Down Under with Hampshire's Iain Brunnscheiler.

IT'S the end of our first term under the Auscricket Management scheme, and we all have a two week break for Christmas.

The time has flown by, and I think all the boys would have pretty good end of term reports, judging by the levels of fitness and cricketing improvement that has gone on. All eight of us have clocked up personal bests on the dreaded Bleep Test, which is quite a good measure of cardio-vascular fitness.

In particular Ian Thomas, our Welsh comrade, has leaped from level 10 to level 12, as well as shedding over 30mm of body fat! The Glamorgan boys will hardly recognise their hard-hitting batsman if he keeps going at this rate!

Gary 'Whippet' Pratt, has not only got his lightening speed to rely on now, but having been working hard on his upper body strength, can now bench press 90kg's, an increase of 25kg in three months.

As well as changing physiques and fitness, this period has seen quite a few changes in hairstyle! Australia seems to have a strange effect on young English male heads. There have been five cases of sudden and mysterious lightening of hair colour - the sun must be strong to change it to bright shades of yellow - or it might have something to do with the peroxide bottle I found in the bin!

Also there have been three cases of complete hair loss - I guess that being on the other side of the world gives the boys a license to experiment!

Having had our last week of training, and completing our fitness assessments, it left just one more group activity. This was namely our Christmas party held on a boat on the Swan River.

We embarked on the wine cruise to celebrate all the hard work we've put in, and it was a great day. Travelling for about three hours up the Swan, and stopping at three different wineries, it really was a fantastic day, and the scenery was beautiful. It gave us a taste of Western Australia that we hadn't previously seen, with most of our training being done in the city. Also we learned some valuable lessons about how the local wines are made and the variety of flavours created.

Perhaps if we were on a David Gower training scheme this would be done weekly - to ensure our vineyard knowledge was up to scratch!!

Some of us are leaving Perth for the break, Toby Bailey is going to New Zealand, and Gary Pratt flies across the country to Melbourne to stay with friends. He is lucky enough to be watching the Boxing Day Test match between Australia and South Africa at the MCG, one of the best grounds in world cricket.

I'm back in England for two weeks, and the others are staying here.

We'll all be ready to get cracking again in the New Year, as the temperatures hot up even more!