Pier

Mornington Crescent

07.08.2014
We decided we needed to take some time out and explore as neither of us knew the area around Melbourne. We joined a city car scheme when we moved here and thought it would be a good time to go for a drive, and luckily for me, the nearest car to our flat is an Alfa Mito. So, on what turned out to the the stormiest weekend so far, we headed for the coast. The Mornington Peninsular is south of Melbourne and is formed by a crescent of land that encloses the bay and is apparently know for its vineyards. We drove down the coast road through some very familiarly sounding towns – Chelsea, Brighton, Sandringham – and we stopped at Seaford for a hot chocolate and cake. Something I've noticed is that place names here are opposite to the UK – Chelsea, Richmond are s!!t-holes. Australia is defo up-side-down-land.

The route to Flinders

Our ultimate destination was a place called Flinders, which is on the southern edge of the peninsula (not penisula) and opposite Phillip Island where you can see penguins and motorbikes (not penguins on motorbikes, that would be silly as they wouldn't be able to change gear because their legs are too short). We stopped for lunch at one of the vineyards and, even though it was the middle of winter, it was pretty busy and warm enough for us to sit outside and eat.

Flinders is a small town with a couple of antique shops and an artists studio and I can imagine it would be a busy place in the summer. We did see a surfer but he looked pretty hard-core and was in a full wetsuit. 

On the way back we stopped at the beach at Rye, for no other reason than we liked Rye in Kent and saw another dozen surfers – they must be very keen.

A stormy beach at Seaford

The thing that keeps surprising me is how much the area around Melbourne is like the UK. I though it was going to be red-dust roads and wombats.

Under the pier downtown

Napoli the Mito

The beach at Flinders

Looking towards Phillip Island

A little sun breaks the cloud at Flinders

Why did Karl Marx only drink herbal tea?

31.07.2014
After a long three months at sea, our stuff has arrived from the UK. After a quick customs check and the destruction of a beloved Christmas decoration ($300 to have it treated or $60 to have it destroyed) it was shipped to Canberra for temporary storage in Bobby and Di's garage (sorry Booby and DI!). This has given us a couple of problems, our flat is too small to store everything and Canberra is over 700k away.

So we decided to hire a van (called Selma) and drive on Friday night (11th July) for about four hours, stop over in Albury for a few hours sleep, then head at the crack of sparrows for another four hours to Canberra. After that would be a day of sorting through boxes before heading back early on Sunday to get Selma back before 8pm that evening.

I think we slightly misjudged the size of the van and the amount of stuff we had to collect, we only managed to bring back about 50 per cent of what we needed/wanted. Now, the people who packed all our stuff in England were very quick and efficient, and wrote on every box which room it was from and a description on what was in it. The problem was we didn't expect them to split things across a number of boxes (I guess they assumed we would be unpacking everything at once). So, as a result, we have TV's without remotes, parts of my stereo missing, half a dining chair, computer without hard drives and I'm also missing one of my guitars. I'm sure all the missing bits are there, we just haven't managed to locate them yet... The 50 per cent of what we needed only turned out to be 15 per cent usable. We are going to give Danielle's Dad a list of all the things we are missing and let him go on a treasure hunt in all the boxes left in the garage.

We did have a lovely evening out in Canberra at the local Austrian club with schnitzel and bratkartoffeln and some Austrian beer – Canberra continues to surprise! This was a warm up for our skiing trip in a few weeks.

Because all proper tea is theft.

Thankfully, my turntable arrived in one piece.

One more time

The Saint and Rogue

Could be in London...

I'm sitting in the 'Saint and Rogue' on Little Collins Street in Melbourne and it could be anybar in London. 

It's the first day of my second freelance appointment - 3 weeks at an accountancy firm. The work doesn't look too taxing, but it's only day 1.  I'm also mobile blogging for the first time - which isn't really working.

There will be an update on the morning ton peninsula, our stuff and my first ski trip in Australia very shortly. (This is like a blog teaser)

Back to life

25.06.2014
I've been a bit slack but I've got an excuse, I've been working.
I've managed to survive two weeks of freelance work and there is a chance that the assignment will continue. I've been working on a number of documents for a youth mental health organisation so the work is very similar to what i'm used to. But there do seem to be a couple of differences between here and the UK – firstly, the Head of Design cares about design and knows what she is doing, secondly, they have a photographic manager who takes pictures, shoots video, is good to work with and doesn't behave like a sex pest – who knew.

I knew it was going to be a good place to work when I saw this on my desk.

Lego phone! I might steal it (brick by brick)

The office (portacabin) is in a place called Parkville and is right next door to Melbourne Zoo. It's quite odd as sometimes I can hear lions roaring and monkeys going mental as I walk home in the evening. Of all the things that could kill me here I wasn't expecting lions... Apart from the wildlife there is a really nice atmosphere in the office, everyone has lunch together and on Friday someone goes and gets noodles from the local noodle shop for everyone - not quite chippy-chips but good.

I didn't have much chance to explore last weekend as I was recovering from my exertions in the week but we are planning to hire a car this weekend and drive to the Mornington peninsula, and maybe pop over to Phillip Island to see the penguins.

Also, I got my first pay today which, although is unremarkable, feels like a significant moment as it's the first Aussie dollars I've earned. It's also 25th June, which I guess is really our Chistmas day. The weather has taken a turn and its been cold and stormy for the last couple of day. There has also been 40cm of snow at the local ski resort but I'm still waiting for my snowboard to arrive. Our stuff landed in Sydney last Monday and has disappeared into Australian customs, we just have to wait and hope there will be no further charges for destroying and fumigating everything.

