G'day, our flat is huge as!

We have a flat now! It’s a large two bedroom on the Gold Coast Highway, about 2 minutes from the beach and a 10-15 minute walk into town. It’s starting to feel like home, but we need a few more decorations. We finally have our own washer and dryer, although the dryer steams up Ryan's bathroom like a sauna and it’s missing a dishwasher. On our first night here we decided to flip a coin (best of 19) to decide who gets the big bedroom. Luckily, I won.


This is our kitchen and dining room.


Our “living room” with a little touch of home. The TV picks up about 7 channels over the air, so we get some decent TV here. Most of it is delayed by a few weeks but House seems to be on time, as are a few others...


This is the rest of our living room, including the den which we constructed. We still don’t have Internet access, although it has been ordered and we hope to have it soon. Australian Internet access is very expensive and restrictive…


This is Ryan’s bedroom. He’s very ashamed of the broken lamp that came with the flat and hopes to replace it soon. Both bedrooms have sliding doors to the “patio”.


And this is my bedroom. We have two bathrooms, one as an en-suite to my room and the other near the kitchen.


This is our patio with access to both of our bedrooms.


And this is the view from our patio towards the center of town. You can kind of see the Q1 tower in this picture – it looks better in person.

After we settled in to our apartment we began job hunting. Ryan was the most successful on the first day, landing a trial shift at “Seafood Mania” as a cashier, and setting up an interview at a clothing store. He’s not very happy at Seafood Mania, and now that he’s started at the clothing store as well (which has better benefits, people and pay), he’s planning on quitting. Seems easy to find two jobs!

It took me a few days to find work, but when I did, it came in waves. I had an interview at Nandos, and after getting the job there as a cook, got a call from a night club to come in that night and work as a glasser (busser). I've been juggling both jobs for a while now with some 2-3 hours of sleep most nights, coming home at 5:30 or 6am and starting at 10am at Nandos. Both jobs have ups and downs, so I’m weighing my options and will probably quit one in the next few days.

We plan on taking a couple of pictures of the places we work at, and posting them on here soon. Shortly we’ll update you on how the jobs are working out, and any side trips we may take. For now, we need to find the time to take some surf lessons.

Surfers Paradise - home sweet home?

It's been a while since our last blog entry and I am sure all you avid Eurostralia fans must be eager for another one, so here is our last two weeks...

We had an excellent stay in Melbourne with my family; everyone was very accommodating to us. We went back into Melbourne city again to see some of the things we missed on our first visit. This time around the weather was much better so we decided it would be a good idea to go to the top of the Eureka tower (supposedly the world’s tallest residential building) and get a good view of the city. We did our best to take some good pictures but as Jordan mentioned before he broke the screen on his camera so it wasn’t easy.


The Eureka tower


A view of Melbourne city from the Eureka Skydeck, 88 floors up.

During our stay in Warrendyte Richard also invited us over to his place for a good ‘ol fashioned Ozzy barbie and we attended Vicky’s 21st birthday party, both of which were heaps of fun. Vicky’s party was quite the event with more than 60 people in attendance and more beer, wine, and champagne than we could possibly consume. It was a lot of fun meeting everyone at the party and we are really glad that we were able to attend.

Ben, Amy, DJ Teesh, Myself and Jarrod

On the day of our departure from Melbourne my Aunt Rosalind was kind enough to drive us to Healesville animal sanctuary where we were able to get up close with all of Australia’s unique native animals.


Sitting in the middle of this tree is a Koala, they sleep for 20 hours a day so it’s not easy to get a good picture of them. A few days previous we actually did see one run across the road, Jordan thought it was a dog.


We watched a “birds of prey” show as well which was very exciting. The bird trainers brought out several birds and had them fly just over our heads. In this picture is a huge Wedge Tailed Eagle.


And here is one of the bird trainers holding a Barn Owl.


We got to see Wombats, Platypus, Tasmanian Devils, Echidnas, Koalas, Kangaroos, Kookaburras, Emus, Dingos, and this cuddly Wallaby.


I had already seen a few Kangaroos on the roadside in Warrendyte but Jordan missed them all. He was very excited to finally lay eyes on this little roo…and not only that but he was able to feed and pet it too.

When we first arrived at Melbourne airport and Rosalind picked us up she greeted myself and “Jarrod”. We corrected her by explaining that his name was actually Jordan but she never really got the hang of it. For some reason she had the name Jarrod stuck in her head and for virtually our whole stay with she referred to Jordan as Jarrod. It became quite the ongoing joke so everyone just started to refer to him as Jarrod; he was even introduced at Vicky’s party as Jarrod. To top things off she had even written on the calendar “Ryan & Jarrod Arrives” which was corrected and then changed back to Jarrod after he was officially renamed. However, in my Aunts defense I think she did finally learn Jordan’s name in the end.


Jordan had to get a picture of the calendar before we left.

We had gotten very comfortable in Warrendyte and we were not looking forward to hostels and backpacks again. We arrived in Sydney and found our hostel fairly easily; however, it was probably the worst accommodation we have had all trip. It was in a very seedy part of town, the room was smelly and the four other guys in our room were actually living there so it was a complete mess...We were REALLY missing Warrendyte now. We made the most of our time in Sydney though and did a harbor cruise where we got to see all the famous sights and learn some interesting facts.


The Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbor Bridge


Jordan and downtown Sydney


A little look at the boat we were on.


The Sydney Opera house again but pictured from on land this time.


And the Opera House yet again.

Day two in Sydney was not a good one as far as the weather goes but we went to Bondi beach anyway. We packed towels and board shorts but the water was far to cold to swim in. Instead we just laid on the beach for few minutes before it started to rain and we hurried back to the bus stop. Much like we did in London when the weather turned on us we went to a show to stay dry that night. This time we went to see an American guy by the name of Arj Barker do stand-up comedy which was very entertaining.


Bondi beach and the overcast sky

After a short but productive stay in Sydney we caught a Qantas flight to Brisbane. From Brisbane it was about an hour on the train and we were in our new home of Surfers Paradise! Since being here we haven’t done much but look for an apartment to rent. At first we were finding it quite difficult to find somewhere that would rent to us for a short period of time but we have found one that is promising. It is a two bedroom, two bathroom, fully furnished apartment just a stones through from the beach. We have put an application in to rent it but the realtor that has the listing for it is not being very helpful. We will keep hounding them for it though and hopefully get it. We are also going to go job hunting very soon. There are plenty of places in town advertising for summer and Christmas job openings so we are optimistic that it won’t be hard to find employment.


This is the Q1 tower here in Surfers, also one of the tallest residential buildings in the world…a little out of our price range though.


This is a picture taken from the beach; the place we are trying to rent is in the background and just to the left of the tall building...It is also only about a 15min walk to the town center so a pretty good location if we are successful in getting it.

We are now just staying in a hostel until we get word on the apartment. We are very eager to finally move into our own place, have some privacy, and settle down for a while. We will keep you all posted on how that and our job hunt turn out.