Dead fish

From the highs of celebrating our first Christmas in Australia, it is amazing how quickly everything can unravel.  The day was off to a bad start when I came downstairs to find Coppertail had passed in the night.  It seems the shock of moving home was too much for him after all.  Barnadi then burried him with his brother Bronzefin under the lemon tree.

The second piece of bad news came at work when I was phoned by the Staff Clinic with a piece of very unexpected news.  It seems at some point in the last year I have become exposed to someone with TB and I am now infected with Latent TB.  In a way I should look at this as good news, as if I hadn't started work at the Alfred, I would never have had the blood test and I may have lived with this hidden disease for years without even knowing about it.

To put everyones mind at rest, latent TB is not contagious and I am in no ways unwell at present, but between 5-10% of people with latent TB will go on to develop the full infection if left untreated.  The gold standard of treatment is 9 months of isoniazid which has a 92% chance of success, but it is 9 months of treatment, and due to the risk of liver toxicity also means 9 months of abstinence from alcohol.  Other treatments do exist but efficacy is not so good.  I do not have to make the decision just yet as I wont see the doctor until next week.  It just goes to show the BCG vaccine was a waste of time, a scar and an unusual patch of arm hair and I still got TB.

Christmas Orphans

I was really looking forward to celebrating Christmas this year, last year we were in Vietnam and still in transit from the UK so we didn't really get to celebrate at all.  The year before that I was on-call and despite our best efforts to celebrate Christmas together, the constant interruptions did nothing for the atmosphere, and I couldn't even relax with a nice glass of mulled wine.  So as well as being our first Christmas in Australia it is also the first Christmas we have properly been able to celebrate in 3 years.



Melbourne Town Hall

Perhaps the most obvious difference between Christmas in Australia and Christmas in the UK is the weather, last Sunday being the hottest day I have experienced since we arrived (depending on which weather forecast you believed it was anything from 39-41 degrees).  Luckily for us that was a one off and it cooled down again by Christmas eve allowing us a trip into the city to see the Christmas lights, the most spectacular light show being at the Melbourne town hall.  The town hall, on the corner of Collins and Swanston street is a beautiful old building normally, but for Christmas they had stuck a big red bow on the front and parked giant toy soldiers in the arches.  Then at night time a complex light show was projected onto the outside walls, turning it into a winter wonderland one minute and a strange mythical beast the next. 

Possums in the park

Walking back to the car we went by the Treasury gardens, a small park in the corner of the CBD, which I remember going to the first time I came to Melbourne to feed the possums.  Feeding the possums is something most locals resent tourists for as they have become considered a bit of a pest.  A lot of trees in the park are now banded with plastic sheaves to stop possums being able to climb them in an attempt to rid them from the park.  At first we thought the attempts must have been successful as we hadn't seen any at all in our walk into the city, the trees instead were full of giant chattering bats.  On our way back however as we walked through the park with our heads looking skyward distracted by the bats, Barnadi felt something brush passed his leg and before we knew it we were surrounded.

We got home and Barnadi had obviously been a good boy this year as Father Christmas had been and left him a stocking full of goodies, I on the other hand must have been very bad.  Still the following morning we had plenty of presents to unwrap with our breakfast, including a new home for Coppertail our fish.  So as Barnadi spent the morning getting dinner ready, I helped Coppertail move in. 

Coppertail's new home

Barnadi had invited the staff at Narai Thai over for dinner as most of them like us have no family here in Australia to spend Christmas with.  As we weren't sure how many people might tum up Barnadi prepared a Christmas feast of epic proportions, chicken, duck, ham, prawns, potatoes and stuffing.  Also mince pies, panettone and mulled wine to wash it all down with.  It is not surprising then that after eating all that some of the guests (no names mentioned here) had to take a quick nap on the sofa when Barnadi put a movie on. 

Barnadi surveying his creation

All in all it was a perfect first Christmas in Australia

Rosanna Vs. Kingsbury

The longer we look for a house, the harder it seems to become.  Even such a simple thing as picking a suburb seems to be getting harder.  Just as we think we have narrowed down our search, other opportunities and possibilities open themselves to us.  The problem is there are good points and bad points to most of the suburbs we have looked at and it is a matter of finding the right balance.  Some we can rule out straight away, Northcote for example is just too expensive. 

Rosanna is a suburb we have recently started to consider, it lies just to the North of Heidelberg and is approximately 12km out from the city centre.  In a recent survey by the age it was ranked 177th most livable suburb in Melbourne (out of 314).  To put that into some sort of perspective Northcote lies at 36th, Heidelberg West was 216th, Bundoora 235th and Reservoir just beating Rosanna at 176th.  Rosanna has a small commercial region of local shops, restaurants and cafes which are centred around a zone 2 train station.  Previously when we have looked at house prices in Rosanna we have found it too expensive, but a recently discovered unit on Lower Plenty Road could be perfect for us, although we wont be able to arrange an inspection until the new year.

We have considered Kingsbury before, although not made any special effort to search for properties there, until now.  In the age survey mentioned earlier Kingsbury features at 124th, much higher than any other suburb we have looked at.  Kingsbury is a very small suburb and could possibly be considered almost part of Reservoir if it wasn't for the Darebin creek forming a physical barrier between the two.  Kingsbury is pretty much a purely residential area with the only commercial sections lying on Plenty road or a small block of shops on Link street. The main public transport route is the 86 tram that runs from the docklands up to Bundoora, making it a very convenient location for Barnadi to get to work from but not nearly so convenient for me.  What Kingsbury lacks in culture it makes up for in green open spaces with Bundoora park to the north and the Darebin creek trail forming a protective green barrier around the eastern edges, giving us plenty of places to take a dog for a walk.

I am finding one of the first things I check when we consider a house is how easy it is for me to get to work.  Normally this might seem a sensible consideration, but I have to remember my current job is only a 6 month temporary contract, of which I am nearly a month into already.  There is no guarantee that a house that is convenient for work now will be as convenient in the future.  Work at the Alfred is however going well, and my orientation was kicked up a gear last week in order to get me up and out on the wards a little quicker. 

The way the clinical pharmacy service runs at the Alfred is completely different from anywhere I have worked before.  Pharmacists are assigned to a clinical team rather than a ward, and so look after all patients within that team regardless of their location within the hospital.  Clinical pharmacist at the Alfred are also just that, clinical, with no dispensary slots, just out on the wards all day.  It is great as it allows me to go on all the consultant ward rounds and counsel all my patients on their medications properly.  I am currently assigned to the Trauma team which is a relatively small surgical area and despite the fast turnover I have only had approximately 20 patients to see a day (apparently it can go up to 40).  The only negative is the early starts, since starting at the Alfred I am seeing less and less of Barnadi, a problem which will be amplified if we move anywhere with poor transport connections, so I suppose this is the true reason why it is such a big deal to me.  My job at the Alfred is almost too good to be true, their clinical service being quite unique even in Australia, I would seriously consider applying for another job there before my 6 months is up,  moving to another hospital just wouldn't be the same.

Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside.

