Bringing it all up to date

It's been hard to keep the blog running. Internet access was limited for the first few weeks, and now we have it at home there has been a lot of sorting and catching up to do.

Things should calm down a little now, so I thought I would bring things up to date briefly, and then anything that we've done that deserves a post of its own I'll add later.

So, we landed, and the first couple of days were spent in Perth getting over the jetlag. We would have liked to have got tickets for the West Coast Eagles vs Fremantle Aussie rules football game, but it was a derby, and tickets sold out straight away. We had to content ourselves with watching some of the game on the screens in one of the food courts! Fremantle (who we now officially support), very surprisingly it turned out, won.

After a couple of days of mooching about we caught the train and headed down to Secret Harbour, south of the city, to stay with friends whilst we found somewhere to live. And once there is was straight down the beach to do a bit of fishing, and to watch the sunsets and dolphins.

The main job really was to find somewhere to rent - an interesting process. You drive past the houses you're interested in to have a look, and then contact the letting agent, who lets you know when the next open house will be. You duly turn up at the open house (it is open for just 15 minutes) and find yourself viewing it with everyone else who is interested. So you wander around eyeing the house up, and eyeing each other up, deciding whether to put in an application for it or not. We applied for 5 houses, not sure how long it would be before we got one, and then were offered the first one (which we took), and then another...

Anyway, more details on the house to follow, but for now the main things to know are that has plenty of room for visitors, and is a 4 minute car drive to the beach :-)

We moved in, all 4 suitcases and ourselves, and set about sorting out the essentials - a few pots and pans and things to put us on until the furniture arrived. Our 2-piece suite is currently two $10 plastic garden chairs from Bunnings (like B&Q, only better). A four bedroom house is very empty when you have no furniture, however we have since added a table and chairs and a computer desk! We have a cheap and cheerful radio and CD player (and you can tell it's cheap and cheerful!) and a small, yellow, borrowed Simpson's tv.

The work situation didn't pan out quite as planned for Daz, but he is now working as a Tap Doctor, driving around in a van with a 3' tap on the top. Which he loves......... He'll be doing that for the next 6 weeks, and then it is back to college, to do a servicing course.

As well as work and house stuff, there has been time for some more fun activities - a trip to Penguin Island, a tootle down the road to Bunbury, into the city to see The Living End (Australia's answer to Green Day), bike rides, and just taking in the sunsets and the dolphins.

I'll post more about these later, but for now the two important bits are that Daz is working and we've found a house.

Just don't mention the football..........

Cheryl x