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