Unusual sandstone cliffs at Sandringham

In the run up to Christmas Barnadi has been doing a lot of extra shifts at the restaurant, working lunch and dinner.  So last Sunday when he was only working the lunch shift we decided a trip down to the beach would be a good way to unwind.  I caught the tram up to Bundoora to meet him at work and then he drove us back down to the sea.  Not wanting to face the crowds at St. Kilda or Brighton beaches we carried on around the coast until we got to Sandringham.  It was quite a windy evening which kept the temperature down despite being a clear sunny day.  The sea was still too cold to consider swimming in so instead we walked along the beach exploring the unusual formations made by the large sandstone cliffs.

Trout and Kingfish Carpaccio

Once we had our fill of cliffs and sand we decided it was time to fill our tummies too, rather than driving straight home and having to cook we stopped in St Kilda and got a table at Cicciolina on Acland street.  Cicciolina is a rather pricey place, but somewhere Barnadi had always wanted to take me to, mainly because they serve brains on the menu.  The restaurant is very small and some would say cosy, others cramped, I would just say if you have a waist size over 38inches this might not be the place for you!  For starters we had the brains of course and we also shared the trout and kingfish carpaccio.  The brains were served wrapped in pancetta and reminded me of pigs in blankets, although they had a much softer texture once you bit into them.  The carpaccio was really nice too, but the blood orange segments that were served with it completely overpowered the delicate flavour of the fish.  Then for a main course Barnadi had the duck while I had a snapper fillet, both were good, but I did prefer my choice.

Back to the Start.

It has been just over a week since we got back from the UK.  Our arrival into Melbourne was greeted with heavy rain and thunderstorms and in many ways it feels like we have arrived in Australia for the first time again.

The first and most important job for us when we got back was to acquire a Christmas tree, after all we needed somewhere to put the Christmas presents.  We found a man selling trees that seemed in good shape outside of Bunnings near the Northland shopping centre and so our Christmas tree was sorted.  The only downside was we managed to pick the one day of the year to buy our Christmas tree that Melbourne was suffering an infestation of large green beetles, which hitched a ride with the tree and infested our house and car as well.

Our First Christmas Tree in Australia

The second job of the day was good old house hunting, starting with the auction of the house in Heidelberg West followed by a second visit to a unit in Reservoir.  Although we both really liked the house in Heidelberg West (much to our friends disappointment) we didn't actually place a bid as our provisional pre-approval for a mortgage was just that, provisional, the bank still requiring more proof of Barnadi's income.  The house didn't reach its reserve price, and so one of the estate agents working at the auction came up to check if we were still interested in making an offer.  He explained that we could always put in a 'subject to finance' clause, but as the agents wouldn't give us an indication of what the reserve price would be we left it without placing an offer.  The unit in Reservoir we looked at was one we had looked at before but the auction was set for a date we were in the UK.  It didn't sell at auction so now was back on the market.  Although we spent a long time there considering all the possible confirmation of furniture we could squeeze in, the final decision was that it was just too small for us to be comfortable in.  So we are back to square one in the house hunting stakes.



The Alfred Hospital

On Monday I started my new job at the Alfred, my first two weeks are set aside to the pharmacy departments induction programme.  Weighing up the options for transportation I decided that public transport would probably be more bearable than facing the traffic on Hoddle street every day, and so far the tram ride has been quite pleasant allowing me time to read a book, a simple pleasure I have struggled to find time for in quite a while.  The first thing I noticed since starting work at the Alfred, is the large number of us POMS working there, the second was the relative youth  of the department, although this might be linked to the third thing I noticed, the high turn over of staff, most people I spoke to having been there for less than a year.  That all aside, everyone has been very friendly and welcoming and in the first week I have been out for dinner with a small group of staff as well as being invited to join in a departmental football game (I haven't the heart to tell them how much I hate the game, being English they must just assume I love it).  Most of my induction so far has been spent in the main dispensary, trying to get my head around their computer system iPharmacy and the prescription pricing process.  If you thought pricing of prescriptions was complicated in Australia for community pharmacy, you ain't seen nothing yet.  The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) may be a brilliant system in assuring affordable medication is received by the good people of Australia, but it is the most convoluted and complex system to work with as a pharmacist, making me miss the UK's one price fits all model.  Another problem with the PBS model (other than being overly complicated) is that it prohibits doing one stop dispensing to wards, the use of patients own drugs on the ward and pretty much the whole medicines management service.  I know Australia has developed its own systems so I shouldn't keep comparing it to the UK, but I can't help feeling that PBS will prevent Australia ever releasing the full potential from their pharmacy technicians.  I am only one week in and I still have a lot to learn.

Love and Marriage

The Wedding day of my best friends David and Kirsty saw us take our second trip back to the UK  within the year.  When Barnadi and I had the Australia leg of our wedding, nearly 6 years ago, both David and Kirsty came out with us, David was my best man and Kirsty a bridesmaid (a slightly erroneous term, considering there is no bride in a gay wedding). 

BBQ on the Balcony

Our flights did not leave until after midnight and so we decided to host a BBQ at our house during the day to pass the time.   It would be the first time we got to use the new gas BBQ we had bought from Bunnings almost 2 months previously.  Amongst the guests who turned up were Sam and Athina, the last time I had caught up with them was at the Fringe festival, since then both have now got full registration and Athina had even got a job.  Sam however was still unemployed although had a few interviews set up.  It was this combination of events which led Sam to the decision he would be coming back to the UK for David and Kirsty's wedding after all (provided he could get a cheap enough ticket that night).  This was very good news as Sam and Kirsty had lived together at university and had been friends as long as I had with David.  The rest of the BBQ went very well, and finished early enough to get most of it cleared up before we had to leave for our flight.  The flight itself was long but completely uneventful, which is always a good thing for a flight to be. 

Racing Santas at Martin and Laura's Festivitiness party

We spent our first night in London as we didn't fancy getting off the plane and facing a three hour bus journey to Bath.  We didn't really do much in the way of sightseeing in London, instead we did a bit of shopping (Clothes in the UK are much cheaper than in Australia and they usually have better cuts and sizes) and met up with a friend for coffee, but that was about it.  The weather was wet, but surprisingly not too cold, and to be honest I quite enjoyed the misty drizzle that is so eponymous with England.  The rain was much heavier when we got to Bath, and the river Avon was much higher than I had ever seen it, the footpaths on either side being completely submerged, the weir completely indistinguishable from the roaring torrent that made up the rest of the river and the bottom of bridges normally high enough to allow a narrow boat under now not even letting any sunlight through.  The weather forecast for the actual wedding day had changed from a sunny day to that of continued downpours.  The weather combined with the development of a nasty cold was giving Kirsty a great deal of anxiety about their wedding day.  Most of our time in Bath was pretty much planned out for us, with dinners out and Christmas parties to attend as well as making the time to catch up with old friends and colleagues.  The rest of our 'free' time was taken up making important trips such as to the bank to transfer the rest of our money over to Australia to put towards the deposit on a house.

