A Trip Of A Lifetime

Hi everyone!

I know, I know, it’s been a while since I’ve updated this – again! So I’ve got a month or so to bring you all up to date on…

December was a bit of a non-event really, as I was sick with flu for most of it! The flu had been going round where I’d been working (reception at a security company) and I came down with it over the first weekend of the month. I called in sick on the Monday the agency rang later on that day to say the company had found someone to take on the reception role on a permanent basis, she was starting the next day so they didn’t need me anymore! To be honest I was quite relieved, for one I was too ill to work that week anyway, but as well as that I was SO bored there, reception can be sooo tedious! The agency managed to find me a great assignment for the next couple of weeks in the lead up to Christmas - part time hours and great pay, it would have been great… had I not had to take another couple of days off sick during the first week and understandably lost out on the rest of the assignment. I was away then most of the last week of December (more on that shortly) and thankfully found work pretty quickly after I got back – I started last Wednesday and found out yesterday that they want me to stay ‘til the end of the month, which fits perfectly into my plans. I’m just doing admin and I’ve had very little to do so far really, but I’m not going to complain tooo much because I have access to the internet and they’re paying me premium rate :-)

So, that’s what’s been happening work-wise! I had a really nice Christmas, I went up to family (Roberta, a cousin of Mum’s) living near Buderim (in Queensland, north of Brisbane). I hadn’t met them before, though Robert (Mum’s cousin living in Sydney) went up as well along with Leanne, a second cousin of mine who arrived over here just before I did. Robert drove up from Sydney over a couple of days but as I’d been expecting to work that week, I had booked a bus ticket to go up to Brisbane overnight, to arrive on Christmas Eve. I arrived in Brisbane after 17 hours on the bus! It wasn’t quite as bad as I was expecting I have to say, but I really wouldn’t want to have to do it very often!! We did have three 40min stops along the way for breaks, but I have to say that at 3.30am, I’d have preferred to keep driving than to stop for a burger!! Our last stop was at the Big Prawn – it’s a standard rest stop except that there is a huge prawn on the roof… that really amused me, the first of Australia’s ‘big things’ I’ve seen :-)

Once I arrived in Brisbane, I then had another 2 hour bus trip to get from Brisbane to Buderim… I was a bit of a wreck when I finally arrived at Roberta’s :-) It was a really nice, relaxed Christmas, but very bizarre with the temperature at 37°C on Christmas Day!! Dinner was great and we stretched it out for most of the afternoon, started off with fantastic fresh prawns as is tradition here (people will queue for hours in the morning to get them!) and had dinner a bit later, the usual turkey & ham (except the turkey was cooked in the kettle barbeque) but with salads rather than sprouts :-) On St Stephen’s Day evening, I went to have another Christmas dinner with another family from back home – they are friends of my parents and Harriet was the teacher at my national school before they emigrated out here 17 years ago. We didn’t do a lot in our time in Queensland really, went for a couple of drives and to the beach once but we mostly just took it easy – it was too hot to want to do much anyway! Robert drove back to Sydney on the Wednesday & Thursday with myself and Leanne, we stopped over in Coffs Harbour overnight. It was still a good 7 hours driving each day, but somehow it didn’t seem like that much! Oh and we passed the Big Banana on the way too – admittedly not as impressive as the prawn :-)

We also stopped briefly in Surfers Paradise...

We arrived back in Sydney to find that it was hot and getting hotter… On New Year’s Day it was 44°C in the city and got up to 45°C near the airport, which made it Sydney’s hottest New Year’s Day on record, and the hottest day on record since 1939!! It was really unbearable I have to say, especially as we don’t have air conditioning in the house… thankfully it cooled down after that and I enjoyed a few blissful days of cloudy, rainy weather – I know that sounds weird but I was getting bored of it being sunny every day (the same way it’s boring when it’s raining every day!) and it had been too hot for my liking as well. It’s very humid here at the moment, which isn’t nice, but the temperature isn't high enough for it to be unbearable so I won’t complain too much!

My New Year celebrations were very uneventful I must admit – I did go down to the harbour in the evening of New Year’s Eve with the intention of watching the fireworks display at midnight, but it didn’t quite work out like that! I saw the 9pm fireworks from beside the bridge, but by then I had had enough of the crowds and the heat and was in a thoroughly foul mood, so I went home, put my feet up and happily watched it on tv instead!! I live less than 4km from the city, and heard it all very clearly – it was like my teeny telly had surround sound :-)

Let me see, what else… I met up with a lad from back home (Nigel) just before New Year, he’s in New Zealand at the moment but was over in Sydney for the holidays. He’s my brother’s friend’s brother- I’d only met him once before, ages ago, so I was a bit surprised to get a phone call from him as I didn’t even know he was over here :-) A few days after that, I got a text completely out of the blue from Emma, an old friend from school who I’d lost touch with after we left… and she’s over here as well! She’s travelling up the coast at the moment but one of the girls she’s with knows Nigel, he had mentioned to her that he’d met up with me in Sydney (I think she went to school with us too but not in my year, I don’t remember her) and she mentioned it to Emma! There really is an Irish grapevine over here :-) Anyway Emma’s planning to be back in Sydney this weekend and we’re hoping to meet up, so I’m really looking forward to catching up with her again.

As to my plans, well I have finally got my taxback and that along with a very unexpected cheque from Barclays has meant I am not in such dire financial straits anymore, which is a huge relief! So I’m going ahead with my original plan of leaving Sydney at the end of this month (under 3 weeks and counting!). I booked my flight to Melbourne, and my flight from Adelaide to Perth the other day, so now I just have to organise the bit in between :-) My plan is to spend 2-3 days in Melbourne, then hire a car and drive to Adelaide via the Great Ocean Road over 3-4 days. Then a couple of days in Adelaide, and a trip out to Kangaroo Island for couple of days before I fly on to Perth, arriving 10th February. I’m really looking forward to seeing a bit more of the country and to getting out of Sydney, I’ve been here long enough now I think! I haven’t made any plans after that, I’ll decide what to do when I get to Perth.

I suppose the biggest thing that’s happened since the last time I updated this is the dawning realisation that I want to go back to Ireland. It came as a bit of a shock at first I must admit, I mean I came over here thinking I would probably love it and not want to leave!! But so far at least I’m fairly indifferent to Australia… I like it well enough, but I don’t love it, and I haven’t been anywhere so far that makes me want to stay. Of course things may change when I get to other places, but this is how it stands at the moment. It feels right to go home when I’ve had enough here - at the moment I don’t see me being here for the full year, but we’ll see. I’m really looking forward to going home, but I do want to see at least a bit more of this country first. I’m just thoroughly fed up of temping, of contract jobs, and of moving about so much… I worked out that in the nearly 9 years since I left school, I’ve lived in 4 different countries, including 7 different towns/cities and 12 different houses/flats, and in the nearly 6 years since I left uni, I’ve done 9 different jobs in 4 different companies – not including the countless temp jobs!! Time for something a bit more secure methinks… and yes I’m surprised I’m saying it too :-)

Well I think that’s about all my news for now – I will try to update this again before I leave Sydney! Hope all is going well for you all – keep the emails and texts coming! :-)

‘Til next time
Gail xx