I'm a bloody pom and I'm gonna bloody whinge

Ok I can't hold it in any more

1. The sun has gone in and we've had ACTUAL RAIN. This wasn't in the brochure.
2. It is, nevertheless, very hot.
3. The Aussies are ridiculously good at cricket.
4. The drivers are discourteous.
5. The estate agents are especially stupid (not applicable to UK ones - Shirley will deck me)
6. The latter advertise complete hovels as being "cute"
7. I have nowhere to live

Testing Times

We've seen five properties now and none of them have been suitable. Jo and Gordon go home next week, at which point we take possesion of their sofas and their tables/chairs, so hopefully we will have somewhere to put them.

Today we drove to Gladesville on the north shore, which unfortunately didn't require a trip over the harbour bridge. Bridges are one of my obsessions. I've been considering my top five all day and they are as follows:

1. Tower Bridge
2. Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
3. Sydney Harbour Bridge
4. Chelsea Bridge
5. The Brooklyn Bridge, New York

I've now been over all of them. Yes, I realise this is a bit autistic. I also have a short-wave radio especially to listen to air traffic control. Draw your own conclusions.

The trip to Gladesville was so that Darren could register with New South Wales medical board. He had to take just about every important document you can imagine (including his A level certificates), and there was a heart-stopping moment some three hours later when we thought he had lost his passport in transit (and with it, our ability to cash the travellers cheques, get paid and rent a house). There was quite a lot of sweating on his part and sulking on mine, but it eventually turned up after we turned the car upside down.

We've also been to Ikea today (to buy a highchair), which was quite surreal as the layout is pretty much the same as the one at home, but it's attached to a shopping mall. And we've opened an aussie bank account, so we are official now.

This evening we walked along the beach at Coogee (see photograph), which was much prettier than I remember. It was way past Ella's bedtime but she loved it, and shared some fish and chips with us while we took in the view. This is the first time we've actually felt we have started to get anything back for the enormous time and financial investment we've made in coming to Australia. The past few months have been really difficult and since we arrived here, we've had no time to stop and enjoy our new surroundings.

Sydney is beautiful. I wish everyone had chance to see it once in their lives.

Bad Hair Day

Today we took our first trip to the beach. Ella loved it and cried loudly when removed from the water, though the sea was freezing, which was a surprise as the air temperature was 34 degrees. The heat is a bit of a shock to the system and we all feel sick, including Ella, who is a bit off her food and keeps retching. We are also suffering from bad hair. I've posted a picure of Ella's, but mine is still hard for me to talk about so I'm keeping it under my hat.

I think Ella may have developed scurvy as a result of eating rubbish food for the past week (the low point was a Starbucks blueberry muffin for breakfast at Hong Kong Airport), so last night we went out to Coles supermarket as I was determined to make her some proper food and home cooked cheese sauce.

Coles is nothing like Sainsburys, Asda or Tesco. It’s not even as good as Somerfield, but it appears to be Australia’s leading supermarket chain. They still wrap meat in paper and there is a lady on the car park who checks your receipt for free parking. I suppose one day she’ll wake up as an automated barrier, but for now she’s in a job.

It would have been a surreal experience at the best of times, but the heat and jetlag combined to make for quite unusual purchases, none of which can realistically be combined into a meal. We have also noted, to our cost, that the plastic bottles of milk aren’t sealed with the foil thing under the lid. Hence if you lie them in the fridge, they leak all over the place. I spent half an hour removing lamb chops from a tray of milk this evening as well as washing the bottom of the fridge.

The other thing we have noticed is the number of independent retailers still in business on the high street and elsewhere, which is such a different situation than we have in the UK. Today we went to the Westfield Shopping Centre at Bondi Junction to get out of the heat, (Sydney’s answer to the Trafford Centre - the food court in the 5th floor has a great view of the harbour bridge). The place is full of designer shops (Max Mara etc) and yet has an independent butcher and fishmonger. I wonder what the situation will be in 10 years time, or does Australia’s isolation help it sustain small businesses like this?