The night before the wedding we went to help decorate the hall the reception was to be held in.  It was a monster task with lots to do, but it was a miraculous transformation from a barren looking hall to a warming winter retreat.  The photo walls that covered the halls notice boards helped disguise the halls many other uses as well as giving the whole place a more personal touch and the blue filters for the lights completely changed the atmosphere of the place.  After we had done as much as we could to the hall we then took a trip over to the church for the wedding rehearsal.  My role as best man seemed quite simple stand to one side with David and present the rings to the vicar when asked.  David never actually asked me to be his best man, it was merely ever implied that I would be.  The first definite clue I had was when Kirsty wrote a message in the invitation that ended "..you had better start working on your speech..."  I also didn't know I was to be one of the witnesses until the vicar mentioned it during the wedding rehearsal. 

Wedding photo's in the rain

In keeping with tradition the bride and groom slept in separate beds the night before the wedding, Kirsty stayed at a hotel with her mum, whilst Barnadi, Sam and I kept David company at his house.  In the morning the house was a hive of activity David and his father had to go to the reception hall to accept the delivery of flowers while I took a trip to the florist to pick up the buttonholes.  We then enjoyed a slightly staggered champagne breakfast before getting changing into our wedding suits and heading to the church.  Sam sorted out the candles, Barnadi helped attach buttonholes and the photographer and camera man set up whilst the ushers handed out the order of service to the early arrivals.  Everything was going well until David's brother managed to drop a cuff link down through a grate in the church floor.  With a great deal of luck he managed to locate it again before the wedding service started.  When Kirsty entered she looked resplendent, the dress, the hair and make up all complementing each other perfectly, the happiness that shone from her eyes completing the image.  The service went without a hitch even though none of us could quite remember what to do when from the rehearsal.  Trying to get the wedding photo's done in the rain was a bit of a shambles however and in the end  it was decided to give up trying to get them all done and just head on out of the rain and onto the reception.

Adding the finishing touches to the hall

The reception was the part of the day I was dreading, not the whole reception, just the speeches.  I had written my best man speech a couple of days ago and had run through it a few times by myself but when the vicar stole one of my anecdotes during the wedding service I began to panic.  By the time we sat down to eat I had already had a couple of kia royales and had developed a headache, thankfully I was sitting near Kirsty's mum, who had come prepared with a wide array of analgesics to choose from.  The best man speech is always last, and by the time it got to me I was shaking so much I could hardly hold my champagne flute for the toasts, but once it was over that was it, I could relax again and enjoy the rest of the night, and what a night it was. 

We spent another couple of nights in Bath before making the trip back to Kent to visit my family, the weather continued to be rainy but it also had grown considerably colder too, so the thought of coming back to an Australian summer was somewhat appealing.  My sister Rachel and her husband Glen drove us back to the airport where they waved us goodbye, much the same as they did only 6 months previously.  Coming back to Australia was going to feel different this time however, Gemma and Dan would have moved on after 2 months living with us and I am about to start my new job.  Not only this but with the pre-approval for our mortgage going through we will be busy looking for a new house.  Everything is about to change.

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Plan 2: To buy a house, has had a massive leap forward.  Barnadi's boss Sam put us in touch with his mortgage advisor, a woman named Bronwyn, who does house calls.  She came round to see us last week got us pre-approval for a mortgage on a house up to $380,000.  It didn't then take Barnadi long before he found the house he wants us to buy.  I didn't get to see the house as I was working, but Barnadi instantly fell in love with it.  It is not too big or too small, it has recently been renovated with a new kitchen and bathroom, it is near the creek and has plenty of parkland nearby as well as a large shopping centre and an Italian wholesalers just a short walk away.  There is one potential problem, the suburb the house is located in is infamously known as 'The Worst Suburb in Melbourne' or to give it its proper name, Heidelberg West.  Heidelberg West was the location of the athletes village for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.   After the Olympics the area was converted into housing commission property and it is this that has given Heidelberg West its bad reputation.  In reality however a lot of the poor housing commission buildings have since been sold on in private sales and the area is nowhere near as bad as the rumours make out.  Public transport is not that accessible in Heidelberg West the closest train or tram line being a good half hour walk away, but saying that there are plenty of bus routes that pass by and an abundance of cycle tracks.  The auction is at the start of December so we have a little time to think about our options, and I will get myself to an open house inspection before then to see the inside for myself.



Dan and Gemma at the Organ
Pipes National Park

On Sunday we had the rare event of a day off together, and so with Gemma and Dan we took a nice Sunday road trip.  First stop was the Organ Pipes National park, a small conservation area to the north west of Melbourne just off the Calder freeway.  The park is most famous for its volcanic rock formations that give the park its name, The Organ pipes.  We spent most of the morning there as the park was bigger than we expected and we spent a long time down by the creek trying to spot a platypus.  We didn't spot a platypus, but we did spot a large cat like creature (possibly a cat).  Other geological points of interest within the park are the tessellated pavement and the rosette stone.   There were some stalls set up near the car park with displays of local ecology, but more importantly amongst the stalls there was a hot dog stand, so we had a quick snack before heading on.
Or second stop was at the town of Daylesford where we went to a cafe called koukla for lunch,  the food was good but the service was a little slow.  We were not in any hurry so this was not too much of an issue, what was an issue was the fact they had their radiators on full blast, and at 28 degrees it was hardly a chilly day.

After lunch we got back in the car with the intention of driving to Hanging Rock...which we did...although I did take a slight detour forcing us onto a gravel track for some of the way.  We arrived at Hanging rock at around 3:30pm timing it just right to miss the worst heat of the day.  To take a car into the park costs $10, but it is well worth the entrance fee.  We had an ice cream to cool down and then headed up the summit path exploring all the nooks and crannies in between the stones as we went.  There is a film set at Hanging Rock which I had been led to believe was based on a true story, the film entitled 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' tells the story of a Valentines day school trip in which a group of school girls and one of the teachers goes missing.  One girl is later found uninjured but with no memory of the events since her absence.  A serious of further unfortunate events including the death of a girl in school and the suicide of the head teacher force the school to close down.  The mystery of what happened that day on Hanging Rock was never solved.  In reality the film is based on the Novel of the same name written by Joan Lindsay, a work of fiction.  According to wikipeadia, the original manuscript did contain an explanation for the disappearance in the last chapter, but at the advice of her editors she left it out.

Hanging Rock

We made it home around 7pm and after a quick freshen up we headed down to Victoria street for some Vietnamese food for dinner.  Next week Barnadi and I will be heading back to the UK for a wedding and when we get back Gemma and Dan will be moving on to explore some more of Australia, this was therefore our last day trip all together and we couldn't have asked for a better day.

Making up for lost time

Kookaburra

It was always our plan to take Gemma and Dan out and about around Melbourne while they are staying with us, but circumstances have conspired against us by not giving us any days off in common.  This week we decided to make up for lost time by making the most of our evenings together.

On Sunday I took them up to Sky High Mount Dandenong to watch the sunset.  On the way we stopped at Pinoak court, the street used to film Neighbours, to keep Dan happy.  Despite the traffic we got up to Mount Dandenong in good time and sat and had a coffee and a walk through the woods to do some Kookaburra spotting before getting back to the viewing platform to watch the sun to set over the city.

Sunset from Mount Dandenong

A more ambitious trip was made on Monday night when we embarked on the 6 hour round trip to Philip Island.  Philip Island is the most famous place to see penguins in Victoria, although there is a small penguin rookery in St Kilda.   Barnadi has never been to the penguin parade, put off by the high entry price,  about $22 per person.  We got to the penguin parade ticket office a couple of hours before sunset, so after buying our tickets we drove to an area of beautiful rocky coastline called the Nobbies where we enjoyed the views of the rocky windswept cliffs dotted with nesting seagulls.



