Captain Maddy !

Another hectic few days... have been looking at houses, cars and jobs as we have neither at the moment. No joy on the house front yet and no real joy on cars either. Had good meeting with agency and they were very positve about me getting a good Project Manager role and were talking quite high numbers so that is all good.

On Thursday we went out on Rob's (Rachel's step-father) boat - an 80 yr old 32ft bay cruiser. Really enjoyed ourselves, cruised for an hour to stradbrooke island - everyone having a go at piloting the boat including Maddy - and mored off the beach. Went ashore on the dinghy and had a really nice picnic lunch surrounded by wallabies.. all very Australian.

Went out last night with Jamin, Tracey, Charlotte and Steve for drinks and tapas. Amusingly after a round of not so good tapas at one restaurant we moved to another for another round of tgapas - which was very good - washed down with a cheapish white rioja - which left me with a little headache.

People are very concerned about petrol prices here, but luckily if you spend more than $30 at the local off-licence you get money-off vouchers for petrol. So I am on a mission to spend $30 on wine as often as possible !!


We are off to see what could be a very nice house on Monday - so hopefully will be able to post positively about houses after that - otherwise it is a tather depressing subjetc. fotr an average 3 bed house the going rate is $400 per week - $1800 pcm. for a nice-ish $500, for agood one $650 !! When my take home is going to about $4500 that is a lot to be spending on accomodation...

Anyhow off to see another house now and then tea with Ian and Elaine (Rachel's Dad and partner) then a barbeque with Sarah and Ollie (Ollie is English and just emigrated in August) which I am looking forward to...

I will try and host some pictures somewhere. If anyone thinks they are any good at basic web design and has a few spare minutes, I have a registered website which Mat is kindly hosting on his server, I just dont have the skills nor a quick enough connection to do a good job - so if anyone wants to volunteer I will zip some photos and some commentary across with the username and password to the site...

Cheers

Stephen