Melbourne

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Leaving Home ... again

So after 4 brilliant months in Melbourne we're on the road again. We've said goodbye to all of our new friends and left our house in Albert Park. The first month in Melbourne was quite challenging, first of all looking for somewhere to live and then trying to find a job. We were lucky to find a 2 bedroom victorian terrace which we sublet from a girl called Kate who was going to South America for 3 months, she left us with the keys to the house and all of her personal possessions.

Our focus then turned to job hunting which was difficult due to the fact that we wern't even being considered for positions by agents due to our short term holiday visas. I finally got lucky when a company called MessageMedia who are an SMS firm advertised a position almost idential to the one I had left with 2ergo. They offered me the job after a couple of interviews which Grandma June had wisely predicted they would do after they saw me ! Jenny also started work a week or so after me working for the department of education on a project to stimulate the local economy by bringing forward public spending on schools. She started off in charge of refilling staplers and measuring chairs, however after they realised that she was not just an average temp, her duties progressed to writing articles for Department of Education publications as well as gaining a name for herself amongst the head teachers in Victoria such that she became the person they would call first to discuss any issues with the project. Government officials in Canberra would also call to speak to her ahead of some of her more supposed senior colleagues.

We both received very good offers to stay, but in the end we made the hard decision to leave the dream in Melbourne and return back to Manchester as persuading our family and friends to follow us out was probably not very likely.

As well as working in Melbourne we did get up to a few other things including, both turning 30, watching the Superbikes at Phillip Island, watching the F1 GP at Albert Park, driving up to Mt Dandenong, climbing up to the top of Hanging Rock to look out over the Victorian countryside, sampling the wines of the Yarra Valley, driving the Great Ocean Road, touring the Mornington Peninsula and riding a Suzuki GSX600 around Phillip Island on a trackday. We also learnt a bit about coffee and loved ticking off places we had visited in our "Cheap Eats" book.

Our last day at work was Friday 26th June with a flight to Sydney booked for Saturday afternoon to give us time to recover from the night before. This turned out to be a really good idea as we were rushing around in the morning packing our stuff and sending home what we didn't need including all of our warm clothes and hiking gear. We got to the airport just in time to check in for our 4pm flight, we thought we had been really clever as we needed to change the destinations and dates of all our remaining flights. Qantas had told us that there would be a charge for this but they had told us the same thing in New Zealand and we worked out that we could change the flights over the phone and then just turn up at the airport .... no such luck in Melbourne. They wouldn't let us on the flight until they reissued all of our remaining tickets which took an hour and a half and cost $750 !! They did put us on the 6pm flight for free though ... Bye bye Melbourne.

Pictures on picasa http://picasaweb.google.com.au/phy7tes

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Comments

[scott]

Down Under
Sounds like you had a great time Tom, the pics are great. When you get back it will be nice to catch up over a beer, you will be full of stories I bet. I read your blog when you post, so keep posting. See you soon