Sign in the Penguin Parade car park

The penguin parade was well worth the money, even Barnadi was glad we had come and couldn't draw himself away from the antics of the worlds smallest penguins.  We started off sitting on rows of seats set up from the beach waiting for the first few brave individuals to come out the water, the beach being clearly illuminated by the full moon made for good viewing conditions.  After watching the first few groups of penguins scurrying up the beach we returned to the boardwalks to watch them return to their nests.

It was about 9:30pm by the time we left the penguin parade and we still hadn't had any dinner.  With a three hour drive home ahead of us we resorted to stopping at a 24 hour McDonalds, to keep our hunger at bay.  It was the first McDonalds I have had in Australia and it is not something I am proud of, but needs must.

On Tuesday night Barnadi was working again so I joined Gemma and Dan for a few drinks on Northcote High Street.  Barnadi and I never tend to go out, especially as we are saving money for a deposit on a house, so it was good to get to experience the High Street while we still live here.

My contract of employment for the Alfred hospital has also arrived, my official start date being the 3rd December, this means I will start work at the Alfred as soon as we get back from our trip to the UK at the end of November.  It is only a six month contract, to cover a maternity leave vacancy they have, but it was a nice surprise when I saw that although it is a grade 2 position they will be paying me at the top end of grade 2.

Van Diemen's Land

I have only been to Tasmania once before, but instantly fell in love with the place, so much so in fact that we seriously considered emigrating to Hobart instead of Melbourne.  Needless to say Melbourne won out for one simple reason, it is bigger.  The fact Melbourne is bigger gave us a better chance of being able to find work.  Melbourne also provided us an advantage with travelling, as it is impossible to fly out of Hobart to anywhere without an extra stop-over in Melbourne or Sydney, greatly increasing the cost and time needed.  With my fathers declining health, the ability to get back to the UK at short notice is very important to me.  We may still move to Tasmania one day, once we've retired possibly.

In the meantime knowing how much we loved Hobart, Barnadi's boss Sam and his partner Saf took us on a trip to Hobart for my 30th Birthday.  The night before my birthday I wasn't feeling particularly well and after getting home from a late night at work I was about ready for bed.  I was about to go and leave Barnadi to watch his German film on SBS about killer bees, when he brought out a bottle of champagne and a small chocolate cake complete with number 30 candles.  So we ended up staying up and finishing off the bubbles with Gemma and Dan, and made a good stab at the cake too.  By the time the last of the German killer bees had been incinerated however it was time to go to bed, after all I did have to drive to the airport in the morning.

The next morning we got up early and picked up Sam and Saf on our way to the airport.  The traffic wasn't too bad for a change, (the Tullamarine freeway usually being reminiscent of the M25), but finding a parking space in the long stay carpark was a challenge.  Sam kept wanting to start the champagne early, at the airport or on the plane, but we reminded him how early in the morning it was and eventually convinced him to wait until lunchtime.  When we arrived in Hobart the weather wasn't the greatest drizzly rain interspersed with the odd sunny spell.  It seems that changing my Birthday from Autumn to Spring was not enough to avoid a rainy birthday.  We picked up our hire car from the airport, a little blue Suzuki Swift, which we all squeezed into before heading to our first stop, the MONA gallery and winery.

View from MONA, Hobart

One of the degustation courses

The MONA gallery is meant to be very impressive and is possibly the reason Hobart has now made it into this years Lonely Planet's top 10 cities to visit (the only Australian city to do this).  Sam and Saf are not big fans of art galleries however so we didn't visit the gallery, famous for its controversial installations such as the 'Wall of Vaginas'.  Instead we came for the food and wine, and had lunch in 'The Source' the very expensive and pretentious restaurant located upstairs.  For lunch they provided a Degustation menu of 3,5,7 or 9 courses, you don't get to see a menu but simply get bought the requested number of courses selected at random by the chef.  We opted for the 3 course option, but even that sets you back $75 per head.  Sam finally got to order his champagne, a local brut prepared at the vineyard on site, the wine was certainly better than the food.  The 3 courses we received were an Asparagus jelly, Steamed ling and a 'deconstructed tiramasu'.  The biggest problem we had with the restaurant was it seemed more focused on the presentation of the food than the actual flavour (or indeed quantity).  The restaurant and gallery must be doing well as they seem to have a deal with a local tour guide operator, as several helicopters arrived during the time we spent there dropping off new guests every 5 minutes.  We took a stroll around the grounds after lunch to take in the views.  The views by far being the best thing we had sampled so far, surrounded by mountains and water, every direction you looked was stunning.

After lunch we checked into our hotel, the Grand Chancellor, right on the harbour front.  Sam and Saf booked the hotel which like the restaurant we went to for lunch was seriously over priced.  Over $200 a room, and that doesn't even include breakfast!  Barnadi and I took a walk around the harbour while Sam and Saf slept.  We found some nice shops in Salamanca and found a few Christmas presents for people back home in the UK.  Then for dinner Sam and Saf took us out again, this time to the revolving restaurant on top of the casino.  They had an ulterior motive for this choice as they planned a night in the casino.  We almost convinced them not to gamble and come out for a drink after dinner instead, but this is Hobart on a Sunday and nowhere else was open.  So we got a lift back to the hotel with a crazy taxi driver and left Sam and Saf to loose all their money in peace.

The next day Barnadi and I got up and had a big breakfast in a cafe on the harbour, before taking the hire car on a drive down to Port Arthur.  Sam and Saf stayed behind to sleep off the night before.  It must have been a cold night as there was snow on the top of mount Wellington, but it turned out to be a beautiful warm sunny day.  The drive down to Port Arthur is absolutely amazing, the guides say allow an hour and a half to get there from Hobart, but I say allow for 3 hours as there are so many amazing places to stop and admire the view on the way.  We first stopped at a viewpoint that overlooked Pirate Bay, a stunning piece of coastline, then at the bottom of the hill we stopped again and walked out to the tessellated pavement, a rocky piece of coastline that due to the natural erosion by sea salt has formed a regular tile shapped pattern that seems almost man made in its regularity.  Our next stop was at the blowhole where we also found breathtaking cliff top views, at this point I was beginning to think we would not actually make it to Port Arthur after all.  After a quick lunch of half a dozen fresh oysters we continued on our way and eventually made it to Port Arthur.

Tessellated Pavement

Port Arthur is a world heritage site, and the location of a famous penal colony.  We only had half a day there so purchased the bronze pass which costs $37 per person, but as well as entry does include a walking tour and a harbour cruise.  The site is a mixture of preserved ruins and house museums spread out over a vast site.  Port Arthur was designed for repeat offenders as a 'machine to grind rouges into honest men' and was in some part successful.  It closed its doors as a prison however when the population of convicts changed from young able bodied men to the older, infirm and unemployable men, making it unsustainable.

We headed back to Hobart and had dinner at an Italian restaurant in Salamanca before heading back to the hotel for a nightcap.  The return flight was later than I had expected and so I ended up having to drive straight to work from the airport.  Even then I was an hour late for work.

