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Day 298 (19.1.08) to Day 299 (20.1.08)
On Saturday morning Tiana and her fella, Ash, came round for some brunch. After we’d had our fill of pancakes and scrambled eggs on toast washed down with plenty of tea we picked their brains about which suburbs to look for apartments in. We wanted to find a place for the next few months so that we didn’t have to live in a hostel. Not only would it work out cheaper we were really looking forward to having a proper home for a while. Now that we were living in a flat for a while we realised things that we’d been missing - not having to share a bathroom/kitchen/bedroom, not having to put up with other peoples mess, having somewhere quiet to relax, being able to watch what you want on TV, having a fridge…lovely!
We went out for a tour of local real estate agencies to pick up their rental listings and then perused them over a cup of coffee in the lovely Acland Street. So far it wasn’t looking too good, most were over our price range but there were a couple to try so we were still hopeful.
We passed the rest of the weekend watching some movies and using the internet to search for flats and jobs, then finished on Sunday night with a trip to Melbourne’s’ big Crown casino with Kayleigh and Spencer. We didn’t win anything but had a good time on the roulette tables again as we had in Macau!
Day 300 (21.1.08)
Today was Mark’s birthday - his first on the road. Unfortunately we had some boring things to do so Chrissie started the day well by making some delicious breakfast and Mark opened his cards - thanks to everyone who managed to get cards out here to us!
The rest of the day was spent looking for flats and setting up a bank account and applying for tax file numbers so that once we got jobs they’d have somewhere to pay our wages into and they wouldn’t tax us inordinate amounts.
In the evening, to celebrate Mark’s birthday, we went out with Tiana for some dinner. She’d mentioned a place called Lentil as Anything, a non-profit vegetarian restaurant where you decide how much you think your dinner is worth. It sounded great to us so we decided to
try it out. We had the most delicious vegetable curries for dinner made with all organic veg and served up in huge portions (and I mean huge, Mark couldn’t even finish Chrissie’s meal for her tonight!). We put our donation in the pot and left determined to go back there again some time.
Back at the flat we had to wait for our dinners to go down a little before we tucked into a bit of the birthday cake that Tiana had brought round for Mark. He blew out his candles and made a birthday wish (has anyone else noticed that when people make birthday wishes they close their eyes - why is that?!) and we ate some cake -delicious!
Day 301 (22.1.08) to Day 304 (25.01.08)
Tiana’s sister and her friend were arriving today for a few days so we were moving out. Chrissie was coming down with a pretty nasty bout of flu so we planned to stay in a bit of comfort in a hostel for a couple of days but with the Open on everywhere was fully booked. We managed to find a spot for the van in a campsite north of Melbourne
in Coburg and after a bit more job and flat hunting we made our way over to get ourselves set-up there for a while. Mark’s friend Bex, whom he’d worked with in Manchester was over in Melbourne visiting friends so in the evening we went into town to meet up with them for a drink or two. We visited a couple of really cool back-alley bars that we’d never have found without the help of some locals and probably will never be able to find again!
The campsite we were staying in was great with a good kitchen, pool and TV room so over the next few days we were able to break up the boring job/flat stuff by taking some dips in the pool and keeping up to date with the tennis on TV.
We went into town on Thursday to drop off our info at a few employment agencies and then went over to meet Bex and her friends at Acland Street for lunch and a coffee.
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