Househunting

We’ve been in Australia for two days now and we’re busy ploughing through a list of essential jobs like hooking up to the internet (achieved already!), getting Sim cards for our phone, and checking that the water does go down the plughole in the opposite direction.

As a matter of interest, could someone run a bath and check that out for me? This is our third visit to Australia and the third time I’ve checked it without first finding out which way it goes down in the UK, which is a pointless exercise. For the record, it’s clockwise here.

Yesterday we met Jo and Gordon (Gordon is the Doc vacating the post at the hospital and reluctantly flying back home to the UK). They are living in a great house which has unfortunately been sold, so we can’t take over the tenancy. Had brekkie at their house and then Jo accompanied us on a very jetlagged tour of three rental properties that were “open for inspection”; two flats and a house. All of them were dirty and the house had a dead three-inch cockroach in the middle of the floor which didn’t seem to bother anyone but me (and certainly not Ella, who crunched her foot on it). Apparently that’s NFS (normal for Sydney) and not a worrying sign at all. I asked Jo whether she’s had much trouble with spiders, “No”, she replied, “but we did once wake up with one of those big cockroaches crawling across our faces, which wasn’t great”.

You’re not kidding.

We have applied for the house because you have to show willing, but there’s no way I’m renting a house with floorboards given this new information, and certainly not one with an outside laundry.

Our final job yesterday was to buy Ella some new toys at Toys R Us (in the "Supa Centa" at Moore Park...why must the Aussie do this with the language?). It was a tiny version of the one at home but we managed to get her some new things. She thinks it's Christmas all over again and has been busy bathing her dolly on the balcony (and tipping all the water out).

Journey Down Under

“Oh don’t worry about Ella, kids adapt better to jet leg than adults” – erm….no they don’t. At least, not my child. Having put Ella to bed at 10pm on our last night in Hong Kong, she slept for a total of two hours before shouting us to announce she had a “nice bo-bo” thank you very much.

We ignored her of course, but being a crafty so and so, she tried all of the other tactics she could think of, including shouting “I’ve done a poo” and “got stinky bottom”, before launching into tune (there’s not much in this world funnier than an 18 month old child singing “The Irish Rover”, or what parts of it she can remember).

Eventually we got some Phenergan into her and wheeled her cot into the sitting room, but after that I didn’t sleep a wink because I now have two lives to worry about (the one in the UK with the potentially loose roof tiles and the new one in Sydney with no roof at all).

It’s funny how worries look progressively worse as a sleepless night goes on. It started with the casual observation that we only had four nappies left in our suitcase, but after we had tried and failed to find a shop that sold them, I now lay awake picturing the following scenarios:

1. Ella is forced to wear swim nappies all the way to Sydney. As my friend Catie found out on a flight last summer, swim nappies are designed to catch the odd poo but not designed to hold any liquid.

2. Darren goes out at 6am to find nappies but is captured by three-legged Hong Kong Triads (I could never quite separate the word from “tripod”, hence I’ve always pictured them with three legs) and never returns (their motives are unimportant, they obviously hold a grudge as we are colonising British scumbags).

3. I am reliant upon their being another child with the same sized bottom on the flight to Sydney. I plead sisterhood with the child’s mother, who lends me two nappies but judges me as a bad mother and spends the entire flight casting her eye over my ability to be jolly entertaining and creative with stickers. As a paediatric SLT, I am obviously totally rubbish with kids unless their parents are watching, so I come off badly.

4. The Qantas cabin crew give me their last two nappies and tell me to ask at all of the other Qantas boarding gates. Although demeaning, this scenario probably leads to a large stash of nappies which will last us a week.


Poor Darren. He was out on the streets at 6.05pm charged with finding (a) Starbucks skinny latte and (b) nappies. The triads didn’t get him, but he only returned with the Starbucks.

