Christmas Down Under

Question: What's wrong with this mental image?

Father Christmas is sitting in a shopping centre, surrounded by lights, tinsel, trees, presents and a queue of adults and their children. A little boy climbs up onto Santa's lap and .... Yes that part's clearly wrong. But also - the boy is wearing a t-shirt, shorts and sandals. And so is his Dad. And so is everyone else in the shopping centre. Apart from the ones wearing dresses or skirts that is. Welcome to Christmas in the middle of summer.

So after almost a week of lounging around, eating too much and cultivating the sort of rotund figure that only Santa would be proud of, it's time to tell you all about our upside down Christmas, a.k.a. Christmas in Australia.

It has to be said that crimbo caught me unawares this year. It's been a year now since I was last corrupting the minds of innocent young kiddiewinks and, without the weeks and weeks of tortuous school xmas play rehearsals in front of a head teacher looking like they've chewed a wasp, I'd sort of forgotten about the whole thing. In spite of the Christmas trees and fake snow all over the place, the weather was all wrong and it took a while to realise that I would have to take some drastic action over prezzies I had to send to the UK. Thank God for Amazon and the fact that my family likes books!

Our day started with prezzie opening and suitable admiration for my family's ingenuity in (a) finding flat yet thoughtful presents to send and (b) planning ahead enough to buy and send them in time for crimbo. Diver Dave had made me a beautiful emerald and white gold ring (see www.davidfrithjewellery.com if you'd like one too!) which I showed my Dad on Skype, then had to explain that it really was only a Christmas present! So all our presents were duly appreciated and tried on before 8 am, including the surprisingly rude looking M&S pants my Mother had sent. Then we had to throw ourselves into action before the rest of Christmas arrived. Starting with the turkey fight.

We'd decided to host a waifs and strays xmas for other poms not with their families, plus a few bemused aussies. So with poms in mind, we had a traditionally Blighty xmas; roast turkey, sprouts (yuk), the works. Thankfully, the weather was pretty miserable so not only did it stop us overheating with the turkey, but it stopped us feeling homesick too! We solved the usual pom problem of not having enough room in the oven by cooking the turkey and roast spuds on the barbie with the lid down. Our aussie friends had hopefully brought some salad and prawns (not for the barbie!) as this is what most aussies eat on xmas day in the height of summer. It hadn't escaped my notice that the fish counter had doubled in size recently at Woolies but I wasn't sure how to combine it with roast turkey and stuffing. So I ignored it. And it looked like the other poms didn't know what to do with it either.

By early evening it looked like one or two guests had had rather a lot to drink, judging by the amount of utter toss they were talking. I had stopped running about with the hoover/dirty dishes/clean dishes and wanted to watch some proper xmas telly. Unfortunately, I was in Australia. After attempting to watch some Courtney Cox dross for half an hour or so, my sofa mate Sal and I gave up and paid Austar to show us Hot Fuzz on their Box Office channel. So there.

Next day, our remaining guests and we made up for all the crap telly that had been on by spending a full day in front of episode after episode of Only Fools and Horses on so called UKTV, followed by almost as many episodes of Extras.

So really the only difference in Christmasses between Oz and Blighty was cooking the turkey and roasties in the barbie, the motley assortment of guests and the fact that we were all sitting at the table outside. And, according to Diver Dave, Father Christmas is still the same down under except he's got a 4x4 and a hydration pack. Christmas telly was still crap - just a more cornea shattering form of crap than the norm in Blighty.

Whales 1 Japan 0 (updated Jan 08)

It seems the new Aussie government really is taking its environmental responsibilities a lot more seriously than the last. Good on ya Mr Rudd!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3082020.ece


(7.1.08) Um... hello? Mr Rudd? Where'd the boat go that you promised then eh?

New spider policy

Diver Dave and I agree on most things, at the risk of sounding smug in a vomit inducing way. And this week we have agreed on a new policy for dealing with the resident spiders. This was precipitated by our agreed horror on the lingering demise of a large spider that wouldn't go without a fight and a run around the house. The sight of Dave chasing it, wielding a large can of bug spray, successfully hitting it square between many many eyes with not-fast-enough acting poison alternated between the hilarious and the horrendous. It finally expired in my new tupperware bowl. Ick.

