Toorak Tractors

Hi,

We've found a house! It's in Toorak Village, which apparently is the most prestigious suburb in Melbourne! It's also given rise to the phrase Toorak Tractor. Basically lots of posh people driving round in their horrible 4wds! Anyway, it's a 3 bed Victorian in a very nice street with lots of trees.

We collected our car yesterday, it's as shiny as we'd hoped it would be and smells like a 'new car'. Maddie has a brand new car seat which has passed the comfort test seeing as she fell asleep in it when we were out and about today.

Maddie is adapting well to Aussie life. Last night she slept through the night for the first time ever!!!!!!!!!!!! That's right, between the hours of 8.30pm and 6am she did not wake up once. Long may it last.

It's Australia Day tomorrow so we're off into town for the celebrations. For all you Aussies, half Aussies and wannabe Aussies out there - happy Australia Day!


Spiders: 0
Snakes: 0

Sharks: one apparently swallowed a man somewhere off the coast of Victoria and he survived. He now has a celebrity agent!

Househunting...in the rain!

We've had a busy day today spending 8 hrs out and about and walking about 8 miles looking at places to rent. Unfortunately for us (but not for the bush firefighters) it chose today to rain...all day! Our viewing was not exactly an unqualified success:
out of 5 places, 1 was a no-show from the agent, 1 the agent couldn't get into, 1 was on the top floor with no lift, and the other 2 weren't really for us.
They do things differently here: the property is open for viewing at a set time (normally a 15 or 30-minute window) and everyone has to turn up then. Mostly there were around 15-20 people looking but one place today had a queue to get into with over 50 people shuffling through inside! It looks a little like finding a place might be more difficult than we thought, but we still have a lot of places to look at and we have the advantage of not being at work during the week.

Speaking of work, I (Dom) have a meeting with a recruitment consultant on Monday, he was very positive on the phone so we'll see how that goes.

Maddie has (fingers tightly crossed!) set her body clock to Oz time and in fact had her best night's sleep ever last night. She is asleep now (Mum and Dad unwinding with glass of wine) so we're hoping for more of the same tonight.

What else have we been up to? Well, Maddie went swimming on Thursday, her first time ever in an outdoor pool. She has some rather fetching new dayglo swimwear which she is modelling in the photo! She is also mid-clap which is one of her newer skills and currently her favourite thing (although it is in danger of being supplanted by chewing her foot...).
She loved swimming as much as she did back in London, so we will definitely be going again (possibly tomorrow morning, although not if it rains like today...still raining as I type this!).

Right, better sign off now as we need to do some more websearching for somewhere to live!

Spider count: 0
Snake count: 0

Sharks: allegedly a great white spotted off Philip Island (eek!)

Zoom-zoom

Those of you with a knowledge of UK car advertising campaigns will know "zoom-zoom" means Mazda...yes, we have bought a new car! Our first proper New Car. Very exciting! It arrives next Wednesday so look for an overexcited post all about new car smells and all that.
We've also ordered Maddie's car seat which goes all the way from now to when she is about 5yrs old. She looks a little lost in it!

Do you mind if I fix it later?

Before we came we had heard a lot about the more relaxed Aussie pace of life, and we got our first taste of this yesterday morning.

We ordered a take away coffee the waitress (or should that be barrista) asked '"do you mind if I fix it later for you?".
This was at 7:50am on a weekday within walking distance of the city high-rise blocks...I can't imagine that happening back home in the city rush hour!

This conversation took place on the way to the Queen Victoria Market, which apparently is the largest open-air market in the southern hemisphere and fortunately for us is just around the corner. For the Londoners, it is a little like a much much larger Spitalfields with more of a bias on fresh food and of course plenty of fresh fish of all kinds.
As Little Miss was up so ridiculously early (see yesterday's post at 4:30am) we got down there for about 8am, where she promptly fell asleep in her buggy for the next 3 hours as we pushed her around! The luxury of being an 8 month old! Anyway the market trip was a success for me (Dom) as we managed to get bananas for $2.50 (1 pound) a kilo which is close to the UK price. I had become quite worried about the price of bananas after Cyclone Larry last year! Of course the Market caters to people without a banana obsession too with a huge range of fruit, veg, meat and fish and I can see us becoming regulars every morning, at least whilst we are in this apartment.

We're off shopping for baby things today, a task made much easier by the loan of a car from Barney and Carolyn - thank you, you are too generous - and we're also going to take Maddie swimming in her first outdoor pool! She will also get her first "big girl" forward-facing car seat too.

Right, better go or we'll never get anything done (need to move early if it's going to be as hot as yesterday when they stopped play at the Australian Open tennis due to it being 40.8C!).

First day

Well, we've finally arrived in Melbourne...and yes, it is quite hot and sunny! Maddie was an angel on the flight and managed to charm both fellow passengers and crew! However, it's currently about 4.30am and we've given up trying to convince her that it's actually night time and she should be sleeping. She's impatiently waiting for Dom to make her favourite banana porridge!

Leaving the UK proved to be much, much harder than we could ever have imagined. If you ever wonder how much you love someone or how much a friendship means to you, try leaving them to move to the other side of the world...we will miss you all. Come and visit soon!


Spider count: 0
Snake count: 0
...and long may it continue!