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Easter weekend
We have been in Melbourne so long now, and are so familiar with the city that we feel as though we are becoming melbournites (if such a term exists). Life has been very good over the last few weeks and I will attempt to recount some of the adventures we have been up too!! Probably a mistake to leave it as long as we have....
Sunday Apr 8th: We went down to the St. Kilda beach with Julien to enjoy the beginning of this beautiful day! As it turned out, this was one of the last truely summery days here in Melbourne. We had a few drinks on the beach while playing frisbee, and waited for Ryan and his two uni mates to find their way down to St Kilda. We met up with them and spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach and eating snags out of the back of Betsy on Beaconsfield parade. After a quick dinner at our flat, we went out to PJ O'briens - the same pub we went to on St Paddy's day. We met the Irish girls there and tipped a few pints. We then took a cab
to a quiet cafe in St Kilda on Acland street, and then walked the 30mins home. We were all quite exhausted. The original plan was to go to Bell's beach for the international surf comp, but we had heard that it was cancelled for a few days due to lack of surf!
Monday Apr 9th - We decided to make the trip out to Bells beach regardless as there was supposedly other things going on there. When we got there however, we found the beach practically deserted, and a smaller surf then we would find on the lake back in Canada! Maybe not that small, but still nothing compared to the nomal monsters that roll in to this beach! We brought out the frisbee again and relaxed before heading to a rest area just west of the beach to cook up some more burgers and snags in Betsy. There was a cliff jump here and a group of 15 or so made the plunge several times, having to swim quite a ways to get back to the pathway. We said our goodbyes to Ry - they were off along the Great Ocean Road the next day, and made our
Catching up with Ryan
We couldn't even figure out when the last time we saw Ry was (he went to Europe over the summer) but it was like old times in no time!way back to St Kilda after dropping Julien off at his flat.
Work, play and no shaving
Tuesday - Friday Apr 13th - Back to work, Carolyn with her job at zest campagning for Amnesty int. on the streets and me back at Bumper doing my video game delieveries and pick ups. Somewhere in here I decided to stop shaving, and I started to have a bit of growth. I let it go until it was quite full, then shaved it off in steps like my friend Steve Corey once did - Full beard, goatee with chops, handlebar with chops, mustache, and then clean. It is like 5 different people! As you can tell, I am not keeping busy enough over here!
Wednesday Apr 11 - we went to see Rod Gilbert, a comedian in the Melboure comedy festival. We got there a full 15mins late after jamming a few Hungry Jack burgers in our mouths upon finding out that we were not allowed to bring them into the show! The comedian was pretty good and gave us some good laughs. After we accompanied Alan, one of my workmates, to the RACV club - and exclusive club that
Boys will be boys!
Playing on Bells Beach - no waves = no surfing competition! organises all sorts of functions. We played a few games of snooker, rubbing elbows with the rich and famous. We met up with Ryan, back from his road trip, at the Espy hotel, and then to the Base backpackers
Carolyn starts on her third job in Melbourne!
Thurs Apr 12 - Carolyn is starting to get down on her job as with it being purely commission can be a rather poor paying job. A few days of making nothing after standing on the street for 8hr's would try the patience of a saint! She decided that she has had enough, and gave her notice. Carolyn and Kyle met up in the late afternoon and went through the Melbourne museum. Kyle graced us with his presence for dinner, and we spent the evening catching up on all the going on's of the past few years.
Friday Apr 13th - A pretty scary day, but turned out pretty good none-the-less. Met up with Kyle and the gang he had been travelling with the past couple weeks of their holidays. Went for some drinks at the Espy and worked our way back over to Acland street later in the evening.
Work weekend #1
Saturday Apr 14th - One of my work mates, David Stein recently had an addition added to his house in Romsey (about 1hr north of the city), and the builders had left him with a partially destroyed retaining wall, and he employed the services of myself and Alan from Bumper to assist him with his endevour. There was about 5 sections, each a few meters long, that need to be replaced and it took the majority of the day to get this accomplised. The ground was rock hard and all of the holes needed to be chipped away with a large pick and crowbar. Unsurprisingly my body was quite sore the next day! The final result looked pretty good - and led to some discussions about what to do with the space inbetween the house and the new addition.... led to future activites on a later date. Carolyn played with their two young children Cameron and Talhia, as well as keeping company with Belinda, Dave's wife.
I like free museums
Sunday Apr 15th - Carolyn was one up on me, having been to the museum without me, so we decided to go through this
again - Carolyn having skimmed some of the sections the first time. It was a bit of a lazy day - we say the Great Wall of China Exhibit, very impressive accomplishments of the different dynasties to have ruled China. We had a nice lunch in the Museum cafe, then went and bought me my very own phone! Because Carolyn and I were spending more time apart with our different jobs, we figured that having the means to communicate about when and where we are was worth the expenditure. Carolyn was initally very jealous of my phone because it is much fancier that the one we have been using since September with my colour screen and all the extra features! I hardly know how to use it even now!
