you some very beautiful places on the iconic and beautiful Great Ocean Road. A bus will leave from Camp St at 8am for breakfast welcomed and informed by the 'shedders' at the Buninyong Men's Shed. After breakfast we drive for an hour through a sparsely populated, very dry plain, through a sea of wind turbines to rural Winchelsea, where the Winchelsea Community House and the wider local community will give us a morning 'cuppa' (tea or coffee) and show us what they do best in the 'later learning' space, very broadly defined.

Another hour in the bus takes us south over the forested Otway Ranges to the lazy beach resort at Lorne and west along the amazing coast for a welcome lunch at the Wye River General Store. Much of the tiny Wye River township (112 homes were destroyed, but no lives lost) was devastated only a year ago by the Christmas Day 2015 fires, but the Australian vegetation is 'custom designed' to recover, and it is all slowly coming back. You will have the option of crossing the road to the beach for a walk or swim before we drive on along the magnificent coastal road, stopping briefly for the breathtaking view at Cape Patton, and on through Apollo Bay to 'Maits Rest', for a truly beautiful walk through a cool, ancient rainforest of Mytle Beech ( Lophozonia cunninghamii ), tree ferns bordered by Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans), the world's second tallest flowering tree.

At 4pm we arrive back at the Apollo Bay Surf Club where the Marrar Woorn Neighborhood House has organized a comprehensive community immersion in learning in later life in a rural Australian coastal community. An opportunity for anther quick walk or swim at the nearby beach is possible before we drive back through the Otways and gathering sunset to Ballarat by 9pm.

Tuesday is Conference Day 1 in central Ballarat with a chance for a sleep in and slow breakfast before assembling in the Fed Uni theatre only a minute from your accommodation with an equal number of new participants. The theme today is Older Learning in Diverse Contexts , that will include, amongst many other themes, introductory keynotes by Alex Withnall from the UK, the CEO of the Australian Men's Sheds Assoc iation, David Helmers and ' Eldership from an Aboriginal Perspective' by Tony Dreise of the Guumilroi Aboriginal Nation - straddling the NSW-Queensland border. Our advance plans are for an evening Civic Reception hosted by the City of Ballarat, conditional on local Council elections in Nov 2016, and an early night.

On Wednesday the focus (and we all) move to Melbourne. Wewill be on the 7.46am train from Ballarat to the large and 'world's most livable' city of 4 million people, Melbourne, getting the last part by tram to the historic ' Royal Society of Victoria ' venue for Conference Day 2 by 9.30am. Today the theme is Learning in Later Life and Social Inequalities joined by many ' new ' participants and a diverse and interesting program. Weneed to finish up by 3pm to ensure those full Exchange participants catch their 6.20pm flight out of Melbourne into the evening sunset out over the Tasman Sea to ACE Aotearoa where an equally warm welcome awaits in Wellington, the southernmost national capital in the world. Here you are half a day away and truly 'down under' - from a Eurocentric perspective.

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