Christmas Day

Well the day has come and gone although in England it is still there. We had a fantastic day.

In the morning we had Salmon and Philly bagels on the beach, washed down with VB, opened by my new Reef flip flops with a bottle opener built into the sole of each one.

Then pressie opening, we got lots, including a Esky (big blue cooler for taking beer to the beach) and CD's and VB stuff. Even an excellent trip to local vineyards with a meal thrown in. So we are very happy bunnies indeed. Well just a quickie today, here are some pictures of us enjoying our day. Party!!!!

Merry Christmas!!

Hello everyone,

The sun is shining and we are predicted to get a hot Christmas day with temperatures hitting 28degrees. So looks like we are having breakfast on the beach!

Christmas lunch with our ex-housemates later in the day.

A big thank you to all those who sent cards, e-cards and presents we love everything (well we will when we open them!)

Have yourselves a very merry Christmas.

Love Peter & Moira
XX
XX

It's Christmas time....

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Weather

I have now become a proud (???) owner of something I never thought I would have whilst in Australia. An umbrella!!! I know most people are thinking, here he goes another story about how incredibly hot he even needs a parasol to keep the sun off. Well no, it's chucking it down!

Over Friday and Saturday Melbourne is expecting 40mm of rain to fall. i know this is roughly the amount that falls every minute in Bradford but over here it is a big deal. They are rejoicing that the reservoirs are going to be replenished. Coast guard is on special alert and weather defences are being erected.

I know what you are asking;
"What is a Northern boy like you doing buying a brolly during this small downpour, you wimp?"

Well I was going for an interview with an agency when the rain started so I was wearing my office attire, speedo's goggles and flippers, and as I didn't want them to get wet I called into the extreme camping sports shop and purchased the rarely used an seen umbrella device. Came in pretty handy too I can tell you! Going into Melbourne today to supervise Moira's purchase of my Birthday pressie. Got to make sure she gets me something good. After all I did buy her some books one year (from the Richard and Judy recommended list, three for a tenner, that's good value and lots of reading) and a car stereo another year.

Sine moving in we have been regulars to the Penguin Colony (we have been twice!) and as we couldn't upload the pictures from my phone we have brought these pictures for you to see. And a couple of night shots from our apartment!

Bit tricky to see this one

Home

Well we have finally been accepted for accomodation. On friday we (well I) moved from our rentad accomodation to our new rented (but not shared) accomodation. It is a single bedroom appartment with a small but functional balcony, air con, heating and looks in good nick.

The address is:
3B / 21 The Esplanade
St Kilda
VIC 3182

here are a couple of photos of the place and some views from the balcony:

St Kilda and Fairy Penguins

Well we are now one week into living with our new flatmates. A decent bunch of people, all a lot younger than us, well not much younger than Moira.

We have Shane and Eva, Irish couple currently working in melbourne and looking forward to christmas.

Wayne and Leanne, scottish couple from glasgow. They are working in melbourne and are enjoying the suummer. they are about to fly out to Fiji next week so are very excited about that. They currently have Leanne's cousin staying with them, Darren.

Ian, another scot, who usually works away in the wilds during the week but this week has had problems with auditors closing his work place down and so now is looking into work in the city.

All very good people and a bit of a laugh.

Yesterday I met Moira in melbourne and we went to the Long Room. This is a cool bar that is, surprisingly, very long. Always guaranteed to get served. We had a couple fo drinks and then moved on. Melbourne is gearing up for Christmas in a big way with a huge advent calander, really huge, that people will absiel down each day and reveal one of the windows. Looks fun.

On the way back from Melbourne there wasa precosious little boy on the tram who claimed to have seen the "penguins". Interest gained we listened in to his mothers conversation with some tourists, there is a small colony of fairy penguins nesting in the peir at St Kilda, we had seen signs but no birds. She suggested that to see the birds dusk was an ideal time.

So we jumped off the tram and ran, as fast as we could, into a bar. Well it wasn't yet dusk and we needed to kill about 30-40 mins. One jug of VB later and we started to walk down the peir. It was windy but not too cold. Eventually we arrived at the area where the penguins were supposed to be. There was a crowd looking out to sea, looking for the birds. As we stepped onto the viewing platform we happened to look at the rocks and there happened, under the rocks, to be a small bird hiding from the people. We spent a few minutes watching the bird and taking pictures and then moved on looking for more birds. We walked down and told one couple about the bird and as they moved away we noticed that there was a bird in the rocks behind where they had been sitting. So we saw two small penguins in total. We were extremely happy to see those little birds in their natural habitat. here is a picture of a penguin, uit is not from my phone as the computer didn't recognise the phone as a valuid drive. Oh well here is a penguin:

Arrived!

