Labyrinth

It's really difficult to explain our house to people - actually it's pretty hard to understand the layout for us! So I created this excellent diagram to help. I'm sure Mathias will be proud of my 2D computer drawing skills.

As you can see, there are 4 houses that are all connected by covered walk ways. The front doors are never used so we enter by the side street at gate 1 - there is a code on the gate for security.

Immediately to the right are 2 washers and a dryer than we can use free of charge (woop!) and to the left are the bins and washing lines. To enter the houses you need to go through another coded gate (number 2).

To get to our room we walk through the big kitchen, down the 2nd walk way and then through the door on the left and up the stairs. We use the big kitchen, which is house number 2 and 3's kitchens knocked into one, but if it is busy we can use the small kitchen too.

Gate 3 leads to the kitchen that was originally the kitchen of our house but it is not possible to access it anymore. Some of the students that live here get their meals included and I think that is where the woman does the cooking for those meals.

We have a bathroom just down the hall from us but if that is busy then we can use the ones in the kitchen or sometimes Mathias goes to one in another house.

On our floor there are 3 other bedrooms and downstairs there are another 2. The other houses are similar but house 1 has a living room where we an go and socialise (we don't :P) and there is a piano there that some of the students practise on.

So, as you can see it is a bit of a warren! But it works pretty well and we like it.

We can pay rent!

Just a week ago we weren't sure if we were going to have to head back to the UK because the work situation wasn't working out very well, but since then I've been hired at the zoo to do catering and Mathias got hired at a cafe!

Today is rent day and we can actually pay it! Woooop!!

Tomorrow it will be 3 months since we arrived in Australia. It has been really fun a lot of the time and really stressful a lot of the time but I guess that's all part of the adventure.

Here's hoping things go a little smoother from here...

Driving Down Under

It took us about 2 weeks to drive from Northern Queensland to Melbourne so I thought I'd talk about driving in Australia, seeing as it's nothing like any driving I've had to do before.

I've driven in the ass crack of nowhere in the US, where there are lots of boringly long, straight roads, but it's different here. First of all, you can't relax. Ever. There is always the potential for animals darting out in front of you here, so you have to be very alert the whole time. Just looking at the road ahead isn't good enough - you have to be scanning the sides of the road the whole time to look for kangaroos and emus that might be resting there.

And that's the thing about these bloody kangaroos - they stand at the side of the road until you're just within hitting distance and then they hop out in front of you! They are so dumb! They are their own worst enemy - they blend in to the colour of the grass around them, they like to hang out at the side of the road, and they panic when you get close, which is why they suddenly hop out. It would upset me if I hit a kangaroo but that isn't the only problem - kangaroos are HUGE. If you hit one of them you're going to cause some serious damage to your car. A lot of the people that live in the outback have special bars on their cars just in case.

This isn't a rare occurence. There are dead kangaroos all over the roads and I had to slow down for ones by the side of the road during every single trip. They are most active when the sun is coming up/going down because it's cooler, and it means that driving at night is particularly dangerous. Once the sun goes down at around 8pm the roads get very quiet because of this (we ended up driving in the dark once by accident. Never again!)

And the dead kangaroos are a hazard too! They are so big, if you hit some roadkill you're going to damage your car then too!

Other than kangaroos, we have seen all of the following in the middle of the road:
snake, goanna, sheep, cows, emus, various other birds, possum... possibly others that I've forgotten.

Luckily it was only the possum that didn't survive these meetings! :/

No chance of a wrong turn around here

Still never managed to get a picture of an actual kangaroo in the road because we're always concentrating too much on not hitting it!

There are a lot of unfenced cattle areas. Cows have the right of way around here!

Emus!

Emus and kangaroos often have friends around, so if you see one you have to watch out for others running out

Of course the biggest problem with driving out here is when your car has a tantrum!

Spotting kangaroos is a lot easier when your co-pilot helps out...