Part Four

My parents are dorks. We went over the road to watch the light show on the harbour skyscrapers this evening, only it was raining and they BOTH wore their Berghaus coats. Honestly - good thing I won't see any other kids I know - and my mum was wearing her oh-so-practical Merrell sandals to add to my embarassment (she reckons they are handy for longhaul flights).

The lights were so-so. I was lying under my pushchair trying to work the wheels out so missed most of it. Afterwards we went back to the hotel restaurant for the evening buffet. Up rolls my mum with a plate of beef and rice and veggies. Ha! Not a chance - I just packed away a bread roll, broke wind (loudly, one cheek of my bottom raised) and shouted "more cake". I got my own way because they are bushwhacked, so I raised the game by shouting "Balamory on" and was settled on the sofa with PC Plum quick as a flash.

I love my life.

Today HK, tomorrow Sydney

We leave Hong Kong in the morning and won't have an internet connection at home until we get our permanent house. We'll be checking in at internet cafes and I'll be adding to the blog, but I won't be able to post pictures for a few weeks.

We've worked out that the photos from the new digital camera take up loads of memory, hence the problems downloading. It must depend on whether the server/website is particularly busy, as it eventually managed to download last night.

Unfortunately, our handheld Canon digital is in a bag under the stairs.....

Part Three

The thing about this new pushchair is that it opens up a whole new world of sleep avoidance. I can hold the tray to keep myself upright when they want me to have a nap.

I have to give in eventually, but there's no way I'm lying back

Part Two

Out in the new pushchair again. I've decided it's ok because it has a tray on the top that I can wipe down and polish (like mother like daughter).

Crossed the harbour to Hong Kong Island on the Star Ferry. Apparently it's one of the great sea crossings of the world but I wasn't really impressed, then we got the tram up to Victoria Peak. The olds first came here 11 years ago and were whining like a pair of poms about the commercialisation (I know loads of big words). The tramway is pretty steep and vertigo-inducing, which is bad for my mum because she has dodgy inner ears.

Hung around with the tourists at the top. I was feeling quite grumpy and tired on account of the rude awakening. Despite my best efforts, they took me into a chinese restaurant where I was forced to behave while we had dim sum and my mum had yet more pork char-sui. This stuff ain't like what we get at the Choy Hing back home.

My Day in Hong Kong by Ella (Part One)

Rudely awoken by the olds at 2am, who were insisting it was 10am. They've lost it.

Chinese coco-pops for brekkie, which was a bonus on two counts; firstly, my mum NEVER lets me eat sugary cereal, and secondly, there's no high chair, so I got to eat them whilst running around the table. Result.

And then I looked out of the window and remembered we're in this place. EVERYONE looks chinese. Dunno what's going on.

The view from Hong Kong looks like this

Here's Ella enjoying our chinese take away plus some shots from our evening (morning) walk around Kowloon with the view across to Hong Kong island. You can click on the images to make them bigger. Ella actually fell asleep eating that bread bun - her hands were still making the movement towards her mouth after she dropped off. And that's my very best "I'm jet lagged and I'm wearing no make-up" look.

As a postscript to the previous post, it's now 1.05am and after an abandoned attempt at bedtime one hour ago, Darren has given up and gone to bed while Ella is watching "Balamory" for the zillionth time. I want my bed.

Hong Kong Calling!

We're over halfway to Sydney. The flight to Hong Kong was a breeze in comparison with the shuttle from Manchester to Heathrow, where Ella did her best impression of an absolute monster, climbing all over me, pulling at my necklace and crying while forced into being strapped to me most of the way.

At Heathrow, our pushchair was delivered to the baggage carousel, which meant that one of us had to leave the terminal to collect it, so I left Darren with a very grumpy Ella, three suitcases, two bags and a car seat while I got the buggy and went back through the security check. Unfortunately this left me in the international terminal while he was back in domestic. It was fortunate I'd made a note of exactly which gate I'd left him at as BA had to put a call out for him and get him some assistance to meet me - huge stress with little time to spare.

