G'Day Mate!

Gday Mate!  "Look at me... Look at me", Neighbours (everybody needs good Neighbours).....Throw another shrimp on barbie ya flaming galah.... Well, if you havent already guessed by my awful, steroetypical, introduction then we have landed in Australia!


Perth, Western Australia to be precise.




This moment had been a long time coming and in a way it felt like a bit coming home, as we were back to western civilisation! Yippee! We were getting desperate for some normality; flat, job, our own bed and being able to cook for ourselves.  It was funny that such small, simple pleasures were a very exciting prospect after 12 months in Asia.

One of the first things that hit us was just how expensive things are back in the Western world and in particular, Perth.  We nearly had a heart attack buying a bottle of water from the Perth airport.  We left the airport and made our way to the Comfort Inn (Perth City) as we had booked ourselves in for a couple of nights to recover from jetlag and to find our feet again.

We had been very lucky and managed to secure a houseshare before we had even arrived Australia, by the ever faithful Gumtree.  Both us, and our prospective housemate, and taken a huge leap of faith and agreed to share before we had met, exchanged money or even viewed the property. Naturally we were thinking this could go extremely well or be the worse mistake ever.  I (Sarah) decided to send across some information over to our new housemate, Lija, to show her that we werent a pair of nutters (although after living with us for a few months she may disagree)!

We slept of the jetlag and then it was time to go and see our property in Bronte Street, East Perth, we were slightly nervous, what if we hated it???  Although all of our worry was misplaced as it was lovely.  We met up with our new housemate Lija, 28 who then she showed us our quarters.  We had our own entrance, bedroom, bathroom and courtyard and we could come and go freely, the transport systems were close by and it was going to be so easy getting around on the free CAT transport system. It had a park at the end of the road and the WACA is five minutes away.  Perfect.

We knew that we needed to start work straightaway and Andrew had managed to secure a job before we arrived, so it was just moi to find one.  I had forwarded my CV before arriving in Perth to the Western Australia Health Department, so within the week I had found a job.  It was back to the world of Healthcare procurement and Andrew was going back to EF teaching schools.  It was like we had never left home :-)

This is me with Lija, our housemate

This is Wellington Square which is at the bottom of Bronte Street

 
One thing that we didnt realise before we moved in was that Lija had a dog, Wookie.  As most of you now know from this blog, I (Sarah) am allergic to fur and was a bit embarassed to break this to our new landlord.  So after a few days of avoiding Wookie, Andrew kindly advisied Lija of why I was so distant.  Luckily Lija put me in touch with a Naturopath and have since been cured of my allergy, I hope it still works by the time I get home to see Burton.

Here is a picture of Wookie, he is adorable!

Andrew with Tony, our Swan Valley Tour Guide

August and September were quite important months for me and Andrew, as it was time to celebrate our 30th birthdays.

Andrew being Andrew said he didnt want to do anything major for his birthday, so we just decided to be tourists for the weekend and started familarising ourselves with the city and  then went out for a meal.  He did his best impression stating that he didnt want me to get him anything (read that as 'please spoilt me rotten') so I pretended that I wouldnt bother and that we didnt have much money anyway (everything was going on the credit cards at this point) and then secretly got him a load of presents so he was a happy boy!  (at least girls are honest when they want something).

Me and Andrew at the start of our wine tour, this is on the boat cruising up the Swan Valley

I, on the other hand, wanted the full monty and so I had arranged for us to go on a gourmet wine tour of the Swan Valley.  This basically meant spending the day drinking/wine tasting and sampling cheese! What more could you want?

Andrew enjoying our lovely lunch

Me and Andrew at Lancaster, our favourite winery of the day

We sampled 16 different types of wine and port at this winery!  In total I think we tried over 70 wines and god knows how much cheese.  It was the stop off in the chocolate factory when I said enough was enough, Andrew managed to squeeze in a ice cream (god knows how) - we will do this again though as we had such a good laugh

This is me in Fremantle on my birthday weekend.

The lovely Fremantle (Freo) markets

Andrew down by the river in East Perth, this is one of our favourite hangouts.

  

Each year the city of Perth holds a festival called Parklife and this year it was to be held at Wellington Square, which just happened to be at the bottom of our street (see picture above).  Due to our savvy housemate Lija we were able to get free tickets because we live so close and the noise etc.  The festival featured Missy Eillot, 2manyDJ's and Groove Armada amongst others.

All I can say is that it was quite a crazy little festival and I can officially say Perth festival goers are mental (literally!).  We have both been to many festivals but this was a definete eye opener!  It was bloody expensive too - me and Andrew decided to drink 2 litres of wine before we got in to try and save some dosh as it was 8 quid for a small can of beer or even more for wine. Failed to find some Jaiger (which in hindsight was a good thing given previous events.

FACTOID - Perth is the most expensive city in Australia (mainly due to mining boom in recent years).

 This is Lija with her boyfriend, Badi.

Andrew with Lija and Badi's housemate Andrew

Drunk with Lija and Badi..

Hiding in the middle of the Parklife crowds for a very cheesy camera shot

My old hairdresser, June, who had cut my hair since I was a wee child had moved out to Perth a few years ago and so we made contact with her and her partner Mark so we could see some friendly faces.  June and Mark live out of the city down in Currambine, so I arranged to meet June for a catch up in the manner of "ladies that lunch" and of course to sample some vino!  All I can say is that after 4 bottles the day is a bit of a blur.  It was lovely to catch up and we have had since had many outings with them both; they have looked after us super, smashing, great.  Thanks June and Mark :-)

We visited the local Aquarium with June, here are some of the pictures:

Amazing Coral

Andrew and June stroking the stingrays

Shark - hope we dont see one of these when we go snorkelling

A lovely HUGE turtle!

One of the things that I really wanted to do was go on a tour to see the Humpback Whales as I love fishies so much.

We got the train down to Freo and picked up the boat which took us down to the Humpback Highway.  We had a brillant day and we saw about 10 whales in total, they are amazing creatures.

This is a mother and her calf swimming up to the boat.

Thats about it now, as you can see we have got off to a cracking start to our Australian adventures and hopefully you have enjoyed reading what we have been up too since Asia (as it has been a while, getting a bit slack on keeping the blog up to date).  Unfortunetly now comes the hard part (and the boring bit)- saving.  So not sure when the next entry will be bloggers as I am sure that you dont want to read about what we get up to at work, it would pretty much read as work, eat, sleep. The sound of a working tourist visa sounds fun, its just a shame about the work bit!  But of course we really do need to save and keep our heads down (read this as not having much fun, other than drinking wine from a cask) in order to continue to live our dream and get some dollar together for the next part of the trip, otherwise we will be leaving on a jet plane!  Although we have bought ourselves a car so we will be buzzing round in that, especially as the weather is heating up here in Perth (not meaning to rub it in, as I think that it is getting pretty damn cold at home). Ciao for now people.

Anyway thats about it - see you soon folks! Sarah & Andrew xxx

p.s. Andrew will be writing the next blog!

Have a look at our new world food blog website The Food Atlas.com for world food recipes and stories.
Are you interested in food recipes from around the world? Have a look at www.thefoodatlas.com
Computer speed problems? www.systemoptimizer.org