Monday - Friday Apr 20th - Carolyn started her new job with Telstra doing data entry in an office starting Wednesday, with me still at Bumper. Carolyn had some dramas on the trams getting in with delays and such, and although getting sick of poor service luckily still swipes her tram ticket because she sometimes gets checked by undercover tram officials! Escaping a $180 fine while others in her group
are not so lucky!
Cara & Scott visit!
Friday Apr 20th - Cara and Scott arrived from New Zealand, our friends from uni back in Canada. We went out and had a few drinks on Fitzroy before heading home at a very reasonable hour.
Sat Apr 21st - The four of us took the train into the city and did a bit of sightseeing for the benefit of Scott and Cara. We had lunch in the Southbank food court (Chinese for me, sandwich for Carolyn), before walking over to the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) for a footy match. We watched the Collingwood vs. Port Adelaide match and were very lucky to have seats unter the covered section as it rained most of the match! The suckers in front of us paid 10 more dollars and got soaked! The footy match was a really good one to watch - AFL , and lasted a full 2 hrs. It looked like Collingwood was going to win most of the game (Carolyn, Cara, and Scott were rooting for them), but Port managed to come back and pummel them in the end! POWA.... POWA... POWA.... ( that is Port Adelaides fan Chant!)
I think they mean to be saying 'POWER' but the end of it gets lost in the drone and the Aussie accent! Carolyn and I went home and had some dinner, while Cara and Scott stayed in the city. We met them later at the Hard Rock Cafe on the corner of Burke and Swanston. There was some good live music and the drinks were good. We were one of the last ones to leave.
Sunday Apr 22 - Up early and up to the Victoria Market, so that Cara and Scott could have the experience. This market has everything you can think of and reminds me a little of the St Jacob market, except has more textiles and merchandise. Cara, Scott, and Carolyn stayed in the city to do a bit of shopping, while I wandered off and listened to some buskers and street performers for a while before heading home. When I got there, I realized that I didn't have the key and was locked out. I didn't know how much longer they were going to be, so climbed up over the balcony in the back - it must have looked pretty sketchy, but I comforted myself
Footy
Aussie rules football is a pretty fun game to watch, but I don't always understand the strategy...they seem to kick it to noone half the time. And sometimes they look like a little kids basketball team when the ball drops and everyone scambles for the ball. by saying " I can't get in trouble for breaking into my own place..... can I?". I went for a 15km run up along the Yarra river and got back to find them back already. We had a relaxing evening after dinner watching TV and chatting. Apparently all the TV shows in NZ are several weeks ahead of Australia (Heros, Gray's Anatomy, ect) so Cara and Scott were on top of them all already!
Back to the grind
Monday - Friday Apr 27th - Carolyn is rather bored with her job already - although she is one of the top workers of the 40 new hires there! She was made to do a typing and IQ test before being given the job and scored a 47.8 words/min and really really high on the IQ test. Who knew she was such a fast typer! Turns out though that all the data entry hardly requires typing skills, and relies more on being able to navigate between different screens, something Carolyn is really good at. I did a couple of long deliveries that took me pretty far out of town, so am getting pretty familiar with melbourne and surrounding area. Cara and
Scott did a great ocean road tour and rented a car to go to Phillip Island so we didn't see them until Tuesday night, and they left Wednesday morning back to NZ. Hopefully they enjoyed their time here in Melbourne. I had Wednesday off (Anzac's day), while Carolyn worked and made double time!
Work weekend #2
Saturday - Sunday Apr 29th - When we had been at the Stein's two weeks prior, Carolyn had mentioned to Belinda that I had done decking in Canada, and I got enlisted for the job. I designed it to fit into the space between the house and ordered all of the decking materials. It was a little confusing at first because all the building materials are in metric over here, while in Canada they are imperial. A 2x4x8' then becomes 45x90x2400, and after making the appropriate conversions, everything got ordered according to plan. Two very long days later the Steins now have a very nice Merbau deck. The Merbau is very hard wood, and requires all the top screws to be pre-drilled. This ended up lengthening the securing time considerable, especially as we were using a seperate countersinking bit to have the head
Pipes and drums for ANZAC day
Can't wait to hear the boys at SAC next year! sink below the deck surface. What a process. Carolyn kept busy being entertained by 3-year old Talhia, drawing pictures and playing with Barbies.
Monday- Friday May 4th - The work weeks kind of blend together. I am enjoying my time with Bumper and try to get my hands dirty with as many things as I can. I have done a bit of welding, lots of angle grinding, and a few odd repairs around the shop. There is an industrial room with all the tools I could ask for! Oh, did I mention I have been doing a lot of angle grinding - what a lovely smell! Carolyn's eyes have been going buggy with all the computer staring, and joined a gym in the city on Monday to maintain her level of fitness now that we have become more settled here in the town. I cycle to work and back, and good 30min ride each way. I had to purchase lights for the bike as the days are becoming shorter and I often have to ride home in the dark these days. I am still losing weight somehow, despite the copious amounts of food I have been eating, and have
Joe working hard weekend #2- Deck Stage 1
Can\'t wait to hear the boys at SAC next year! hit a record low of 180lbs, a weight I haven't seen since probably gr. 9 or 10. Maybe I should increase the intake of bacon - that usually helps moderate my weight level! On Monday night our roomate, Diana made us a very delicious meal of soups, steak, salad, and chocolate bake pudding.