We touched down on teusday last week so this is one week on. We have been busy. The first day we just wondered round Melbourne looking at the sights and gaining our feet. We were not too badly affected by jet lag so spent the whole day wondering round. The weather was spectacular (35 degrees) and unusually hot for this time of year. Turns out this was bad as I managed to catch every ray of sun I could and have spent the last week looking like a beetroot with a skin disorder. I have learnt my lesson now and use something called sunblock.
Thursday was when the jet lag caught up with us and we basically spent the entire day asleep. Just waking up in time to go down the road to the pub for jugs of VB. VB should be a national symbol! A kangreoo drinking from a can of VB whilst throwing a footy ball (different shape) to a Koala.
Over the weekend we looked around for various areas of Melbourne we would like to be based and have decided that the small village of St Kilda is an ideal place to settle. Near the beach and with an interesting culture, something a bit hippy crossed with goth.
Moira started work on monday afternoon and I started looking for accomodation and a job. accomodation is proving to be a little harder than we thought. The Estate agents allow 15mins for a inspection of a property. Not ideal to be looking round a flat for two with thirty other people all doing the same. apparently there is a high demand for accomodation so it is difficult to secure a place. Applications are submitted and then it seems there is some kind of biding war between the top applicants. Maybe we could have covered the mortgage if we had adopted the same system in england on our house. Ah well.
We have been staying in serviced appartments, courtesy of Oxfam, for the last two weeks and we will be moving into an affordable shared house at the weekend. Lots of Brits staying in a house together living and wroking in Oz. I have a feeling I have seen this kind of thing before but cannot just recall where.....
for the moment though I just keep plodding through appartment after apartment. The sun did do me one favour though, when I called to check on one application we made the woman asked me
"Are you the sunburn boy?"
So at least they are remembering me, not difficult when it looks like I just stepped out of a bush fire.
So the weather has returned to normal (21 degrees) and overcast. Not too dissimilar from england I bet :-)
Anyway have to get along I have two appartments to view, along with 5,000 others and some food to buy.
I made spicy barbeque Kangeroo for moira on her first day at work. I will let you hear her judgement when she adds to the blog. I liked it, although it was a bit springy (Boom! Boom!)

By for now
Peter

the lost Ark!

Just like in the closing moments of the famous Indiana Jones movie I was today watching the screws tighten on a case holding the most sacred of articles!! "The ark of the covenent?" I hear you ask! well my friends, it is almost the case.

Today we were woken early by a force of blokes who's sole purpose was to empty my life, pack it in small cases and deprive me of it for fourteen weeks. They were polite and courteous but I couldn't suppress my disappointment when the final side of the crate containing my TV was screwed shut. No TV for a couple of weeks!!

And it's not as if I am a soap addict but this week somebody could be killed off in a soap, lots of people get killed off in a Horror series based on Big Brother AND SPOOKS returns!

No dead Max, who cares really? No zombie invasion in the big brother house-hold. No exciting saving of the world from predominantly Muslim terrorists (why can't we have a welsh terrorist, apart from Duffy that is) for me. No what do I get?......a book.

If that is not enough, they also took all my kitchen utensils. What can you make with a milk pan (apart from noodles)? Just one tiny cooking pot with not enough room for anything (I said no noodles) to cook in it. Luckily I remember the student days, and I am a seasoned backpacker so I am sure I will be able to scrape together a meagre existence, also luckily I am now employed and have lots of take away menu's to hand. Plus, there's always pot-noodles;-)

Bedding, clothes, TV, computer, lightsaber, remote control Dalek, all gone! Well actually the remote control Dalek is under the stairs. Oh no Moira has taken it to the charity shop.

Took all our DVDs to the shop to pawn (yes that is spelt correctly) and they offered us on average £1 per DVD. There's no point arguing that an ex-rental copy of dog soldiers is better than shop bought as it has more trailers on it, no point at all. So our house is empty apart from some furniture we have donated to the Aussie invasion, and a couple of plants doomed to extinction!

So we move out of our house on Friday and in moves a strange Australian, well three in total. This is it, fingers crossed as we are embarking on the Nomad/Homeless phase of our master plan.

More about the leaving do

Well as we get the house packed up I though I could share a few photo's from the leaving do with all and sundry. Usually everyone places these on facebook but not allways. So here we go.

Football: man in Orange gets better tickets than us.

Moira has a drink

Is duncan actually bored?

football match

Drunk!!!

Not the first Shaft he's look along

Just a few of the wild photo's from the do.

