Day 3 - #Thatchersontour - Melbourne

Mother was especially excited today as we we were going on the Neighbours tour. We may have woken up a tad early not realising that the meeting place was slightly closer than expected but at least we had somewhere air conditioned with internet to wait. Ramsey Street was around a 45 minute drive out of the city but our driver, Safari Pete, kept us entertained with Neighbours trivia on the way. He was a very enthusiastic and very Australian chap, coming out with some cracking Aussie comments, 'you beauty!'. Now I didn’t know that what we know as Ramsay Street, is in fact just a normal residential street where normal people live and it isn't called Ramsey Street at all! When buying a house on the street, as part of the purchase they have to agree to let Neighbours film there. They only film there once a week so they make sure they get all the shots they need in that day. The rest is filmed in the studio. When we arrived we were surprised at how small the actual street is. It’s amazing what they can do with camera angles.

We had some time here to take photos of the various houses and also meet one of the stars. Unfortunately all the actors are off for the holidays as Neighbours takes a break from filming over Christmas, so we met a star from the past, an actor named Ben Nicholas who played Stingray, a young bogan who was on the show for about 4/5 years before he died a tragic death in the middle of the street. Despite his name ringing a bell, the majority of us couldn't remember who he was so Blake had to Google him. He was pretty young when he was in the show so it's a good job we did as you can imagine he looks a bit different now he is grown up. He was a really nice guy though and obliged us with lots of photos. After about half an hour here we headed to the studios where we visited the back lots. Here we saw the Erinsborough sign (did you know that it was an anagram of Neighbours with a couple of extra letters chucked in), Grease Monkeys, the car garage and the bric-a-brac store. We also drove around to look at Lassiters, the high school and the Kennedys back yard. They only use one of the real back gardens on Ramsey Street and the rest are recreated in the studio. Before we knew it we were back on the coach and back to the CBD where we stopped at a burger bar for lunch.

After our feed, we headed out to St Kilda to have a bit of beach time. Blake and I haven't managed to visit St Kilda yet so it was nice to see the seaside. We only managed about 20 minutes in the sea before it became very windy and a storm blew over. It was great to watch the lightening forks come down over the sea though.Read more