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!
Yesterday, the OzIntro group travelled to the Blue Mountains (about an hour away from Sydney) and spent the day walking through the bush.
In a little under 2 weeks I’m heading off to Australia for the next nine months or so on a Working Holiday Visa. It’s not my first time travelling down there. A few years ago I spent a couple of weeks with friends around the Melbourne area, and took another week to see Uluru and travel to Alice Springs. This time, after a brief stay with the friends in Melbourne, I’m spending a week in Sydney with a group organised by OzIntro.
Basically, OzIntro help with getting visas, accommodation, health care, and all the rest sorted before you leave home. Organised tours aren’t really my thing, and companies like OzIntro aren’t really doing anything that I couldn’t do myself, but after spending most of my first month in Dublin trying to fix tax benefits and open bank accounts the opportunity to get as much as possible up and running before I leave proved too good to pass up! Another reason is that you’re part of a group of people who all arrive at the same time, and are in much the same position. I’ve been in touch with a few of them already and they seem like a good lot. I have no plans at all after my first week in Sydney (This seems to be a common theme throughout the group!), but I’m sure that before the week is over something will come together!