We agreed that it's not the spider's fault that it's so big and ugly. It's not their fault that they want a nice dry place to shelter in when it's raining. So our agreed coping mechanism when confronted by the urge to scream hysterically over a fast and hairy intruder, is to apportion a personality to it. You know - bored, sleepy , cross, cold... er... pregnant, etc, although we don't actually go as far as naming them. This might result in some degree of loss if the recipient should be overcome by bug bomb fumes and keel over. But Dave recalled, with a worrying amount of nostalgia, how back in the UK, in his freezing cold workshop, a large spider would pop out to share the heat from the lamp on his workbench, then scuttle away again once the light was switched off. It appears Diver Dave was glad of the company.

Well all this agreement is all well and good, but what about that enormous creature that emerged from behind the bookcase with a vengeance to make a star appearance on the bedroom wall at 2 o'clock this morning? It was only revealed when one of us switched on the light to go to the loo. "Do you want me to get rid of it?" Dave asked sleepily. "No, no, don't worry," I replied, bravely when "YES - PLEEEEEEEEASE!" was what was really going on in my head (why did he not sense the silent screaming?). A few minutes later he switched the light back on, "Just checking it was still there," he reassured me. Aaaarrrgghhh!!!!

Needless to say, I did not sleep very well and that particular uninvited guest's personality so far is "Mom" - a reflection of all the spiderlets we think it is responsible for on our bedroom ceiling. I think we both agree that that's pretty yuk.

We have since also agreed that it is permissable to freak out when, next day, the afore mentioned visitor leaps out at you from a towel that was hanging on the back of the bedroom door as you go for a shower. This naughty spider is now sitting in a flower pot at the bottom of the garden, looking somewhat offended.

Getting up & going to bed in Australia

Last night Diver Dave was already in bed asleep by the time I'd finished watching..er... John Travolta - Inside the Actors' Studio. Well? Could have been worse; could have been Jerry Springer.

Well anyway, as I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, I became aware of a lot of hoofing about going on outside the door. Judging correctly that not even the resident spiders could be making THAT much noise, I realised it was some new kind of Diver Dave getting-up-and-going-to-bed-again ceremony. When asked (through the bathroom door) what on earth he was up to, Diver Dave replied, "I'm moving out", followed quickly by "..and I'm taking you with me."

On venturing out of the bathroom, I discovered that he'd moved all our bedding into the spare room. Why? Because one of our resident spiders had left behind a million billion babies on the bedroom ceiling. We think it was probably the one that Dave chased behind the bookcase the other evening, clearly allowing it to have the last laugh.

I was a bit reluctant to leave the lovely room I'd spent days decorating but had no choice once I knew Dave was going to get serious with the bug spray. Bedroom safely evacuated, Dave showed no mercy.

Next morning, I was treated to the sight of Diver Dave leaping around our new-ish garden furniture with the outdoor version of the bug spray; the really mean one that sees off the red backs (although I STILL haven't seen any). Sarong flapping wildly in the breeze, Dave nearly succeeded in eradicating himself before breakfast.

There are still a few spider-icles in the bedroom so Dave says we have to use the Bug Bomb next. Crikey.

When bug bombs go wrong: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20031218-9999_7m18bugs.html

Buying a used car (part 2): Ebay redeemed

Hooray for ebay! I've been tootling around in my new car now for a few days. And so far, so good.

Courtesy of Joel of auto_traders2006, I received it a week after I paid for it. I paid on the Thursday, it was sent to the Sydney depot on Monday and arrived in Brisbane the following Thursday. The service was second to none and Joel kept me informed all the way. The car is all good, looks nice, drives well and with only a couple of little quirks in keeping with a ten year old car. All the bits are in the right places and, although it lacks a few horses going up hills, it's fine for pottering about. Trying very hard not to compare it to my Lupo Gti which often makes a surprising 'grrrr' noise for such a small car and gets me to my destination yesterday.