Fun weekend!
Friday May 4th - Bumper had it's monthly pinball challenge party, so Carolyn met me there after work, and Julien and one of his French friends joined us later. We got free pizza and game play - having to fight for time/space with some middle-aged pinball-obsessed geeks! After, we met up with our old Irish roomies to celebrate Lorraines b-day.
Saturday May 5th - We had originally planned to go to the zoo this day, but the weather was very dreary and was raining off and on. A better day to visit the Melbourne aquarium! This was very worthwhile and we saw heaps of tropical fish, sharks, and other marine life. There are very large tanks, one surrounding a room with glass tunnels that allow the sharks and stingrays to swim directly above you!! One was massive! We also went on a roller
coaster ride that was surprisingly violent and almost left the two of us with severe whiplash! The poor kid across from us kept smashing his head into the cushion rest ahead of him! We went to a "Going Home" party for one of Carolyn's old workmates from job #2. For some unknown reason, he decided to make it a themed mask party. Most of us, begrudgingly took part, us with our Darth Vader masks!
Sunday May 6th - Sunday proved to be a nicer day, so we gave Julien a shout and met him at the gates to the Zoo. He is very keen on nature and although having lived almost right beside the zoo for the past 5 months, had never been! It wasn't as big as the Toronto Zoo, but had all the really cool animals - Massive brown bears, tigers, jaguars, lions, giraffs, elephants, and even meercats! The Lions were roaring up a storm, very impressive how much volume they can generate! Another full day of walking around! We have both been reading in the evenings - Carolyn reading the Alchemist again (her favourite book - Thanks Darcy!), and I read 'the Potato Factory'- Bryce Courtney,
'Cell' - Steven King, A war child memoir of Labanon, and a Napoleon Biography.
work, work, work
Monday - Friday May 11th - Carolyn went to the gym a few times this week - We had a couple people look at the van. Everyone seems quite taken with it, but are either looking for something a little different, or are looking to spend a lot less money. We will have to sell it within the next few weeks though, as we want to head to Perth on June 12th after going to see Sloan here in melbourne on the 10th, on the guest list thanks to one of Carolyn's high school friends. Funny enough, they are playing in cottage country in Canada on July 1st - which a bunch of my friends are going to back home! We made our first lasagna Wednesday for Diana, our roomate, to return the favour of her having made us dinner the week before. It was a phenomenol first effort - and I expect this is the start to some pretty good lasagnas in the future! So delicious and so easy! Just takes a bit of time....
Work at Bumper is still pretty
Joe with a beard
I hated this.... good - I was speaking with the owner of the Panel Beating shop next door to bumper and was giving him ideas on how to hang a new sign out front of his shop. He was complaning that the sign company wanted $1200 to hang it and that there was no way he was going to pay that. I told him that I would do it for $500 and have since been commissioned for the job. Don't expect that it will take me more than a days worth of effort - I need to find more jobs like this!
Work weekend #3
Saturday may 12th - Another mate at work, David Maxton is interested in getting his garage framed so that he can drywall it. He has loads of arcade games and wants to make it a little nicer. I agreed to do it for him, and knowing that he was trying to find someone to paint his daughter's room, asked Carolyn if she would be interested, and because of her vast experience painting with my sister, Sarah, said she could handle it easily! So the two of us worked most of the day - Carolyn doing an amazing
job with the daughters room - it looks amazing now! The timbering is coming along, but is going to need a follow-up day as it is a good size garage (7mx7m). After chatting well into the night, we didn't get home until 4am because he lives in Leopold which is the other side of Geelong!
Sunday May 13th - Happy Mother's day to Wendy and Bonnie! Today I had one delivery to make for Bumper - a set of Daytona machines, and I comissioned one of Carolyn's workmates to help me with the sign template. This required me to get out of bed at 8:30am which seemed pretty eary for some reason! Unfortunately the panel guy wasn't open today, so we never got the chance to start hanging the sign, although the template is now finished. They were given a scaled printout of the words, and I have cut out small strips around each letter so that I can tape it on the wall and using a paint marker, mark where all the letters have to go to be perfectly in line and level. Then I will just need to glue them all up into the proper markings, using
double sided tape to hold it all in place while the glue dries. Too easy.
I met Carolyn in town after finishing the delivery, and we have now ended up here completing our travel blog we have been so delinquent with! Our plan is to continue here in Melbourne for another 4 weeks or so, and head to Perth around the middle of June - then hopefully on to Darwin, before flying home via Sydney on July 10th - arriving the 12th. It is starting to hit home that we are now approaching the end of our trip, and that leaving Melbourne to go west will be the last leg. I don't think we will have any problems heading home - it has been a very long time, and although it is very amazing over here - as the saying goes - there is no place like home!
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Lara
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Good to hear that you're enjoying melbourne! Great city! Joel' jealous of your footy game, he is trying to figure out if he should play over here. Even his team from Hamilton has started up and his Geelong team is missing him, as he is them. If you want to supply teach contact SOS $210 a day! Staffing Organisation services, look them up. Have a blast! Cheers big ears