A diary from down under: What a difference a day makes...

A slightly sleepy start for some of us on Boxing Day as we rose to the dreaded noise of fierce rain pounding against the windows and roof.

Overnight the temperature dropped some twenty degrees and we were reminded why Melbourne is famous for its four seasons in one day. You never know what you're going to get from one minute to the next!

When the skies started to clear in the late morning, Granny, Popps, Jack and some of the others were able to make their way to the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground, below) for the start of the Boxing Day test.

We decided to pass on the cricket and instead we took our leftover turkey sandwiches into town and headed for the NGV (National Gallery of Victoria). On the way, we walked across the Yarra and had a look down the river at the Southbank where Josh asked Nush to marry him some 12 years ago (she said "OK then" by the way, and that was that). It all looked very pretty in the sunshine.

We enjoyed the short stroll to the gallery, taking in the fountains and statues and the wall of water at the entrance to the building.

The first thing to greet us as we entered the gallery was this phenomenal installation made entirely of almost 1500 bike frames. It forms part of the Forever Bicycles series by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and is incredible to walk around and through.

Here are some pictures from the next room we entered. Can you guess what they're all doing?

No? Having a well-earned snooze? Not quite! They're admiring the beautiful stained glass ceiling that occupies the back of the gallery.

Here's Abigail and Louis enjoying the atmospheric mood-setting mist sprays in the gallery gardens:

The gardens were so warm and lovely that we decided that this was the perfect spot for our picnic lunch.

After lunch (and coffee) we went back inside and located the Studio Cats exhibit, part of the Andy Warhol/Ai Weiwei exhibition currently showing at the gallery designed for kids. It surpassed all expectations and was truly wonderful. Here's Abigail enjoying part of the interactive cat-themed space ( check out the tail on her desk chair!!)

This cat wallpaper was designed by Ai Weiwei to reflect his love of cats and their love of him.

We watched a short film about Ai Weiwei and his cats. It followed some of his feline friends as they moved about his Beijing studio:

The cats were soooooo cute. It made us all miss Poppy (our feline friend) even more!

We watched a video about Andy Warhol too and learned loads about his life and also about his love of cats. He had 23 cats, all of them called Sam except one which was called Hester. We then joined the queue to go into one of the 5 gold-curtained selfie booths where we had a go at making some Warhol-inspired portraits and videos. We had a lot of fun pulling faces and different poses for the camera! Here's a sample of what we made:

After the gallery we decided to go our separate ways for a couple of hours. Josh, Louis and Abigail caught a train to Thornbury where Rachel, Andrew, Hugo and Sylvie live, and Nush took the number 11 tram to Gertrude Street where she met up with Kira and Julia for a spot of sales shopping. Here are Nush and Julia modelling two of the many dresses that they did not buy:

By teatime though, we were all reunited at Ra and Andrew's home for a delicious BBQ supper. Here is Oska - she is Kira and Sarah's dog. She's a kelpie and she's super cute!