Hunting

for jobs, cars, houses, wedding venues, wedding celebrants - we've got our fingers in a lot of different pies at the moment! On top of that, I'm getting the surf ski wet at the weekends, and I'm trying to piece together a set of holiday video/slideshows to send home. Busy? I guess you could say so :)

Plenty of highlights though:

• top of the list - catching big waves with Nat at Currumbin last weekend. I caught a few 4-5 footers, and managed to hold on to them as well. Good thing too, as if I'd fallen off them I would have been well and truly mashed. We're off up the sunshine coast this weekend, hopefully lots more of the same!
  
• Morticia Addams showing us round Bungunyah Manor House Resort on Mt. Tamborine - a bizarrely Basil Fawlty kind of place, with a strong christmas theme even though the 12 days have long since passed... it would satisfy plenty of our requirements (outdoor ceremony, delicious food, accomodation for the wedding party), but it was just a little weird. I think it's a weird part of Queensland, to be honest. Mind you, the gum trees up there were the tallest I've ever seen, absolutely magnificent. Even if we don't have the wedding there, we'd be taking friends and family up there to tour the wineries.
• Our new phones - these Sony Ericsson K750is are brilliant. The 2MP camera is fantastic for starters, and we just realised last night that we can play mp3s as ringtones. So, in the space of barely 10 minutes, I had downloaded some free wav file editing software (wavepad) and had cut and editted the best funky guitar chops from Groove Armada's Chicago for Skye's ringtone. I had forgotten how much fun, and how easy it can be, to get in there and remix sounds...
• and finally - a troop of rainbow lorikeets keeps coming to eat the berries off the tree just behind the kitchen. They are simply so colourful that they are amazing to see.
  

Brisvegas

We finally made it across the "banana curtain" and we're here in Brisbane. The last 2 weeks have been very hectic, and we've been living out of our bags (still), but now we're here we've unpacked and we're living out of a wardrobe instead!

We've got a long list of high priority pastimes: wedding venue, jobs, somewhere to live, new car, bank accounts. We mustn't forget that we also need to prioritise getting away to interesting places at the weekends, too - after all, that's one of the major advantages of living here.

We're currently enjoying/surviving using "The Bus" as our transport - the huge space for luggage and gas-filled shock absorber seats only just make up for the lack of AirCon ;) It's definitely hot up here, and definitely humid with it. I'm sitting absolutely still right now, and even with a fan switched on behind me, I'll break a sweat if I type too fast :)

Arrived in Oz

I have to say, I expected a little more ceremony when I went through passport control - perhaps a grilling about our relationship, or a quiz on Aussie sporting records, or at the very least a "welcome to Australia". But no, just a quick stamp on the passport and that was it. Mind you, we had slept very little on the flight and weren't really in a decent state for anything more complicated. As it was, deciding what to do about our customs and quarantine declaration was enough mental excercise. Gotta love the Steve Irwin promo video shown on the plane before landing - "Declare or beware". We declared our boots, and customs happily (and for free!) gave the soles a good hosing and returned them to us. Some poor bloke has the job of scrubbing all those minging holiday shoes...

So, the travelling is very nearly over, and certainly we're no longer wrestling with challenges of language barriers and menus (unless you count Aussie slang and a general lack of veggie options). We're both feeling a little displaced, and I'm certainly feeling anxious to establish myself. I guess it'll take a little while for us to settle into being here, and experience says that with hindsight these periods of discomfort usually look like insignificant blips. The trusty Aussie sun is well and truly shining on us, though :)