The worst beer ever

Well this weekend was our leaving do/ final party blow out day. We had bought tickets to see Barnsley and Crystal palace fight it out on the football pitch. Very exciting!! Jon was down from Leeds so Moira was happy and we had enough to drink on the Friday to ensure nobody would be feeling guilty about starting (drinking) early on saturday.

A hot sunny day meant that we had chance to drink Chapmagne beer outside shivering by the garden furniture. it appears that hot and sunny are deceptive in October.

Soon we had set off for the journey of a lifetime, well to be more precise the football pitch. We had originally intended to meet with Duncan and Emma and thier friends at our house but they were running late so we changed venues, eventually meeting at the station for a bite of lunch then onto the match. Football fever, football mad. When we arrived we decided to have a quick drink before the match.......Bad Idea!

Crystal palaces idea of what Kronenburg should taste like is so very very wrong. The beer was foul and we couldn't drink a whole pint. Well actually that's not entirely true. I perciviered and managed to force the terrible tasting liquid down. I was to regret this later. Crystal Palace 3 - Barnsley 0. should have guessed it really!! Barnsley Beer 50 Crystal palace Beer -10.

Any way after the footy we dropped into an american style steak house. And then onto the Tup.

The m ost impressive attendant of the night was Helen Tun who, living all the way out in darkest Shenfield, made a massive effort to come and drink our farewells with us and desrves a special mention on this blog. Well done Helen, we love you, hope everything goes well in the future.

soon we were well into our inhebriated state as many of thise people who know me will recognise. Soon Jons excellent idea for a game, say what is most innapropriate at the time, was under full swing. Norks was used in one conversation with a woman, who incedently is rather well endowed. And between spoiling random strangers pool matches and watching Duncan and Chris snog I would say what I can remember of the evening was a success.

Now the long process of packing and cleaning the house. Next week our furniture is taken from us including the TV so I am already getting anxiety attacks!!

Guitar Hero

Having purchased a copy of the game guitar hero for our nintendo DS games machines we are now rapidly working our way through the songs in expert mode. Here is footage of a duel between Fraser and myself earlier this year.

I won by the way!!!

Renting Our House

So, our house was put on the Market. We asked for a professional couple, employed with no children and who didn't smoke. The estate agent listened very closely to us then picked the entire opposite. I understand that they are just trying to get somebody in as fast as possible and they have to make ends meet. I just wanted to have some security.

I must admit I am a little wary about renting out to foreign people who have yet to arrive on our shores, but have been promised by our agent (b'stow eves - Remember the name folks) that there will be a stringent background check on the prospective tenants. Hmmmm! My latest nightmare...

B.E: Hello bruce, we have a flat available for rent but need to vet you before you move in. Have you got a job?
Tenant: Not yet.
B.E: You sound ideal! Bring your bong and kids and we can find you a nice little flat. With furniture to sell as you need, they have broadband so you can sell everything on eBay.
Tenant: Ripper, I'll tell all me mates we are having a monster party!

An then I wake up screaming, very quietly so as not to wake the wife, actually this is not likely to be the case in reality as we are renting to a nice Australia person and some other Aussies who we have never met. I am brimming with confidence!!

Must remember to fix the leaky tap before we leave.

Oh and we have another batch of paperwork to fill out, and more fee's. Renting sounds nearly as expensive as selling.

Official

Well this is now officially official. With the tickets booked and a new suitcase purchased we are another step closer to moving to Oz. We have a 22 hour flight booked with Cathay Pacific. They look as though they have nice planes!! Most importantly they have in-seat entertainment systems so we can watch movies and play games on the way there. Seems our Nintendo's are not necessary for the flight.

Just have to sell the entire contents of the house. So if you want a drinks tower or retro space hopper then keep your eyes on ebay. If we ever get the darn thing up and running. my Darth Vader Mask will be available for those interested as will be a Scooby doo phone.

It's really amazing how much you manage to gather in a few short years. Anyway if anyone wants a Mazda MX-5 (£2,000 - Includes a Bluetooth hands free kit) then let me know.

Now we just have to start planning for the party!!!

It's Official

Well the decision has been made by the australian immigration department. After having been nominated by Oxfam in melbourne, hunted down all our personal documents and then scanned them and uploaded them to the website. Having slammed my fist into the computer several times whilst the immigration website failed to upload the documents. Having the embarrassment of having to have two chest x-rays due to the fact my torso is too long to fit on a single plate. does my chest look big in this is not normally a often asked question.

Finally, having decided we were not suffereing from fatal lung deseases, maybe a couple of mental one's, we have been granted the Visa. Monday the 29th October 2008 and we are now officially allowed to enter the land of Oz!

Grab a tinnie and jump into your Ute! We gonna have a party.