The overnight flight was fine. Ella fell asleep after 20 mins (oh yeah, and a drug-laced cup of milk thanks to Daddy) and slept from 9pm until 5am London time. The portable DVD helped for a further hour. Darren and I had a few gins and I had a couple of sleeping tablets and off I went.

Landed in Hong Kong to exactly the same weather we had left in Manchester (though warmer), drizzly and misty. This evening we tried to fox Ella by bathing her and putting her into her sleeping bag. She fell asleep in the buggy but only for a couple of hours. It's midnight now and she's sitting with Darren, who's reading "The Gruffalo" to her.

Still, the view is great and we've all had a fab chinese take away in our hotel. I've taken loads of photos but I'm having trouble uploading so will keep trying.

We leave tomorrow

Not enjoying this part actually. I want to be in Sydney, I just don't want to do all the leaving bit.

Apart from that, we are wearing very random clothes and eating very random food from the freezer. I like to be in control and this feels like I've lost it.

Hope to write from Hong Kong to update on exactly how the journey was.

Why are blokes so crap at packing?

So we heaved our suitcases downstairs last night and put them on the scales. Ella and I weighed in at 24 kg (one kg over the allowance) but the other half's suitcase weighed 34kg.

At the risk of living up to my reputation of being somewhat schoolmistressy, I was forced the confiscate the follwing items from his luggage:

3 pairs of theatre blues
1 large tube of Ultrabrite toothpaste (in case you can't buy it in Sydney)
1 Bar of "Dove" soap (ditto)
1 pair of heavy shoes that rub his toes and are therefore seldom worn
1 "I've climbed Sydney Harbour Bridge" teeshirt - no comment
3 winter shirts
1 Gap hooded top that he'd aready decided was too heavy to pack

He looked very sheepish. He still does, actually.

Odd Ones Out

If Australia is so fantastic, how come all but two of these are over here?

Lovely, Lovely Friends

Awww

Just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who has wished us luck on our travels and a particular thank you to My girly friends Lou and Nat for the sponsorship of a family of Macaw parrots in Sydney's Taronga zoo. (This pair have history - they sponsored me a one-legged one-eyed dog when I left my job in Wigan, which promptly dropped dead. If I was one of the parrots, I'd be worried).

Also a huge thanks to Annette, Kath, Lorraine, Nicky and Sally for the lovely book of dodgy photos of our friendship through the years, particularly the picture of the night we met Matthew Corbett in Piacenze in Lymm, got drunk and begged for his photo on the grounds that "we really, really loved Sooty" and the photos of the night we dressed in our school uniforms, ate sherbet fountains and went off to Manchester Academy in an unroadworthy minibus with a geographically challenged driver.

One of the reasons we think we could never emigrate for good is because we have such gorgeous friends. Love you all to bits and can't wait to see you all next year for a "welcome home" bash. Please post your comments to keep me sane over the next month.

Gatecrashers

So we have this party and this woman walks right in the back door and sticks her tongue into our chocolate fountain. The cheek of it!

Does anyone recognise her? She does look a bit like that character from the office who fancied Tim. Answers on a postcard...

Antipodean Popularity Contest

But who would win?

(a) Kangaroo
(b) Quokka
(c) Koala
(d) Bilby
(e) The Spinifex Hopping Mouse


I'm still voting for the mouse

One last stab at the Cadbury's

I how I love Cadbury chocolate. You can keep your Green and Blacks, Lindor and all of that Swiss stuff. It's got to be Cadbury's. We have spent some considerable time wondering how to smuggle the stuff into Australia; the Cadbury's over there has some additive to stop it melting, which works well, but also stops it tasting like Cadbury's. And it gives it the consistency of Hersheys.

Might as well stick my face into it while I can.

This One's for Auntie Nou

So this is the view from the ANA Harbour Grand's Horizons Bar. That looks suspiciously like an alcoholic beverage.

Never mind the spiders, look at the view!