One month of marriage and one week downunder

What a week we seem to have had. We arrived on Wednesday morning 8 am and since then we have sorted out bank accounts, car, home, furniture, medi cares (Australian NHS), and tax numbers. We still have a little more to sort out but we are almost there. We signed on the dotted line for our home today (12month contract which can be reviewed) and we pick up the keys in the morning. We hope to have the furniture and electrical goods delivered on Thursday morning, so we won't be moving in till Thursday, which will mean that Claire will have to do most of the move herself, as Mark starts work on Thursday. However we don't have much to move (4 suit cases). Any way some of you have been asking to see what our currently accommodation is like. So we took a few pictures to show you.









We hope to show you photo's of our new home in tomorrow's blog

A home at last!

What a day, is all I can say. I'm finally feeling like we have a place in Australian society. After finding the home we wanted over the weekend the first things we did on Monday morning was to get the application form to the agency. It was then out of our hands and we had to sit and wait for the phone call to say whether we'd got it or not.

Knowing us as you do; we don't sit and wait, so we headed off to town to see our banker for a face to face meeting to discuss car insurance. It seems over here it that their more interested in how many years you've been driving than how many years no claims you have. It appears also that car insurance is a lot cheaper and not looked on as important, as when you buy the car you get 3rd party insurance anyway (with my driving history though Mark doesn't want to take the risk, so its fully comp for us).

Following this we head over the government offices to sort out Medicare (their NHS). Was the easiest thing we've done so far. I can't get over how friendly and helpful people are over here.

By now it was lunch time and our parking space was running out. So we hopped into the car and headed to the large park in the middle of the city, beautiful. For those of you interested in cricket we walked past the Adelaide Oval headed to the river.



Where when we'd found a spot away from all the birds (Pelicans included) we had our packed lunch and watched the birds. I've never seen so many different birds that I don't know.











The rest of the day we just wandered around our new home city and came familiar with it. We received two phone calls in this time which resulted in us being able to pick up our new car on Tuesday and sign on the dotted line for the home we wanted. With all this sorted we headed home and began the furniture/electrical items search. We also had a visit from Marks new boss, who seems very helpful and friendly.

As you can see things are finally coming together. A couple more busy days and I think we will be sorted, to the stage where we will be camping in our new home.

Time for the beach and relaxation

Hi guys hope all is going well, and your enjoying our blog so far.

We've not really done much today. Got some papers ready to persuade an Australia agent that they want us in the house. Though we're feeling a little penned into a corner as the contract is a little unfair, but we have not other choice. We will be speaking to them about it tomorrow. We decided to hold a sit in protest until they give it to us, as its available now.

Following this we decided to take the day off and went for a drive to the beaches, the wineries and Belair National Park. Hope you enjoy some of the pictures (I hope the ones of our accommodation will follow). Click here for our Australia collection on Mark's Flickr

Adelaide driving (26.06.2010)

We've spent the day driving around looking at houses and finding shops to buy furniture etc in. The house search was successful as we have found a home. Now we just have to go through the next stage, which is to fill out a agency application form and hope the owner picks us.

We also had a nice surprise when Marks friends that live in Adelaide rang us and invited us for dinner tonight (they use to live in north Wales when they moved over there for 3 years). It was nice to talk to people who had been in our shoes before. They made us feel very welcome.

Anyway to get on to my rant of the day. Driving in Adelaide. Now before you start I know I'm not the best driver in the world but compared to drivers in Adelaide I'm good. They don't seem to know about roundabouts so instead these are replaced by traffic lights, which are everywhere. And this is where the problem begins. When the traffic lights are on red there is no amber light it goes straight to green which leaves people guesting what to do at times (they take ages to get off the mark). This is not the best when you only it seems to have 10 seconds of green light. Because of this people don't seem to let people in and corners my god. As most of Adelaide is straight lines when a corner comes up (in the mountain area) they have no idea and they all seem to drive automatic cars.

God when it rains it rains over here

The day began with been awake by very heavy rain on the tin roof of our granny flat (5.30am). Mark has decided that this granny flat reminds him of his holidays in his grandparent's caravan in the lake district. We ended up lay there listening to the noises coming from outside. It sounded like a fight was going on as one bird sounded like a laser gun and another sounded like a machine gun (we are yet to identify these birds, but I think I may finally be interested in bird watching, oh my god, old age is setting in).

