some amazing things about the birth and condition of the new baby elephant.

We had a bit of lunch there and then got the tram back into town and then back to our apartment to put our feet up and relax a bit before the tennis tonight.

The tennis draw to night for Rod Laver Arena is Lleyton Hewitt  V’s Ricardo Hocevar ( a qualifier ranked 192) and Alica Molik V’s Julie Coin (Fra), so we have some good tennis to see. Our plan is to also have a walk around the outside courts while we are here to see other matches and maybe see some of the highly ranked players practicing.

After a cheese platter for an early tea, we headed off over to Rod Laver Arena at 5:40 and got there about 5 to 6, a nice easy walk.

We spent the next 50 minutes or so walking around the back courts and watching bits and pieces of games on a variety of courts, just to get into the feel of the event.

Today was the biggest day crowd ever to attend the Australian Open Tennis, with more than 45000 people through the gates.

We had great seats , 3 from the front and between the service line and the base line on the northern end of the court on the opposite side to the umpire. About 12 seats around from the players box for both the Hewitt and Molik “teams”.

The Hewitt match was great, although the scores don’t indicate it at 6-1, 6-2, 6-3. Hewitt seems to be on his A game. Alica Molik let her game get away from her, she had a chance to win it in 2 sets , but finished losing in 3 sets to Coin from France.

The crowd was amazing, “The Fanatics” were great to have in the stadium. They got the crowd going and the umpires and players all enjoyed their antics. They managed to get the SLOWEST Mexican Wave in history to make its way twice around the Arena, it was so funny!! Between that and jokes about Tiger Woods and Susan Boyle amongst others, they were great entertainment and a bonus to the Open experience.

Play for the night eventually finished at about 11:45 and we were back in our apartment by mid-night.

Great games tomorrow for us, we have Svetlana Kuznetsova, Kim Clijsters and Rafael Nadal. (try them all on spell checker!!)   

Bring it on.