On our arrival day we met up with Paul from work and he kindly drove us all around the suburbs, North, West & East of the city (South is basically very wet being a big wet natural harbour!). We were quickly able to identify the areas we had researched on the web and get a feel for the types of areas we liked and wanted to look for a rental property in. We got home about 8:30pm absolutely shattered having arrived after a 22 hour flight @ 6:30 in the morning. Big ZZZZZ's were definitely on the cards if only our heads weren't buzzing with suburbia!!
Day Two (Tuesday) started by being met at our 'hotel' accommodation at 9am sharp (serviced apartment is the correct description and not too bad either) by a very helpful lady - Helen, from Cendant - a relocation specialist company. And with that we set off house hunting. Another long day but at the end of it we had 2 houses we'd made applications on - one in Eltham and one in Doncaster East. OK Eltham does sound less British than Doncaster East - no offence to anyone from Doncaster but we didn't travel all the way around the globe to move to Doncaster did we?
Errrr - Yes we did apparently!
We got the choice of the two houses on the Wednesday (corporate relocation certainly pays since both houses had other applications as well!). However we'd decided that the Eltham one, although stunning with a superb treetop 'Bush' view was really just too big for us and not as handy as the DE one.
That evening marked the start of the Commonwealth Games. It'd be great if we could post some shots of the fireworks viewed from St. Kilda where we were staying as they looked stunning.......on the telly! Only on TV could we summon the energy to raise eyelids, just a little bit, to squint at the opening of the games. Shortly after exhaustion took over and with the help of VB I certainly slept like a baby! VB = Victoria Bitter MMmmmmm mmmmmm :-)
On Thursday we signed up for a years lease and went shopping! The house comes fully fitted with an Oven and Dishwasher (not me!) and well errrr not a lot else, in fact nothing else (apart from our inherited Goldfish) so without the aid of a car as we didn't have one at this point it was off to the shops in the tram (just like the one which flew into the MCG for the Opening Ceremony) in order to start getting some essentials. We also managed to sort out the bank account (yes thank you HSBC for opening it remotely from the UK and then posting all the debit cards and cheque books back to the UK??!! HHmmmpphff.) and generally had a good mooch around the CBD (Central Business District or central city I guess) and began to get to know Melbourne.
Some pictures from St. Kilda and on our way tot eh Rugby 7's @ the Telstra Dome......
Thursday also marked the first of our official CW Games tickets and we went along to the Rugby 7's competition. Was a great night - some piccies in CWG post - found it a bit strange that the wife suddenly lost respect for all things British and started cheering for Fiji against Wales?? Why ?? I'm welsh, sat in Australia feeling a bit like a minority and she starts cheering for the Fijians??11 - go figure! - much to the amusement of the crowd around us. HHmmmpphff again. OK so in the spirit of things we also cheered for some of the southern hemisphere teams but the top billing of the night was when the little local Yellow & Green team played the ones with White Shirts & Red Crosses. Ho Hooo!! Boy did the locals get a shock!! Go Go England!! He he he he - who's laughing now hey! He he he!!! :-)
Having said that we soon realised that unless the Yellow & Green teams or competitors were doing well you didn't get to see any other sport on TV or results. Since the local team didn't get into the Final for the R7's they televised the Bronze game and then it wasn't for another 18 hours via the UK the score came in for the Gold & Silver! This was somewhat a recurring theme for the coverage over here. Still its nice they're so proud, but even the locals were embarrassed and calling radio stations to complain about the coverage being so biased!!
We managed to get a car for the weekend and so with the aid of the Melway (superb street map thingy) & NavaRoo our superb Navman GPS system we managed to locate Ikea and spent a fruitful half day filling trolleys - luckily everyone else was watching the Games and we were able to pick up everything we needed to survive until the rest of our gear arrives. Also trawled the shops for a combi Microwave, some home phones, bedding, towels etc & food! plus a whole host of other things you forget you need until confronted with an empty house with no cleaning gear, Hoover or whatever!. We also got caught up for a quite a while trying to decide if a Plasma screen would fit in the boot or not! Well they are much cheaper here ;-) Lucky for the bank balance we decided it wouldn't fit !!
On the Monday I started work and L had an interview too! Picked up the new car - an Escape 4WD at lunchtime and then headed back into the city at the end of the day feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the whole work thing - you have to remember we'd been effectively off since the end of November in our minds only doing 3 weeks work from December to March!! Go on feel sorry for us - you know you want to! ;-)
Tuesday - one week & a day after arriving L picked up the keys to our rental home. Now the real life begins.
Wednesday - this marked our first day in the house, complete with giant inflatable mattress! Took a bit of doing to set the house up and unload all the bags and shopping but not bad, even feels fairly cosy.
Next up was news L had been successful in her interview and she just had time to sort out the utility bills, get broadband connected and was starting work on the following Monday - boo hoo!
No comments:
Post a Comment