While I hesitate to recommend that people buy a car on ebay without having looked at it, here's a checklist to ease those worries:

a) Do your research. Spend time looking at how much similar models are selling for and in which state. Prices will vary in different states.

b) Read the seller's feedback. Don't be put off, but be cautious of sellers with little feedback. If they are a business that uses ebay, they will want to maintain their reputation.

c) Check the car's history online using the VIN.

d) Ask lots of questions, eg. about the tyres, paintwork, etc.

e) Use a bid robot to see off the competition!

f) Remember to factor in any transport costs if you're buying interstate.

On a different ebay note, I recently discovered that the cow who wouldn't sell me her table because I won it too cheaply is trading again under a different name. lady*beetle84 is now cunningly disguised as beetle*84. Elementary Watson. Duh.

However, my ebay faith was renewed yesterday when, to help us host Christmas day for eight people, I picked up garden furniture from the lovely maxihull06 ebayer in Caloundra. He couldn't have been more helpful. So there.

Screw beetle lady. Ebay rocks!

Update (7.1.08): Diver Dave has named this car after Jim Morrison - because all the doors are f****d.

Postal deliveries: Bag of sh*te

Sorry but, what's with all the not delivering the sodding post? I waited in all day yesterday for a delivery, only to find a 'You've got mail' card in my post box telling me to collect my goodies from town.

This isn't the first time this has happened either. It kept happening when we were in the flat in Noosaville. When Diver Dave phoned up to complain, the following day I got an earful from an angry post lady who'd obviously been given a dressing down from her superiors. Unfortunately for her, this harrassment-a-la-rude-and-ugly-fishwife incident, which ended with me shouting back and slamming the door in her face, only gave us cause to complain even more and we never saw her again. Even more unfortunately, we were told that Australia Post has a policy of not venturing very far from the delivery van/bike and that they are supposed to beep the horn... before driving off at great speed, presumably laughing their heads off. So ugly fishwife post lady shouldn't really have been given a b******ing at all.

I can sort of understand the reluctance to climb stairs to a first floor apartment to make a delivery, although why they can't extend a finger to ring the doorbell is beyond me. And I can understand they don't want to have to go for miles across the average Aussie country acreage from the front gate to the front door. But surely they can walk the 50 odd steps it takes to transport themselves (and our post) from our post box to the front door and back?

Lazy arses.

Water restrictions: Where's all the warda?

God politicians are crap. And it's a universal disease.

So after years of encouraging every Tom, Dick and Johnny Foreigner to move to Queensland, particularly Brisbane, because of the skills shortage, years of banning rainwater tanks in the city because they look unsightly, years of not receiving enough rain in the dam they accidentally made in the wrong place for Brisbane, and years of passing the potential problem onto the next government, lo and behold! Brisbane's running out of warda - duh!

Yes folks, it is a catalogue of blunders and not-giving-a-monkeys by a succession of rubbish state governments that has led Brisbane and the Gold Coast to start panicking (finally) over their depleting water levels. Here are some facts I have gathered from tinternet: The Wivenhoe dam is Brisbane's major source of water. Completed in 1985, it has a water capacity of two and a half times that of Sydney Harbour (wikipedia!). The rain clouds have since stopped bothering to cross the mountain ranges inland to drop their load there (Greg Roberts, The Australian, 25.10.2006) and consequently this dam level is currently at 15.85% of its capacity (SEQ Water 12.12.2007).

Brisbane and the Gold Coast are now on level 6 (out of 8) water restrictions which means you are only allowed to water some of the garden with a watering can between certain times and you are only allowed to wash parts of your car with a bucket. It does not specify how many times you can refill your watering can/bucket, you can still top up that all important swimming pool and if you're an OAP you can still use a hose anyway. Residents are being encouraged to have 4 minute showers and to only use 140 litres per person per day (http://www.target140.com.au/). In a reversal of previous policy, Brisbane City Council is now encouraging its residents to buy rainwater tanks with a government rebate as long as all the household services use tank rather than mains water. Household using more than 800 litres per day will be fined up to $1050. Presumably if you use 799 litres per day you don't incur any penalty? Although households are connected to water meters, they do not pay for the amount they use, they only pay a flat water rate. Australians are surprised by the idea that water restrictions are in place in the UK.