Winds of change

The most common complaint you will hear from Melbournians is the unpredictability of the weather, you can go out in the morning dressed for a beautiful sunny day only to be caught in a torrential downpour by lunchtime.  For those of us who come from the UK, unpredictable weather is nothing new, but it does throw visitors to the city off guard when the common perception of Australia is somewhere hot, sunny and above all dry.  The main cause for this unpredictability is the wind, Melbourne is constantly buffeted by strong winds carrying a vast array of weather systems across the city.

It is not just the weather that is changing, as another big change is about to hit our lives in Australia.  My interview at the Alfred did not go as badly as I had feared.  I did not get offered the renal job for which I applied, the reasoning behind this being my complete lack of hospital experience in Australia, instead I was offered a 6 month temporary contract to allow me to get that experience.  This left me with a bigger dilemma than I had expected, should I leave a permanent but part time job for a full time but temporary one?  After a day of weighing up the pros and cons I decided to do both!  I accepted the job at the Alfred, and agreed to stay working at the pharmacy in Epping at the weekends.

It may be that I am biting off more than I can chew, but I am not yet ready to burn my bridges with the world of community pharmacy, there is after all no guarantee that this six month contract will lead onto anything more permanent.

Fringe

The problems of living so far away from home have never been as manifest as now.  My father was rushed to hospital on Monday night after getting increasingly short of breath.  My sisters tried to contact me as soon as they could but suddenly realised that they never had my Australian mobile phone number and so ended up leaving a message for Barnadi and I on facebook, in the hope one of us would be bound to check it.  So Tuesday morning when I was at work I got a text message from Barnadi telling me what had happened.  By the time I got home from work it would have been the early hours of the morning for those back in England so I had to wait for a more reasonable hour before I could attempt to contact my sisters to find out what was going on.  After what felt like forever I eventually got to hear what happened.  My father had been away for the weekend, with his active retirement group and had been feeling rough and not been able to sleep the whole trip.  By the time he got home he was unable to speak without getting short of breath and so my half-sister took him straight to hospital.  After ruling out another heart attack they diagnosed him as having fluid on the lung which they treated with aggressive diuretic therapy and used artificial ventilation to keep his oxygen sats up in the meantime.  This seems to have got him back under control and his obs all started to stabilise.  He is still far from out of the woods and he will have angioplasty and a stent put in before he goes home.  This whole episode seems to have been precipitated by events from a few weeks ago when my father was getting dizzy spells.  The GP feared his blood pressure was getting too low and so reduced some of his medication including his diuretics, we now think that it was this reduction in the diuretics which allowed an excess of fluid to build up slowly in his lungs to the point where he needed hospitalisation to fix it.

While feeling so far a way from family back home in the UK, having friends from the UK over here in Australia has made life seem more interesting again.  This week I took Gemma and Dan up to our friends house in St Andrews so that they could see their first wild kangaroos.  As well as kangaroos we also saw an abundance of cockatoos, galahs and even a kookaburra.  Dan however seemed more interested in poking every rotten log or tree looking for spiders. 



Cockatoo

The Melbourne fringe festival is currently on, and we used this as a chance to catch up with Sam and Athina who we hadn't seen since we had them around for dinner soon after they first arrived.  Barnadi was working so Gemma, Dan and myself went into the city and had dinner at the Ludlow on the Southbank where they have 'steak night' every Monday and Tuesday.  A porterhouse steak with a glass of wine or pot of beer for just $20.  It was a very good steak, and very good value for money considering the usual prices for going out here.  We were a little worried at first that we were going to be late for the show, but luckily we made it to the fringe hub with enough time for a beer with Sam and Athina before the show started.  Sam and Athina have made a lot of progress since we last saw them, they both now have their registration sorted with AHPRA (a much simpler process than I had with them), and are currently looking for jobs.  Sam and Athina had picked the show they wanted to see "As we mean to go on", a drama performed by a group called Elbow Room which won several awards after last years festival.  It was billed as being a new look at creation theories, but in reality it turned out to be a retelling of the book of genesis.  The show was performed in the middle of the audience which was small, and arranged in a square around the stage.  The acting was good, but a little too religious for my liking.  The funniest thing however was when Dan asked me just before the show started, "do you think there will be any nudity", to which I answered "No, as the brochure would put a warning if there is nudity in the show".  The lights suddenly come on to the first scene....Adam and Eve.

Sam and Athina went to watch another show after the first one but Dan, Gemma and myself thought one was enough and had one last drink in the fringe club while watching some dodgy free cabaret before deciding to head home.

The Interview that almost never was

As happy as I am with my current job I have been keeping my eye out for other opportunities.  There are several reasons for this: firstly my hours are officially part time and although I am currently getting good hours, they are inconsistent; secondly I have no contract and no security.  Both these things combined do not work well when considering getting a mortgage.

A while ago my dream job was advertised, medicines information pharmacist at the Royal Melbourne hospital, and so I had to apply.  Unfortunately I did not even get shortlisted for this position.  A little disheartened I still continued to apply for other positions as they became available with a little coaxing from Barnadi.  The last was for the Senior Renal Pharmacist at the Alfred Hospital, after my previous track record I wasn't expecting to hear back from them, so imagine my surprise when I got an e-mail saying I had been shortlisted for interview.

The interview was last Thursday at 11 o'clock and I made it to the Alfred with plenty of time despite the inevitable traffic on Hoddle street and Punt road.  I was lucky enough to find a parking space as the large multi storey was already full, but not so lucky when I saw the parking rates for the hospital car park.  Despite the modern outward appearance of the hospital, the inside was no different to any other hospital I had been too, and looked like it could do with a face lift.  The pharmacy department was hidden in the basement although there was an outpatient shop up on the ground floor.  As I looked for the room for the interview I was impressed and slightly jealous of their massive clinical trials unit.  When I found the right room I was informed that they were running late and so I went back upstairs for a coffee.  By 11:30 I still hadn't been called in for the interview and I was beginning to think that I might have to forfeit if I wanted to make it back to work in time.  Just as I was getting myself ready to say sorry and leave, I was called in for my interview.

While still in the UK I had an interview with the Alfred over SKYPE.  It turned out that one of the people on the interview panel was the same, and she instantly recognised me from that interview.  The interview itself went better than I expected, but I couldn't help feeling distracted by the time, constantly keeping an eye on my watch.  Even my presentation went well as I managed to do the whole thing without looking at my notes once.

Despite some positive feelings about the interview, it has been almost a week and I have had no word.  I therefore feel it is unlikely that I will get offered the post.  I had been weighing up the pros and cons for a while anyway, even if they did offer me the job I had to decide if I even wanted it.  The advantages would be the pay for one, the security for another and perhaps most importantly it would mean doing a job where I could use my brain again.  The negatives however are just as important to consider, commuting during rush hour traffic and the most dreaded on-calls.  Still I would have to be offered the post before I need to face that decision.

House Guests

It is not just fish that we are now sharing our house with, our friends Gemma and Dan, whose wedding we went to in May, have arrived in Australia and will be staying with us whilst they are based in Melbourne.  We got up early on Tuesday morning to pick them up from the airport and went for Brunch at a new restaurant in Thornbury called little Henry.  As both Barnadi and I were working that night we left them to explore Northcote by themselves and they seem to have enjoyed their time, finding a few bars along the way.

