Unemployed but not bludging

After 4 solid weeks of sitting at the computer writing bloody selection criteria to apply for jobs, I’ve finally cracked today and registered with a temp agency. Although this will severely reduce the number of applications I can get out each week, we are gonna be in the red as soon as we pay the deposit on this flat so needs must. Grumble..grumble.. However, I’ve had the best ever experience with an agency today which made it worthwhile. I met with two agents who specialize in the government, education and nonprofit sectors, so totally up my alley, who seemed genuinely pleased to get someone with my experience on their books! I have to say that is a first. Where it leads, time will tell..

I’ve applied for a plethora of government jobs but they take such a long time to get around to responding to applications. I’ve received two emails this week regarding government jobs I’ve applied for, telling me I didn’t make the shortlist. One I applied for on the 18th September, the other was when we were in Mackay, so around July – August.

I’ve had one interview since moving to Melbourne. It’s a great job with the disability services department with a nice healthy salary, but I didn’t do so well with the last couple of questions. Nerves got the better of me, along with my limited experience leading large projects giving me not enough solid examples to draw from. I haven’t heard back from them either way, two weeks after the interview, but who knows whether that’s a good or a bad sign.

Bryn is not having a good time in his new job. It’s a long commute out to his office, it doesn’t pay very well and the job’s not particularly thrilling so he’s on the lookout for something better. I’ve been trying to be a good wife and cook him dinner every night which I have mostly succeeded at, but it’s been a long time since I’ve done this much cooking so I often find myself scratching my head trying to figure out what I can make. Bryn has an uncanny talent for producing amazing meals out of a few things we have left in the cupboard, but this is not a skill that has rubbed off on me. Despite filling our cupboards with food as if I’m preparing for the holocaust, I still often find I’m missing something vital for a particular dish, or can’t think of anything original and revert to my small repertoire of basics.

It’s a rather nice novelty being in a flat with those wonderful luxuries like hot water from a tap, a hot shower and carpet! Ooooerrrr.. We are taking over the lease from a girl who has lived here for the last 2 years and are still searching for a new flatmate, but 2 weeks before she goes I’m trying not to panic on that front just yet. Fortunately, she’s going overseas for a bit and then moving to Sydney, so she’s leaving us a lot of household stuff that she otherwise would have thrown out or given away elsewhere, which has been a great help in getting us set up here.

The flat has 3 bedrooms and we’ve advertised for a single or couple to take one room with the plan to keep one room spare for guests/office space/whatever. I think that makes it feel more like a home than a crash pad. It’s in a posh part of town and not really where the action is but it’s quiet, safe and close to town. If Bryn gets a job closer to town, we’d probably move to an inner-city suburb in North Melbourne, but right now that would make his journey to work even worse.

Right I’m off to plan the weekend’s adventurings. There are so many parts of Melbourne we haven’t seen yet, so I feel an exploratory mission is in order!

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!

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...

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

Drifting into Drifting

At some stage in Mackay, we've begun to feel like we're not so much travelling as drifting. We had no clear goal, and even if we did, not enough money to pursue it. So off to Brisbane we did go in search of next!

The first next was my brother's wedding in Kingscliffe. I am pleased to report that I was probably the worst behaved of my family but don't seem to have disgraced the clan too badly. I am not so pleased to report that I cried during the reading I gave during the ceremony, though there was some sibling revenge when I was reliably informed by his new bride, that Dan did have a little cry himself later on. I think that 'big sis still has what it takes to make little brother cry' makes a far better conclusion than 'big sis blubbed in front of the whole congregation'.

Besides this, we have been job hunting. We thought it would be fun to apply for jobs that really interest us around the country and see what happens. As a result, Bryn has been offered a job in Melbourne and I have an interview in Perth on Tuesday. Couldn't have gotten much more extreme really. If I get the Perth job, we'll move there. If I don't, we'll go to Melbourne. Either way, we have a lot of driving ahead of us and will be a fair distance from most people we know in Oz. Hmm... Now that i've actually written that down, it seems to be the most ludicrous decision to make, but I'm quite excited cos it will mean living somewhere I've never lived before which equals adventures!

We'll keep you posted with the outcome!

Oh, and some of Bryn's photos from Synchronicity, the video installation are going to be published in a statewide booklet on regional arts.

All Change Please

Last week we made the decision to leave the tour guiding job, barely 7 weeks after arriving in Mackay. We were both completely fed up with the boss who lied to us about the pay rate, the amount of work we would have and the work roster (i.e. rather than there being a roster, we had to be at his beck and call at all times, thus preventing any form of a life or potential to supplement our income). Besides this, he is completely disorganised, self-centered (seems to believe that communication is about him talking only, non-stop) and unwilling to take on board other people's suggestions.

After various discussions we finally decided to tell him together after work on Saturday (11th July) however whilst I was doing a tour around the Sugar Mill he told Bel that we had to come to work on Thursday night, for an hour, as he'd booked a tour (without checking if we were available - we don't normally do evening tours). She told him that we had other plans, to which he replied "you'll have to cancel them then" (!!!) Unsurprisingly Bel took this opportunity to tell him that we were leaving the company and he did have more than a little huffy. I was so disappointed to have missed it as I so wanted to see his face when realisation struck that we weren't going to play along any more. We did offer him 2 weeks notice but he decided to be a spiteful little boy and end it on the spot, so we are now unemployed.

Well not entirely unemployed, just not getting paid for working! We have been volunteering at the Mackay Arts Festival helping out a community arts group called Crossroad Arts with an outdoor video installation, which has been fun and good to meet new interesting people who appreciate our technical abilities.

So what's next? We are going a few hours north to Airlie Beach for a few days to meet an old friend of Bel's and have a look at the work situation there, but the main plan is to head back down to Brisbane (or failing that, Sydney/Melbourne) and get ourselves proper jobs. For me there are far more opportunities in getting a CAD job in a city. Although I have lots of experience in the UK, I lack the Oz experience which is limiting me work-wise when we aren't in the big cities.

We are finding that a combination of lack of money and proliferation of shitty jobs has outweighed the freedom of travelling around the country at this stage so we feel we need to get some funds together before we keep going. Before we travel anywhere too remote we need to get Jym's engine rebuilt, but to save up the cost of this job does force us into work we don't particularly want to do and puts a strong hold on the fun elements.

Dallas!!?

As we are a touch tight on cash, we answered an advert found on a board at a local supermarket that required a live in caretaker in exchange for free accommodation. We are now the said caretakers but in reality this means that we are house sitting a million dollar house (yes you did read that right), on a hill directly above a beach (with direct beach access) with its own pool and an amazing view of the ocean and Barrier Reef islands.
The house is owned by a flamboyant Brisbane interior Architect who used to live here but now rents the rooms out (6 bedrooms) and we have to make sure they behave (no laughing please) and keep the place spic & span. For that we get the master bedroom (bringing the total to 7) with en-suite, private courtyard with outside shower and a view of the ocean from our bed.
So Jym (the van) has been dumped for a proper house even though I preferred Jym's homeliness to this rather austere 70's white walls, floors and black marble chic but it does have an amazing view (as mentioned before) and all the modern luxuries that we haven't have for a while.

The tour jobs are still swinging between the poles of fun and frustration so we will wait and see how long it all lasts before we pack up and head off elsewhere, but with some very special UK visitors coming to visit later this year, we are trying to save our pennies for adventures to come.

In other news, Bel has become infatuated with the smell of guava but was sadly disappointed when she finally stopped sniffing it and got around to eating it as the taste is bland in comparison.