Nobody yet knows what level 7 and 8 restrictions will involve.

Short of drinking your own urine, my advice is to stay/live somewhere that doesn't have all this messing about with water: Northern Territory, Tasmania, parts of New South Wales and the Sunshine Coast for example. At the moment on the Sunny Coast it seems to be raining at least once a day, usually at night though which is more convenient. As a result our rainwater tank is overflowing. Our property's not on mains water - cuts rates by about half. If we're desperate we can order more water to be delivered (probably from someone else's mains water). Apparently Noosa is on level 2 restrictions (you can still water your garden and wash your car) but, from what I can gather from Noosa residents, it's a grudging concession to some idiot politician's declaration that Noosa residents are unAustralian in their attitude to saving water while the rest of the country is struggling. Noosa's currently got more water than you can shake a stick at - if you so wanted - so most Noosa residents would probably happily tell that man to bog off, or the equivalent in Australianese.

Live somewhere wet. Get a tank. Simple as (as they say in oz).

Places to visit: A Town Called Eumundi

First impressions of Eumundi, especially on a stinking hot day, are that it's maybe just another one horse town along the railway line, on the way to somewhere more interesting in Noosa. But STOP! Take a closer look. Or alternatively, take advantage of the air conditioning inside some of the shops and cafés. It's a little gem.

We have recently moved to the outskirts of Eumundi and, by UK standards, it's more like a village. There's one main street where all the shops and cafés are and residential areas are mainly behind this street on either side. It is most famous for its markets which are held in the town centre every Wednesday and Saturday. You can buy all sorts from here, particularly clothes and jewellery and it's quite good for souvenirs to take back home to Blighty.

These markets have enabled Eumundi to develop a bohemian, arty crafty image up and down the main street. You can choose from exclusively designed art from the glassware shops or gear from The Hemp Shop (man)! And the most exciting shop to open recently is Berkelouw's bookshop which sells a vast array of over 100,000 second hand, rare and out of print books, all classified and displayed accordingly, in addition to brand new ones. It's a family owned small chain of 7 stores in Australia and one in Los Angeles. The Eumundi one has a great café attached to it - guaranteed to help you lose track of time. We recently had breakfast in there and it was yummy. And of course we had to buy a book!

The choice of where to eat is great for such a small village. In our first week here, up to our eyes in cardboard boxes and not wanting to cook or wash up, we grabbed a take away from a Thai place. It was good and we could just as easily have stayed there to eat. In fact it would have saved me from even more washing up.

Last night we went out for dinner properly in our village for the first time. We had a BEAUTIFUL meal at the Balinese looking Modern Primitive, although the food wasn't balinese and, during the day they serve tapas. It was all organic and cooked to order, and we realised after a while that the reason they weren't very busy was because they were staggering the bookings so that you got really personal service. It was great to eat in a restaurant where the staff were keen to suggest what would go well with your meal, and the flavours were awesome!

How cool is that for a village? And that's the first place we've tried. We've got all the rest of the main street to do yet!

I'll be back with any further updates on the quest to eat my way round Australia!

(19.2.08) Non food update: Eumundi now has a lovely, brand new, open air, heated swimming pool. It's not very big (25m) but I racked up half a kilometre easily enough and it's fine for keeping up your fitness. The best thing about it is that (so far) it's not very busy, during the week at least, and the kids pool is a good distance away from the grown up lane swimming one. It's basic but clean and peaceful, and we really like it so there.

Flatulent Kangaroos Could Save Planet

Click here for breaking news. Tee hee.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,315586,00.html

Australia's answer to signing the Kyoto agreement.

Buying a used car: Part 1

Well, without wanting to be disloyal to my little VW Lupo GTi in the UK (which I totally love and goes like stink) , I have had to buy a used car in oz. I've spent weeks on all the different websites trying to choose and it seems to me that there is a big price variation between the different states. On the whole I found the prices to be more than in the UK, esp when you compare them to the UK price guides, dollar for pound. Queensland (where I live ) prices seemed to be the most expensive but then, because the roads don't get salted, the cars don't really suffer from rust.

