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.


Things I’ve seen:
40+ kangaroos
1 dog on a tuckerbox (at Gundagai)
7 bilabongs
0 swagmen
2 fruitbats

I really liked Melbourne, it feels more like a European city than anywhere else and seems nice and relaxed, apart from the traffic which is dreadful and we paid $21 for an hours parking in the city. Just before we left for the long drive back to Canberra on Thursday morning we got a call from the estate agent and it was good news! We had got the flat in East Brunswick and we can move in on the 19th May.

Lunch at St Kilda (with Tram)