Melbourne

WOOHOO!

We are in Melbourne! We woke at 4am to get our 6.10 flight from Cairns to Melbourne (via Sydney) on 1st September and have ended up in St Kilda where we stayed at... Base!! We have now worked out come Christmas, we will have stayed at every Base hostel there is in Australia (St Kilda (Melbourne), Magnetic Island, Brisbane and Sydney at Chritmas time).

The Base here seems v swish in comparison to the others and we stayed there for 5 days while we hunted for a place to stay (desperately needed to get out of the hostels)! We saw a lot of horrible share houses - landlords know they can make a bomb out of working travellers here and shoehorn 4 people into a room, 5 rooms in a house, so that's 20 people per house! Might as well stay in a hostel...

Sam did all our searching and had the great idea of putting an advert for US looking for a place to stay, rather than us replying to other people's ads. That's when we got a call about a house with 4 other people in it at the moment. We were quite dejected after seeing a lot of duds and decided, en route, that if this one was rubbish, we'd concentrate on a job first and get into another place later. Well, someone must have heard our conversation and worked some magic because this place is a palace!! Sam and I are in a room at the top of a 3 story flat, our room has its own ensuite and a walk in wardrobe for our stuff, the kitchen is gorgeous and new, has Foxtel tv (Sky) and wireless internet, balconies and a video intercom for the front door! It is perfect and a freaking bargain ($10 more a week than we were paying in Brisbane, which was a special rate for the dead of winter). It's gorgeous and we moved in a week ago and have been v happy here so far!

We are now searching for jobs. I'm not having a lot of luck with agencies for office work but Sam has spent a day training for an inbound call centre job which I'm hoping to get something similar this week. Shops around here that are advertising are hairdressing apprentices and a ful time chef (counts me out then!) and a casual partimer (2 days a week but long term so again, not for me). Very frustrating as not only do I need ot earn to live day-to-day but I need to save hardcore for the future travels. Oh well, got a meeting with the agency that found Sam a job tomorrow morning so wish me luck!! Sam and I are keen to go to Zumba class at the local gym so we must get earnig ;)

We are here now until we go to Sydney in mid-December for xmas and new years while little Sam has flown to Brisbane and gone inland again to work at an Irish pub! We'll hopefully reunite when she flies to Melbourne in December and do the Neighbours tour before going to Sydders. We have also found out Paul O'Brien (who played Jack Holden in Home and Away) has a bar around the corner from our house so we are planning to go and get a pic with him one ladies night! Watch this space :P