Finally, I've been playing with my video camera.

New acoustic

12.06.2014
My first acoustic built in Australia.

Home

06.06.2014
We had a week in Canberra to relax before flying to Melbourne on the morning of the 19th to pick up keys and officially become residents. Unusually, things went without a hitch and everything was planned with precision. It involved picking up keys, picking up van, finding and driving to Ikea to pick up some essentials for our unfurnished flat (we are still waiting for all our stuff from the UK to arrive, it should land in Sydney on the 12th June), pick up a TV, return van and build furniture.

The first few days here were taken up with interviews, admin and setting up home. I signed up with Aquent in Melbourne and met with my agent who turns out to be English, funny as my Agent in the UK was an Aussie. It all sounded quite hopeful and there were a couple of jobs that were suitable for me, I just had to be patient and wait for the usual process to happen.

The flat we’ve moved into is brand new and in quite a large block in a very large development. We were some of the first people to move in and there have been a few teething troubles. Firstly, there are two large sliding glass doors that make up the entrance to the building. Early in the first week after a trip to the local supermarket we came back home and used the key fob to open the doors, the first door opened and we went in, only the second door didn’t open and the first door closed – trapping us between the doors. There is button between the door to open them in case people get stuck, but it wasn’t working. We were basically trapped like a weird art installation, with a weeks shopping (including toilet roll and broom), for everyone passing to look at. Thankfully, I had the number for the building manager and we were rescued after about 10 minutes. And then a couple of days later the smoke alarm in our bedroom decided to go off at 2.30am. Danielle had an interview the next morning at 9am. It ended up wrapped on our balcony wrapped in a towel.

Danielle’s parents were our first guests and they brought some of our stuff over from Canberra.We had a good few days exploring Melbourne by tram, seeing the sights, visiting the markets and having cakes by the beach. After they left the reality of our new life started to sink in as it was the first time since we arrived that we were on our own. And thankfully our patience payed off. I’ve got a 3 week booking, working for a kids mental health charity, which starts on Tuesday 10th June. And Danielle starts a 3 months booking for MYOB, in their internal design department, on the same day. Thank you Aquent!

So, this is it! It’s pretty much exactly 2 months since I left TfL and we are up and running. I can’t say that it’s been easy and we’ve had our ups and own, which I guess is all part of the process, but I’m pretty happy that we’ve got so far so quickly. The only thing left now is the arrival of our stuff from the UK which still has to go through customs, I’m sure there will be a tale to be told about that.

Sunset over Melbourne

Hume Highway

On the road to Melbourne

06.05.2014 
Last Monday we hired a car and headed off along the Hume Highway to Melbourne, the sat-nav said “Continue on this road for 658km, then turn left and you have reached your destination”. Australia is very big! On the map Canberra to Melbourne looks like a couple of hours drive but it took us 7, and to get to Perth is another 23 hours. We stayed in a place called Coburg, north of the city, with one of Danielle’s friends. He has a room that he hires out as a B&B in a beautiful old Victorian house – this was a great first impression of Melbourne.

The next morning we started house hunting, another piece of the puzzle as it’s very hard to do stuff here without a permanent address. It didn’t start well and then got worse!

Flat one: nice place in a block on St Kilda Road, with a coffee shop and grocery shop on the first floor. Unfortunately, we got the wrong day and didn’t get to see it.

Flat two: in a block about 2 minutes from the beach at St Kilda, sounded promising but was the opposite. It looked a bit like a run down motel with a central courtyard and a view of a wall, and was tiny. But it did come with a 50’ TV which took up most of the lounge.

This is when it started to chuck it down.

Flat three: in a place called Prahran. As we waited outside for the agent to turn up we noticed a sign that said "Rooms by the Month, Week, Day, Hour” – this was a bad sign. Up three flight of stairs to a tiny, dirty apartment that was serviced and cleaned, just not very well. The agent looked genuinely surprised when we said we didn’t want to fill out the application. As we left and got to the bottom set of stairs there was a young(ish) lady sitting on the bottom step, smoking and texting. She was suitably dressed (bearing in mind this was 3 in the afternoon) in a very short and revealing gold dress and 7 inch heels. Paying us no attention at all, we actually had to climb over her and as we got outside we saw her client driving off in his ute.

This was a low point as we were starting to realised that all we could really afford came with en-suite prostitutes.

Flat four: in East Brunswick. A brand new development, just within our price but small. Things were looking up! All mod cons, parking, outside space and just off Lygon Street (Trent might be able to tell you about the area) which is full of bars and restaurants, and only 20 mins into the City by tram. A possible, but seeing neither of us have jobs yet we weren’t sure if we’d be able to get it.

Next morning, the sun was shining and Danielle had 2 interviews, so I went back to Flat one to see it. Again, small and on the 12th floor but it did have one thing going for it – a view directly over Albert Park. It was a bit more expensive and felt a lot more claustrophobic than the previous place as it didn’t have a balcony but it was close to the park, the beach and not too far from some nice restaurants.

The view over Albert Park

So we put in an application for the last two places and crossed our fingers that one would be available. I also had an interview with a freelance agency and made contact with Aquent, who have an office in Melbourne. Both sound hopeful that they will be able to find me some work, so fingers crossed again.


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