The next day we took a drive down the Mornington peninsula with the initial intention to stop at Sorrento for fish and chips, but as we were taking the slightly longer and more scenic route following the coastline we were only at Mornington by the time we were ready for some lunch.  It is currently the school holidays and the streets of Mornington were packed with locals and visitors making the most of the good weather.  We wondered up and down Main Street searching for a fish and chip shop, and headed down to the beach to enjoy our purchase, a mixed selection of battered flake, prawns, crabsticks and calamari. 



Mornington Beach

After our big lunch we re-adjusted our goal, to get to Sorrento for coffee and ice cream, so we got back in the car and continued down the road.  On the way Barnadi decided to change the goalposts again, saying he wanted to get the ferry to Queenscliff and so when we got to Sorrento we got a one way ticket on the ferry.  Coffee and ice cream could wait until we arrived in Queenscliff.  The ferry ride was smooth, but it was too windy to spend any length of time outside on the deck.  We arrived in Quenscliff just before 5pm and were disappointed to find all the cafes either closed or closing for the day, so our plans for coffee were scuppered.  We did however find several ice cream shops open for business, so we got something for our trouble.

Ice cream finished it was then my job to make the long drive home via Geelong, with Gemma and Dan taking it in turns to fall asleep in the back, I think their jet lag had not yet worn off.  This is Gemma and Dan's first ever trip to Australia and we have managed to get them to completely circumnavigate port Philip bay before they have even set foot in Melbourne itself.  They are planning to stay in Australia for at least 6 months, but will be moving around a bit in that time so exactly how long they will be staying with us is not yet decided.  They are of course welcome to stay as long as they like.

Tragedy

Barnadi has always lived with pet fish, in the UK we had a cold water aquarium in which a variety of goldfish had lived.  The longest lived of them all was Goldie, at 10 years old she was still doing well when we left if not a little grey.

It was time therefore Barnadi decided that we start a new fish tank here on our balcony, we had the container ready, a sprinkling of multicoloured gravel along the bottom, all we were missing were the fish.  Yesterday we went up to the petshop on St Georges Road and chose our fish - two 'colourless' goldfish.  While carrying them to the till Barnadi noticed one had a white spot and was worried it might be sick so we swapped them for two fresh ones.  Although they are described as colourless they are actually a brownish colour.  One had a longer tail and a reddish shine to it, so we called him Coppertail, the other had a more yellowy tinge and so we called him Bronzefin.

To begin with both fish took a while to get used to the new surroundings, and hid underneath the plants at the bottom, occasionally coming out to chase their reflections around the edge of the tub.  This morning however they both looked more relaxed, and even came to the surface to feed when I gave them their breakfast.  But it was a short lived improvement, at least for Bronzefin, as when I got home from work today Barnadi informed me that one of the fish looked sick.  Indeed Bronzefin seemed completly paralysed, lying on the bottom of the tank, only his mouth moving.  Within a few hours he stopped breathing altogether and poor Bronzefin was no more.

Coppertail still seems quite active and we can only hope that Bronzefin did not die of anything contageous, for it would be a real tragedy to loose both our fish so soon.

Poor Bronzefin, may he rest in peace.

Old Friends

Barnadi now gets his day off work on a Wednesday the same as me, so yesterday we took the opportunity to go for a drive down the Mornington peninsula to visit Barnadi's friend Chris.  We packed some homemade iced lemon traybake and a bottle of wine and we were ready to go.  Two and a half hours later and we arrived in Fingal a small village near Sorrento.  After being given a tour of Chris's new house with 5 acres of land and making friends with her dog Neo, we headed to Sorrento for lunch.  We had lunch at the Sorrento hotel, I was driving so Barnadi and Chris could enjoy a glass of wine, or two or three....It was probably not the best idea then  that Chris suggested we played a game she had learnt about during a recent holiday in Switzerland involving a big block of wood, 3 nails and an axe.  Luckily no-one got hurt!

Chris and Barnadi playing the Swiss nail game.

We then had the long arduous drive back up the Nepean highway and through the city during rush hour traffic.  We didn't have time to stop anywhere along the way, as we had invited some friends over for dinner.  Luckily the friends were late, as we got lost trying to find a route with less traffic only to get stuck in an even worse jam.  The friends coming for dinner, Sam and his girlfriend Athina, are our first visitors from the UK.  I met Sam when I was still at University when he used to come over for dinner all the time, and we would enjoy a bottle or two of wine and some long debate over various scientific theories that would bore most other people at the table.  After graduating he moved up to Scotland where he met Athina, and we hardly saw each other after that.  They have now just arrived in Melbourne after a month travelling through Indonesia, and they are planning to stay here for at least 3 months if not longer.  The dinner was a success thanks to Barnadi's amazing (as usual) cooking efforts  and conversations flowed as if the last 7 years of absence had never happened.

Neo

Fine Food Australia

Barnadi's boss, Sam, got tickets to the Fine Foods Australia Convention, a food festival for people in the hospitality and catering industry. Rather than go himself however he sent Barnadi and myself instead.  The event was held in the exhibition centre in the CBD and was a large hall containing stalls displaying everything from industrial kitchen equipment to food stalls. There was also many cooking demonstrations and competitions ongoing throughout the day.  Most of the food stalls were giving away free samples and we managed to get very full very quickly trying everything.  Even after complaining how stuffed he was Barnadi couldn't help trying something from every stall we passed.

My Favorite Stall: UK food importer

As well as free food samples a lot of stalls had tote bags full of information and free pens, notepads and other miscellaneous bits and pieces.  Once we had our fill of free samples our next quest was to collect as many of the tote bags as possible, as they make good reusable shopping bags.

Gold medalist in the cake decorating competition

We ended up spending a good 3 hours at the exhibition centre before heading home.  Later that night at the restaurant we were chatting with Sam about the exhibition, and somehow we got onto the subject of how Wednesday was always my day off and now he has changed Barnadi's hours so that he can get Wednesdays off too.  This means we will now always have one day a week off together.

Chairman of the Board

Aside from a spot of amature photography, one of my favourite activities is playing board games.  Not simply your run of the mill party games, although they can be fun too, but proper strategy games that involve a much higher skill to luck ratio.  Since moving to Australia this is something I have missed out on as Barnadi has no interest in games of any sort, let alone ones where he has to think.

Despite Barnadi's assertions that people in Australia don't play board games, my hopes were raised a little when I saw a board game shop on Swanston street called MindGames which seemed to specialise in all my favourite games we used to play back in the UK.  Another clue to the secret board game fans of Australia came to me when walking home from the station one day and I spotted a lost 'Ticket to Ride' card by the side of the road.  Still I had yet to met anyone who would openly admit to their love of board games.