I was looking to buy a Ford KA (which they stopped producing here in 2003..?) but prices for these were a bit inflated. So in the end I've bought this ten yr old VW Polo for $4000 from the Sydney area through ebay!!! It's about to be transported up to Brisbane this very moment. Is probably NOT a recommended way of buying a car, and I begrudge paying this amount for such an old vehicle, but believe me it was the best value I could find after all my research. I'll be back here to describe what it's like when I finally see it!!!

I'm sorry Lupo.....mummy'll be back for you very soon... :-(

God Awful Australian TV

Look out! Mega whinge alert!

Oh dear oh dear. It seems the aussies have accidentally decided to follow the American TV broadcasting model: Utter shite, interspersed with irritating advertising drivel every 5 minutes. In the UK we enjoy having a good old moan about the telly; how awful and dumbed down it is, particularly with the advent of 'reality' tv programmes that seem to be reproducing themselves interminably.

Well. Not only have the aussies adapted some well known reality tv formats to make their own, eg. Big Brother, Australian Idol, etc, but they also broadcast the complete toss that is American reality tv in order to pad out the programming schedule. And, just to add insult to injury, Neighbours and Home and Away, which are currently tucked away at the 6pm and the god-only-knows-where time slots respectively on British tv, are featured as the cream of aussie creativity in prime time viewing slots of around 7pm. God! I can't understand it. Total tripe from the nation that brought us such movie greats as Gallipoli, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, the Piano, Muriel's Wedding, Shine, Moulin Rouge, The Dish and Happy Feet! And such tv greats as ...er... Prisoner Cell Block H...?

Even sport doesn't escape the madness of crapness. Trying to watch the Rugby World Cup match where the poms trounced the aussies (tee hee!), proved irritating beyond belief with all the bloody adverts shown in the middle of the game. I could barely see Johnny's thighs!

The only saving grace in all this trash is that aussie terrestrial tv is free, so there's no unfair licence fee to pay for a channel you only watch for 'Stenders' and Doctor Who.

If you can't manage without your telly in Australia, then the solution is to pay for cable or satellite tv courtesy of Foxtel or Austar -both seemingly Sky affiliated, so the facilities will seem very familiar to Sky users. Having said that, the ridiculousness that was Foxtel's customer service when we attempted to terminate the contract was not very familiar. It dragged on for months after we had moved house and started an Austar contract.

Thanks to UKTV you can still get a daily dose of Trisha, Emmerdale, Corrie and Stenders, albeit up to a year out of date. It appears to be the place where British tv channels finally send their programmes to die. Last week's exciting announcement was that "I'm a 'Celebrity'" is going to be shown on UKTV.... Last year's. So I know who won. Although I still don't know who he is.

After UKTV we mainly watch SBS (when last year's Top Gear is on), the History Channel and the movie channels. We also watch Sky news as, through the magic of the red button, we can watch the UK version.

Which brings me onto my next whinge: Why can't we in Australia view UK programmes via broadband like you can in Blighty? Well actually I know why and it's purely political. After sending whinging emails to the BBC and Ch4, I've learnt that it's all down to licensing; they aren't licensed to broadcast in other countries - or some such rubbish. The BBC said it was something they hoped would be available in the near future. I hope so because they're missing out on a lot of revenue in the meantime from desperate ex pats all over the world who are pining for Richard & Judy, etc.

So the moral is if you're a confirmed couch potato with square eyes, maybe Australia is not the place for you.

Places to visit: Lady Elliot Island

We have just come back from spending 3 nights on Lady Elliot Island at the southern most tip of the Great Barrier Reef. The photo I took from the plane says it all, mostly.

We took a 30 min flight there from Hervey Bay which I understand can be extended to have a nosey at any passing whales during the right season. Flights also go from Brisbane, Maroochydore and Bundaberg. Unfortunately, when we went all the whales had finished their holidays and scooted off back down south until next year.