Following a hearty breakfast we adventured out to test drive a car. What an adventure and a story to tell the little ones in years to come. We were given the keys and head out on our test drive. It was not long before we released that we had come out without a road map and we had no idea where we were or where we were going. You can image the fun we had in the car. No you can't has it got worse, the petrol light came on. Well all I can describe it as is shear hell.

When finally we got ourselves back to the car lot we brought the car and headed to our first house viewing. We've got the impression that they do things differently over here. You are given a 15 minute window and that's it, if you can't get there in time you don't view the house. All I can say is that today's house viewing was not successful. Hope we have better luck tomorrow.

On deciding that we had had a far to stressful day we head to the beach. I wish I could say for a swim but its to cold (yes cold in Australia) and the waves where massive, little things compared to Australian waves according to locals but big enough for me. Though I can tell you that its just like a scene out of bay watch. We did get an amazing ice cream though. Which was huge compare to UK standards, thinking of that all food and drink over here seems to be given in bigger portions. Right well I think that's enough for one day, if I write any more I'll have nothing left to tell you.

Settling in begins

We wake up this morning with a note from the landlord on the door, saying that there was a Koala in the trees in the garden. What a welcome to Australia. Though I have not yet seen it for myself. What can I say about were we are staying. Its up in the mountains above the city, so we get a great view. The house is in a large plot of land, with chickens and cockerel.We are based in their little granny flat at the bottom of the garden. We have a kitchen/dinning/ sitting room, one bedroom and a small shower room with toilet. It is basic but comfortable.

The task of looking for a car and rental accommodation has begun today. We have found a number of both and hope to view them over the next few days.
We spend the morning shopping which normal with Mark in tow would take an hour max. But today it took 3 hours. They don't seem to have any of the same brands and their supermarkets are called Woolworths, very confusing. So far I have found that they have sweet tasting milk and the tea is horrible. However their shop assistances do seem to know how to pack a shopping bag probably and their orange juice is good.

Arrived at Adelaide

On arrival to Adelaide we managed to sort out a hire car, find our way to our temporary accommodation, sort out bank accounts and familiarise ourselves with Adelaide and its public transport before crashing around 5pm with jet lag ( we were desperately trying to keep each other awake on the train back from Adelaide, as we had heard that the best way to bet jet lag is to stick to local times). We managed to bet the jet lack and went to meet our new neighbours who had invited us for tea.

My first impressions of Australia are that they are very welcoming people and love to hear stories about the UK and its differences.

The Flight

On the flight we couldn't believe our luck. We would say that Singapore airlines is the best company we have ever flown with. Hot towels, pillow and banklet on arrival to the aeroplane. However this comfortable flying did not last long. As we had eaten and the whole plane were settling down to a good nights sleep. A two year old children began to cry. May god I've never heard a child cry so loud, I didn't thing children that age were capable of such a thing. IT, it dose not deserve a name (nor do we care). Cried not stop for 4 hours, it eventually stop. The plane sighed a sigh of relief and settle down to sleep. This peace didn't last long as we then began to experience an hours whether of turbulence. This cycle continued for the whole journey. No one slept and the parents of the child will never be able to hold their heads up in public again.

Though I can say that the second flight was far more enjoyable. Being well fed and watered we both settled down to around 5 hours of sleep. This sleep allowed us to feel like it was morning when we arrived in Adelaide at 8.05 a.m. (around 11pm UK time).

Adventure begins

We travelled down to London on the 19th June 2010, in Marks GTI Golf with four very large suitcases and our dear friend Mark P asleep on the back seat. Who had just flown in from Cuba and had agreed to drive our car back from London. After a very speedy journey trying to dodge traffic we arrived in London to be greeted by some old friends. We had a great weekend in London before flying out on Monday 21st June 2010 at 10pm. I would recommended going to see the West end 'We Will Rock You' Show, Que Greens or the National History museum, if you ever find yourself in London.

Our long journey begun from my friends house in Hendon at 5pm. Us and our 4 large suitcases were herded into a taxi and driven to terminal 3 at Heathrow. We checked in our over weight baggage with a very nice employer of Singapore airlines and went to kill time in a French restaurant in the airport. We boarded the flight with no problems and all was going well.