One of my friends in the UK, and possibly the biggest board game fan I know, then sent me a link to a website called BoardGameGeek, which had an Australian forum page, but the posts were all quite old and the only groups I found mentioned were university clubs.  It was only last week when another UK friend and board game fan found a site which advertised a board game night held at the Royal Standard pub every fortnight on a Wednesday night.  I am not very good when it comes to meeting new people and there was no way I could convince Barnadi to come with me.  I eventually plucked up enough courage to click the attend button on the website only to find the event already full and that I would be put on a waiting list.  At this point I decided fate was against me ever playing another board game again, but I was wrong.  On Wednesday morning I received an e-mail saying my place had been confirmed,  so now I had to build up that courage all over again to actually attend.



Goldenbrau

I arrived at the Royal Standard, a pub just outside the CBD near Flagstaff and the Victoria Market, at around 6:30pm and the place was already full and many games were underway, I was quickly and warmly welcomed by the organiser of the night, a guy named Corey and after a bit of deliberation I ended up in a group of four with a board game none of us had ever played before.  In my group were a couple of guys, Chee and Anton and a girl Sonika, the game which Sonika had chosen was called Goldenbrau.  It took as a while to read through all the rules and get an idea of what we had to do, but once we got into it, it was a relatively quick and simple game to play.  The point of the game is to invest in beer gardens and breweries with the aim of making the most money after 3 weeks of trading, each round being one day.  It was a good game, Sonika won by an absolute mile, Chee came second, I was third and Anton was last, but like they say, it's not the winning that counts but the taking part.  Chee then picked the next game, one called '10 days in Africa' a very quick and easy game to learn which basically involves collecting cards in the correct order to make a 10 day trip through Africa.  We had a couple of rounds of this before I decided it was probably time to think about heading home.



10 Days in Africa

It has only taken me 9 months and much assistance from my friends back in the UK but I have finally found somewhere I can go and play board games.  The number of people in attendance (over 70 people), just goes to show that Barnadi was very wrong and Melbourne has actually got a large number of people who enjoy a good board game, and I am now unashamedly one of them.

A Tramcar Named Desire

We received a gift voucher for dinner on the Melbourne Colonial Tramcar Restaurant as a leaving present from the staff at the Green Park Brasserie in Bath, last night, we used that voucher to celebrate our 5 year anniversary.  The Tramcar Restaurant was founded in 1983 and is supposedly the first of its kind in the world.

Barnadi at Southbank

We headed into the city early, by Tram of course, and spent an hour or so walking down the south bank taking photos of the city at night.  Melbourne truly is a beautiful city, especially at night, and the south bank is a good place to see it.  As well as the casino there are many lively bars and restaurants, which are busy even on a Monday night.  However we continued walking further along past the exhibition centre and along the much quieter South Wharf.  This area has seen a lot of recent redevelopment, but is like a ghost town after the hustle and bustle along the south bank.  It is quite sad for us to walk along there now as nothing exists of the venue where we help the Australian leg of our wedding 5 years ago.

After this little trip down memory lane, we headed back up to the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant pick up stop, which lies just between the Crown casino and the Exhibition centre.  Again it was busier than we were expecting for a Monday night and as we stood there watching other couples and small groups arrive I couldn't help get the feeling that we were entering an Agatha Christie novel, 'Murder on the Colonial'.  It made me wonder about the back story of all these seemingly unconnected people and what decisions and events made them all come together tonight. This feeling was strengthened when the Tram arrived and we boarded.  The interior of the tram was decadently attired with plush red curtains and tasseled lampshades, the lights under which flickered with the power fluctuations as the tram pulled away.  The perfect setting for a 1920's murder mystery.



Me inside the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant

Putting all thoughts of murder aside we quickly settled in with a glass of sparkling wine and some tasty capsicum dip and liver pate.  We were served by a very lively Australian waitress whose informality seemed both completely at odds with the elegant surroundings but somehow also completely in tune with it.  She certainly made everyone feel at ease and was quick to top up an empty wine glass.  It didn't take long to get used to the jerky movements of the tram, and compared to trying to eat on a plane when it hits turbulence it felt as smooth as anything.  For an entree I had the kangaroo fillet whilst Barnadi had the grilled barramundi.  For our mains I went for the chicken and Barnadi had the steak.  Considering the fact that all the food had to be pre-prepared and was simply being heated up and presented on the plate in the trams tiny little kitchen the food was surprisingly good, and we were having a very good night.  When the mains were finished we were presented with a small cheese board containing a Victorian cheddar and a Tasmanian blue brie, but I think we were the only table to eat all their cheese!

Colonial Tramcar Restaurant

The route the tram took was not quite what I expected, it travelled up Swanston street then across Victoria parade as if it were going to Richmond before stopping and travelling back past St Vincents plaza and along Collins street, at the end of Collins it turned left into Spencer street then headed straight down to St Kilda.  We stopped for a short while in Albert park where we could get out, stretch our legs and take a few photos outside the tram if we so desired.  On re-entering the tram we were served dessert as the tram made another loop of the city.  It was after this stop that we learnt the nature of a few of the other guests motives for coming on the restaurant that night, (luckily nothing as sinister as murder), a couple of birthdays were being celebrated and the man sitting at the table next to ours had used the short interlude to propose to his girlfriend.



Barnadi's Panna Cotta

For dessert Barnadi had the panna cotta and I had the sticky date pudding, a quick coffee and a cognac later however and the tram had reached its final stop and it was time to disembark.  Unfortunately the Restaurant does not do requests, so we had to get a standard tram back home feeling a little bit tipsy, very full and bloated and incredibly sleepy.

Un Monstre a Paris

After our full day of exploring wineries and reservoirs, we settled in for the night with a glass of wine and a movie.  The film in question was 'A monster in Paris', which it turns out is not a very good film, but I enjoyed it non the less because of the memories it evoked.  Our final European trip before leaving the UK was to Paris and it happened to coincide with when this film had come out in the cinema.  When Barnadi and I first met I often referred to him as a 'Barnadi -Monster' mainly due to his temper and so I always felt the film was somehow relevant as I had my very own Monster in Paris.

My very own Monster in Paris

When the film finished Barnadi did a dangerous thing and fed his addiction.  His addiction for SBS.  SBS is an Australian TV channel that focuses on world wide TV, and they frequently put on good foreign films late at night.  Barnadi has fallen into the habit of turning on SBS when he gets home late from work and getting himself hooked to a film, staying up until the early hours of the morning so that he doesn't miss the ending.  This is OK for him as he never has to get up early in the morning, although it is a little less practical for me as my hours are more variable.  I wasn't working early today but it was still a little annoying as we had the plumber turn up at 8:30am to fix the kitchen tap.  It wasn't Barnadi who had to get up to let him in or find the water stop cock or clear the cupboard under the sink.  In fact it is happening again as I write this blog post, he is watching another French film.

Wine Country

Today was a very unusual day as Barnadi and I both had a whole day off together.  After taking the car to get its first 3 month service, we spent the morning exploring some of the 'cheaper' residential parts of Preston and ended up in the Northland shopping centre.  Although we are still thinking we will end up focusing our search for a house in Bundoora, we are not ruling out other suburbs like Preston if the right house comes on the market, for the right price.

