Birds and bats in botanic gardens

I decided to take a break from the job applications yesterday and took a walk to the Botanic Gardens near the harbour.

It was lovely, really beautiful flowers and great place to take lunch if you're working in the city I imagine.
One thing that surprised me was the strange noises I started to hear - looking up I realised there were hundreds of bats above me! Loads of them everywhere! Really bizarre. Apparently the thing to do is to go around sunset and you see them all flying up.


Also a strange site was flocks of big cockatoos, very friendly, they came right up to my feet looking for food I think. I liked this one who was trying to drink from the water fountain, I considered turning it on for him but thought I might get a finger taken!


Looks like a great place to run too, hundreds of runners out from the offices at lunch time and have a great view of the opera house and harbour bridge.

Australian government officials are lovely!

I am very impressed.

Just went to the immigration office (26 Lee Street) to get the visa stamp put into my passport.

After experiences in the US I was expecting a 2 hour wait, gruelling interview, and moody officials. But no, I was served by a jolly lady who did it all in 5 minutes, without feeling it necessary to be behind bullet proof glass either. It would have taken 2 minutes, but she wanted to finish watching the results of the Melbourne Cup race on the big screen TV.

Relocation company

Hurrah, we have free internet! Well, Crown relocation company is paying for it now, rather than us paying $15 a day (rip off!).

Would recomment Crown Relocations, it's all gone really smoothly and they sent us a nice welcome pack with guidebooks and sunscreen too (easily impressed!). Probably it costs a lot, but that is where relocating with Adam's work helps!

Our flat

Here's a quick pic of our temporary appartment.


It is pretty small, but very central. Can't wait to move into somewhere with an outside area for a barbie!

Glorious sun!

Ah, today I really loved Sydney. At the weekend I thought it was good, but today the skies are sunny and it is 28 degrees! This is what I'm here for!

Poor Adam has gone to work so I won't go on about it too much ;-) but it is great!


Had a walk down to Tumbalong Park, which is not far from where we are, then came back for meeting with recruitment agent. Fingers crossed for interview tomorrow!

The 'gym' in the hotel is actually just a bike and a treadmill, and a 5 metre pool, but shouldn't moan - it is free. Hopefully some cycling every morning will help out the knees, not sure I could run outside any way in this heat!

Bondi beaches

Continuing our weekend tour, on Sunday we decided to head over to Bondi. It took a bit longer than I thought on a train and a bus from the CBD, I'm not sure I would want to commute that far.

The beach was really lovely, and apparently good surfing waves! We did a beautiful walk along the coast from Bondi to Coogee beach, stopping at Clovelly beach for a good lunch of john dory and chips. Clovelly has good scuba diving, might have to try it out sometime.

Bondi walk

Coogee beach
It was quite cloudy but still pretty warm, I know understand how strong this sun is, since we got a bit sun burnt even through the cloud! Factor 30 everyday from now on!

We went up to Newtown afterwards. I think it is the 'shoreditch' type trendy area. Doesn't look too great but has all the cool bars. I'm not sure I'd want to live that central but will definitely be fun to go out!

Still undecided on where to live. I think I prefer Manly at the moment, but yet to see Mosman and a few other areas Adam has in mind...

First day!

After getting to our new little apartment in Darling Harbour decided it was best to just keep going through to try to get over the jet lag asap. So went out to get my first real view of sydney!


As Bill Bryson says, having travelled so far, your mind almost expects to see the exotic. People riding camels, strange lettering, that sort of thing. But Sydney just seems so western, that it could be a european or north american city easily! Have to keep reminding myself that we are really in Asia!

We had a nice brunch on the waterfront at Darling Harbour (Carl what was the place called that you worked in?!), then got a day pass for transport so we could start to investigate where to live. this site has been really helpful for good reviews of local areas. We saw balmain first, which is quite suburban with lovely architecture - all balconies and cute little terraces.

Then we went over to Manly. Really liked the beach, it reminded me of Paignton in a funny way! Think maybe if the commute is not so bad it could be great to live by the beach!


Big cliche but the people in Sydney really do seem so friendly, from the chatty passport control guard, and the people helping us out with directions, to the young father and son who came over to offer us a look at the hole young Joey had dug on Manly beach. Apparently Joey was digging through to China, I suggested he could help us out and dig through to England instead, but apparently that was just silly.

Had some great news - we finally have tenants! We had been working so hard on the bathroom right up to 1pm on the day we were travelling (various disasters with putting up the shower rail!) so it was so great to hear that somebody finally wants our flat, not to mention the financial reasssurance.

Only thing left to do now is to find myself a job! I've been using Seek to look for jobs. Despite the economy issues there still seems to be a few josb out there. I have meetings with recruitment agencies on Monday and Wednesday, and a phone interview with a Ticketek - a company similar to ticketmaster in the UK, on Tuesday.

Going to head over to Bondi today, hopefully the sun will come out, it's been quite warm but not really sunny yet - although it is spring...