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.