After almost 3-months, I’m leaving Geelong this afternoon and flying back up to Sydney. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do once I get there yet, but getting a job is pretty low on the list of priorities at the moment.
I’m flying out to Tokyo at the end of March, and I want to spend some time in New Zealand before I leave, so that only really leaves me with 6-8 weeks in Australia. Even if I found a job tomorrow, I don’t think there would be much point in it!
Instead, I’m planning on heading back up to Magnetic Island to get my SSI Advanced diving certificate, then maybe up to Cairns to dive at the Great Barrier Reef, if I can stand the tropical heat, that is!
Other than that, I’ll most likely just be catching up with the guys that stayed in Sydney. Possibly fly out to Perth to see Martin.
If I can do all that, I’ll have seen more of Australia than a lot of Australians!
Christmas isn’t supposed to be hot. I’ve been thoroughly confused by the lack of ice, snow and freezing rain for the last month or so. The lack of rubbish Christmas songs on the radio is quite refreshing, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory really — Fairytale of New York is nowhere to be found (It seems that nobody here has even heard of it!).
Apparently the weather has been pretty mild for the last week or so though. I’m told that most Christmases down here are spent avoiding the North Wind, supposedly similar to standing in front of a huge hair-dryer while somebody throws dust at you. So it could be worse!
Apart from the odd weather, Christmas has been quite nice really. Roast lunch with Meg’s family, enough cold meat to last a couple of days, and little neoprene tubes to keep bottles of beer cold!
It’s all been very interesting anyway!
Over the last 8 weeks or so I’ve travelled roughly 3000km on the road from Cairns to Sydney; living out of a backpack and only staying in one place for a few nights. Now I’m back in where I started in Geelong and slowly adjusting to things like having my own room, a usable kitchen, and not being charged by the minute to connect to the Internet!
I arrived in Sydney by bus on Thursday evening, and spent the weekend catching up with most of (Sorry, Laura and Bryony) the rest of the OzIntro group who decided to settle there. The highlight of the weekend was the “Opening” game of the Rugby League World Cup between Australia and New Zealand on Sunday night. As a neutral fan, the game wasn’t anywhere near as close as I’d hoped, but it was exciting to see two of the best teams in the world fighting it out against each other! Australia ended up dominating the game and ran out winners, 30 – 6. The next afternoon I flew down to Avalon to be met again by my friend Meg, who’s been kind enough to put me up for a while even though she’s currently in the process of selling her house!
So now that the East coast is finished I have to get back to the more serious business of finding a job and somewhere more permanent to live. I saw a few promising-looking recruitment adverts while I was coming down the coast, hopefully I’ll have some success down here!
I’m well aware that I’ve been neglecting this a bit since I got over here, but I haven’t had much time to sit and write near a usable wireless network.
I made it over to Melbourne with a fairly small amount of hassle. A delay in Aberdeen turned a leisurely stroll across Heathrow into a mad dash to get clear of Terminal 5! I made the Sydney flight with about 10 minutes to spare, worried that like the last time I travelled to Australia, my checked bag would be left on the ground in London. Thankfully, when I arrived in Sydney my big red holdall was already waiting on the luggage belt. Immigration and Quarantine wasn’t so easy though. It seemed like five flights had arrived at once, and taking into account the 2 -hour delay in Bangkok, my connection to Melbourne took off before I even cleared passport control! A few frantic phone calls later, and after another run through an airport I boarded my final flight and met Meg in Melbourne airport just about an hour behind schedule.
So much has changed since I was last in Geelong, but so much still seems the same. It was good to arrive to something vaguely familiar before heading off to Sydney to start something completely unknown.
