Settling in nicely.

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Just when you thought you'd heard the last from us - it's time for an update.

We have been settled into our new rental home for about three weeks now. The area is nice and quiet, it's a 30 minute drive to work for me and twenty minutes to the top end of the city, ( Lygon Street ), which is our favourite part for nights out, so that’s really handy. There are some nice boutique shops (Emma’s words!), restaurants and cafes just 7 minutes walk away, and loads of bike and walking tracks, (although mostly flat).

The house is beginning to feel like home now, even though we still only have one bed and one sofa in the whole place - out container is not due until mid December now. Emma's parents are staying for Christmas, arriving on the 14th, so hopefully our stuff will be here and installed by then.

Moving in day was pretty painless ( probably because we didn’t have anything! ), apart from me bursting a tap whilst installing the washing machine on the first day and had to call out the plumber. Gas, water & electric were all switched on immediately and we got our broadband installed within a few days, so at least we have some sort of entertainment of an evening.

The house is nice, but a bit noisy - there is no such thing as double glazing here, ( only the new homes are starting to put it in and only at a premium ). The walls are paper thin, so you can here all sorts of noises from outside. We have a huge gumtree in the front garden and the birds make a racket in the morning - it does sound like being in the jungle a bit.

As we only moved into the house on the Thursday, and I started work on the Monday - with a lot of running around in-between to find sofa's etc, we hadn’t really had time to do much exploring around Melbourne. I started work on Monday 5th, then Tuesday 6th was a bank holiday - bonus. We went out to give the new car a decent run, the Pajero is running great - it’s a 3.5 V6 petrol, so very thirsty, but petrol is only around 55p a litre. We went up into the Dandenong ranges and visited the rhododendron gardens. It's right at the end of the season, but all the flowers were still out. It was a lovely spot, up in the hills with huge trees, deep clear blue skies, cockatoos and beautiful bright coloured lyrebirds flying around all over the place.

Emma is looking for work at the moment; she has a few applications in for some interesting jobs in the city. My boss has put her in touch with a few people and she is making some useful contacts. Fingers crossed something will come along soon, as she is starting to get bored at home all day.

My job is going well. The office is nice, the people are all sound. It's a half hour run each way in the car, yet it's only 9 miles door to door. It doesn’t really matter how busy the roads are as it's the traffic lights that scupper you. The actual work is pretty easy, the buildings here are much simpler than back home - they don’t have snow loading to worry about! The other day everyone was told to drop what they were doing and pile into one of the offices; I'm wondering what the hell's going on. Turns out it was one of the draughies birthdays! The office girls had baked him a cake the night before, and the two big bosses congratulated him, thanked him for all his hard work this last year, gave him a birthday card and then divvied up the cake. Since then, there have been three more birthdays and everyone got the same treatment. It's a much nicer work environment in here, but you are still expected to put the effort in. There are no slackers in here.

Oz is SPORT MAD. Everyone is so fit. I joined a gym next door to the office and go before work so the roads are clearer. I go to the gym 5 mornings a week now, and it's amazing how busy it is at 6:30am! They even have a spin class at 6:05 in the morning a few days a week. You see people jogging all over at 6am on the way down to work. Crazy. People are very health and fitness conscious, plus the weather is so nice at that time in the morning.

It is very expensive here, despite what people back home may tell you. Petrol is cheap, but other car running costs are about the same as UK - used cars are extortionate to buy, and you pay stamp duty on them. The cheapest bangers I have seen start at $2000, ( about 900 quid ), and that would pretty much only be fit for the scrapper. I sold my old BMW at home for 500 quid, the same models here, in the same condition are going for over $12,000! ( that's over 5,000 quid! ). I think a European car import business might be a good bet.

Eating out is similar price to the UK, maybe a little cheaper. Household bills are about the same and grocery shopping is about the same. Rent is very expensive though, at almost half of my net monthly wage - not including bills and insurance etc. But I suppose we are living in a major city. The house is nice - but quite small for here. Upstairs is probably the same size as ours in the UK, but downstairs we only have one living room and a kitchen/diner. You would need to pay over $850 a week at least for a large house in this area, ( Balwyn ). The cheapest house we have seen to buy in this area was over $800,000. We are about 30 minutes drive from the city centre, but not near any decent public transport, ( apart from the buses ). If you want to be near to a tram or train line to the city then the rent goes up even more.

Wages are generally lower than the UK for the same types of job. Luckily, I am getting paid almost the same as home - but I can't get the big hours in I used to do. It's a little tight on one wage at the moment, especially as I am not doing much overtime. That’s the price you pay for living near a big city I suppose. Still, if you compare it to say London, then it is a relatively cheap city to live in.

Last weekend we spent most of the time driving round suburbs and new release land estates and show homes to see what and where we can afford to live. If you are willing to live a little bit further out of the city you can get a build a fantastic house on a decent plot of land for under $500,000. We obviously can’t say if we are staying for good just yet, but it would be nice to get a rung on the Ozzy ladder. House prices here are rocketing. Melbourne has just overtaken Sydney for population, and there are more people moving to Melbourne than Sydney now every year. Some suburbs have seen house prices rise by 50% in the last 12 months and there is no sign of a slowdown.

The weather, for the most part, has been unreal. It's been in the mid twenties from 6am, hitting 37 a couple of days. Then, suddenly, it dropped down to 18 and rained for 24 hours straight. It's starting to climb again now though. It's nice as it doesn’t stay mad hot for too long. It builds up over a week or so, and then cools right off, before building up again. Most days the skies are deep blue and clear all day long. Lovely.

We've met some great people so far, and are starting to make some friends. We have seen a lot of our friends Kim & Steve, the couple we met in Singapore back in January. Sixteen of us went for a curry last week, all Brits from the expats forum - it was actually very nice, no Khans, but a better curry than we thought we would get out here. They all seemed like a nice bunch and we exchanged a few numbers. Some were new arrivals like us, and others had been out here a few years. All of them are loving it here. Emma is meeting one of the girls in the city for a coffee on Thursday. One of the blokes is a Geordie that's been out here a year or so. He worked for Kvaerner in recruitment and knows a lot of the same engineers & draughies I know. Small world eh?

The locals are really friendly, they always pick up on the accent and then ask where you’re from and how long you’re staying. When you tell them you have moved here, they all say ‘welcome to Australia’ and say how much you are going to love it here. So, far, every Ozzy we have been met has been friendly, courteous, really helpful and gone out of their way to talk to you. Even the supermarket cashiers will ask you how your day has been. It’s very refreshing.

So, we’re feeling like we're more settled now. We have only been here just over four weeks, but it seems like months. We had to fit so much in in those first few weeks. We're looking forward to doing a bit of exploring now we have some free weekends.

Do we like it here? We absolutely love it, but we're pretty easily pleased and we're footloose and fancy free so to speak. Can't say we'll be here forever yet, it's all an adventure for us at the moment. All I can say is it is totally different from the UK, and some of the things we enjoyed in the UK we will not be able to do here, but there are things we wanted to do in the UK that we are able to do more of here. Only time will tell how we will settle long term, although we must be enjoying it as we are currently land hunting so we can build a big Ozzie house!

That's all for now, stay tuned.......

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Comments

[Gary]

Boro Weather report
The weather in Cleveland - Cold, dark, wet, windy. Nuff said Gary