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...