Yarra Valley

We had a quick lunch back at home before taking our freshly serviced car for a drive into Victoria's wine country, the Yarra ranges.  Once we got to Yarra Glen we took a short stop to check directions then continued on to the Yering Station winery.  It seems to me the most cruel of situations to have so many nice wineries around, but all of them you have to drive to.  As I was designated driver, Barnadi enjoyed a nice glass of wine and we both had a dessert and coffee.   My dessert was a rhubarb pie with blood orange sorbet while Barnadi had a sticky date and rum pudding.  The desserts were delicious but the views alone were worth the lack of wine as despite the gloomy start it had turned out to be a beautiful day.

Yering Station Winery

On our way home we took a little detour to the Sugarloaf reservoir where we took a long walk across the dam before continuing on our way back home with a stop off at Bundoora to pick up some more affordable wine.

Sugarloaf Reservoir

The Health of a Nation

Last night I was watching Michael Moore's Sicko, and it made me feel very grateful for always living in a country that provides free health care.  The film focused on how the American health service has evolved to be run by rich insurance companies who will do anything they can to not pay out, leaving even the most comprehensibly insured out of pocket or refused medical treatment altogether.  The reasons for this quite unique anti-public health care stance is put down to an irrational fear of socialism drip fed to the general public by the government.  It is a stance which is unlikely to change anytime soon as President Obama's own attempts to create health care reforms has proved.  It is also the main reason I would never want to live in the USA.

The Australian health care service is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a million times better than that provided by the USA.  GP's, blood tests, stays in hospital and even opticians are completely free, but like the UK it does not pay for dentists (this is why Barnadi still goes to his sister in Jakarta if he needs any dental work done).  Medicines are not free but are heavily subsidised by the pharmaceutical benefits scheme, general patients can expect to pay a maximum of $35 for a prescription and patients with a concession a mere $5.80.  This is not quite as good a deal as you get in the UK where a standard prescription charge is around £7 and anyone with a concession gets all their medicines for free.

Health insurance does exist in Australia, and probably more common here than in the UK, the main advantage the insurance companies try to sell you is the tax refund you get from the government for having private health insurance.  They fail to mention that the premiums for the health insurance are more expensive than the medicare levy!

The one thing you do need to have insurance for is ambulance cover as this is a service the government in Australia does not pay for.  Ambulances are not cheap, and are usually required in an emergency, so it is not something that you can budget for.  This is a big issue for me, coming from the UK where you never had to worry about whether you can afford to call an ambulance or just hope that chest pain will go away by itself.......

Back to Reality

We met with a mortgage advisor at the bank today to look into how much we would be able to realistically borrow, to enable us to focus our search with a more accurate price range.  Barnadi went straight in saying we hoped to get a $400-$450k house, where as I simply wanted to know how much they would be willing to lend.  They explained the standard mortgage arrangements were for a 20/80 split with 20% deposit, stamp duty and loan insurance paid up front and the 80% making up the loan.  For a $400k house however that would mean we would need at least $90k saved up, and as we were considering starting the search by January next year this was not going to be possible.  They then explained they could do a 95% loan as long as the loan insurance didn't constitute more than 2% of the total cost, which in our case it would.  This means for us to be able to buy a $400k house we need to save up a minimum of $20k before January.  We are currently putting $2k aside each month into our savings account, although the bank thinks we could probably get away with increasing that to $3k with no loss in quality of life.  We would need at least 3 months of consistent savings to prove to the bank we can be capable of saving that much.  Even if we save $3k a month we would only have another $15k by January, not the $20k we would need, this means we might have to consider bringing over our savings from the UK, which Barnadi is very much against.  The size of our deposit will also be effected by the money we currently have invested in shares, if that goes up it will be a great help, but if it goes down we will have to wait even longer before we can consider buying.  The most positive outcome of the meeting however was when we got onto discussing repayments.  Over a 30 year period we would be paying back a monthly amount equivalent to our current rent, but by increasing the monthly repayments to $3k, something we could comfortably afford, it would cut the loan period to 17 years and cut the interest paid back by more than half.

Our only other debt at the moment is our car loan as we always keep our credit card balance clear and I completely paid off my student loan not that long ago.  The next biggest expense we have would be travelling, and unfortunately as more and more of our friends in the UK announce their engagement this is not an area we will be able to save in, at least not without upsetting a lot of people in the process!  After travelling the next most expensive thing in our lives is the rent, but unless we want to go homeless we can't cut back on that. Equally the utility bills are quite fixed and necessary, so we really are saving all we can.  So short of winning the lottery we will not be ready to buy a house until halfway through 2013, by which time house prices may have risen and mortgage deals worsened and we'll find ourselves back at square one.

So now "plan 2" is more than just a pipe dream, we have a much more realistic structure to what we must do and how much we must save in order to get our feet onto the property ladder, and although it may take a little longer than we had hoped, this is not entirely unexpected.  All in all, a positive outcome.

Moving On

Now as much as we love living in Northcote we are over half way through our current rental agreement and so we will have to decide what to do next.  It seems like a good time to start considering whether we are ready to initiate "Plan 2" -  Buy a house.  In order to get a more realistic idea of what we can afford (if anything), we are planning to meet with our financial advisor this week.

We have already made a start by narrowing down a list of which suburbs we would be willing to live in.  The first deciding factor is public transport, unless we want to buy a second car we need to live somewhere on the South Morang train line (for my work) or Tram line 86 (for Barnadi's work).  It will be unlikely that we will be able to afford to stay in Northcote and even Thornbury and Preston are a little too pricey for our estimated budget.  That leaves us with a choice of Reservoir, Kingsbury, Thomastown, Lalor, Bundoora, or Epping. 



Map of our Search Area, Courtesy of Googlemaps

Yesterday we even went to a couple of open house inspections in Bundoora, just to get a feel for what to expect if nothing else.  The first house was really quite nice and had a beautiful large covered deck out the back.  Barnadi was not so impressed, he has gotten too used to modern open plan living.  The second house was not as nice, it was very run down and absolutely stunk of stale cigarette smoke.  It would have cost more in renovations than the property was worth.

After the house inspections I took Barnadi to see Epping, now I have been working in Epping for several months now and know what an ugly, rough suburb it is but I don't think Barnadi really believed me until he saw it for himself.  As I had been telling him since we got here, if the only place we could afford to buy was in Epping (or a similar suburb; Craigieburn, Broadmeadows etc.) I would be on the first plane back to the UK.  So that has at least helped narrow down the search a little more.

We are getting a little ahead of ourselves, and it is just as likely we will end up having to rent a bit longer to ensure we can save up enough money for a deposit.

An elephant never forgets

We are being followed around the world by a parade of elephants.  We encountered our first elephant in London in our final week in the UK.  They swiftly followed us to Singapore where we encountered many more of them.  Now they have arrived in Melbourne.

Elephant in London

Elephant in Singapore

Elephant in Melbourne

This form of street art has definitely become a world wide phenomenon, back in Bath we had pigs and then lions, over in Bristol they had gorillas.  Elephants however seem a much more popular animal as this is the 3rd city around the world we have seen them in.

This kind of interactive art display has much appeal, firstly it gives local businesses and artists a chance to get involved with designing their own unique version.  It gives locals and tourists alike a treasure hunt of sorts as they try to spot them all.  It then ends in an auction were every piece is sold in order to raise money for charity.  Despite the lack of novelty I still find myself getting excited every time we find a new elephant in the city.