Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Well feather my nest and call me big bird...

I seem to be nesting - Eek!

This week I have collected a rather nice dining table from freecycle (some people give away the most beautiful things!), have assembled a herb garden, bought some clothes and a big purple furry blanket. There's no way we'll get all this stuff in the bus if we decide to hit the road, so I guess that means I have definitely decided we are going to stay put for a while.

All I need now is a bloody job to pay for all this new stuff! ;0)

Oh.. and in the great bus is-it-really-falling-apart-or-are-we-just-worrying-too-much saga, the gearbox was absolutely fine ...this time!

Monday, September 28, 2009

Melbournarama

We've been getting a bit slack with the blogging so it's time to rectify that!

So we've come to Melbourne with a view to knuckle down with proper jobs, save some money, buy Jym a reconditioned motor and gearbox and get a city fix.

The gearbox is a new development, and true to form started playing up 5km down a dirt road in the Mimosa Rocks national park with poor mobile reception and two hitchhikers in tow! It's since been playing up randomly so it might hold out a bit longer yet, but who knows!

Since we got a mobile mechanic to check it wasn't the linkages, there seems to be a problem with our battery, but the subsequent trip to the auto electrician has offered no solution to the mystery - apparently the electrical system is absolutely fine. Honestly, if it's not one thing it's another! So in the meantime, I've been making good use of our RACQ membership and having nice little chats with the guys while they jump start the bus. It's been enlightening though. The last bloke reckons we're silly to spend all that money on a reconditioned engine and thinks we should just keep putting oil into it.

We took our time getting down here, making the most of being bums before getting back to the grindstone. We stopped into Stanthorpe to catch up with Jeff & Katrina, Newcastle to see some of the family and pick up some stuff from storage, and Sydney to spend some time with Janine and Jim. We took the coast road, which was gorgeous, though some of the towns were a bit on the weird side. Our last night before arriving in Melbourne was in Wilson's Promontory national park, which was magnificent. We did a couple of the walking trails and did see wallabies and wombats!

After several rejections from share houses for being a couple (why doesn't anyone want to live with a couple?), we found a flat in ultra-posh Toorak. It's really close to town and thus in the tram network, which is awesome. We're sharing with a girl who has lived here for the last two years but is going overseas in 6 weeks. This means we have to find a new housemate but that's likely to be less of a problem than trying to find a room in an existing share house.

So Bryn is working hard at his new job and I am working hard at applying for jobs. I am getting better at responding to selection criteria but I still can't seem to knock out any more than 3 applications a week. Mind you, they are all about 7-8 pages long, plus the CV!

We are having a nice diversion tonight though. I've won some free tickets to a couple of shows from the Melbourne Fringe festival and the first one is tonight. We paid good money for a show last week and it was rubbish. Let's hope the free ones are better...

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Short note

Just letting everyone know that we are still alive and currently in Melbourne and hope to update you all on our adventures shortly once life calms down for a moment.
Love & Hugz
Bryn