Lady Elliot is a great place to go if you enjoy:
(a) snorkelling or diving
(b) bird watching
(c) great food
(d) excellent friendly service
(e) getting away from it all.

Do not go to Lady Elliot if you don't like:
(a) Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds"
(b) the smell of bird poo
(c) being woken up by screeching birds
(d) being crapped on from a great height
(e) being cut off from the outside world until your flight rescues you from the bird colony you accidentally had a holiday on.

Seriously though, I did enjoy my holiday in an eco hut. An eco hut is a part timber, part canvas construction with power, two sets of bunk beds and a polished wooden floor! This was the cheapest accommodation on special offer at $99 per person per night, including a glass bottom boat trip with snorkelling, buffet breakfast and dinner each day, but excluding flights.

I got quite attached to the little bird who was sitting carefully on her egg and quietly chirping to herself at the back of the hut. I found myself worrying that she was in a rather exposed place and I kept popping round the back to see if she was alright and whether her egg had hatched yet. It didn't hatch while we were there and as we were about to leave on our last day, she left her egg briefly to pop round to the front of the hut and have a look in through the doorway at us for a change.

On a tiny island surrounded by coral, Diver Dave was in his element, as you can imagine. Booking on for a dive seemed to be a pretty casual affair since the boat appears to go out just off the island four or five times a day so you can pretty much go whenever you want. I was happy just to snorkel and although I had my own gear, use of the resort's snorkel gear is free. Snorkelling through the coral gardens was beautiful. The local green and loggerhead turtles may not have been ready to come ashore to lay their eggs yet but they were certainly out and about in the shallow waters. I also saw cuttlefish, clown fish, reef sharks and an eagle ray. Diver Dave came back from his diving with photos of lion fish and eagle rays. Diver Dave's Dad, a.k.a. Not Diver Jim, was content with pottering about on the beautiful beaches and taking advantage of free tours around the island.

So all in all, a really enjoyable, relaxing and interesting trip that I can recommend. Just remember to bring a large hat!

Shopping in Australia: Supermarkets

It seems to me that about 50% of the ebayers I meet to collect things I have bought from them are poms like me. One lady I met who lived on the Gold Coast was selling everything from the house in order to go back to Blighty for family reasons. We asked each other what we missed about the Motherland and, as I was still in the heady stages of my emigration 'euphoria', I didn't say a lot, apart from missing friends and family obviously. She countered with a long list of things she was clearly looking forward to seeing/having again, one of which was Tesco!

I too was a regular Tesco-ite (?), mainly because it was on the way home from work and cheaper than Sainsbury's. But it was Sainsbury's I always went to for posh food for occasions or nice treat food. In all honesty, I don't feel I've missed out by not being able to frequent either any more. The supermarkets here are just about as good and very similar and familiar to shop in.

The choice of supermarkets in SE Queensland seems to boil down to a three horse race with Woolworths in the lead, Coles in 2nd place and IGA trailing way behind in 3rd. Yes, that's right, Woolies is where you buy your groceries in oz, not your cheap school uniforms or pick and mix as you do in the UK. Look out for Big W for that sort of thing (that's Woolies owned anyway).

I haven't found a supermarket here that's as diverse as a large Tesco can be, with clothes and furniture, etc, but most do sell some basic electrical stuff, like kettles and hairdryers, at reasonable prices in a corner of the store, plus stationery, kitchenware and DVDs, etc. Prices aren't too bad, except for milk and bread which are definitely more expensive than in the UK. Since the onset of globalisation, there are also quite a lot of familiar brands available too, eg. Heinz beans and Tetleys tea. However, only Coles could provide my favourite Colemans mustard and life saving McVities plain chocolate digestives.

The great thing about supermarket shopping in oz is that they automatically pack your bags for you as they scan the things in. This saves you from (a) the infuriating process of having your purchases thrown at you down the conveyor belt faster than you can pack them, leaving the next shopper tutting and waiting impatiently for you to finish packing and get out of the way after you've paid. Or (b) the humiliation of asking for help with your packing which somehow makes you feel inferior in front of the other shoppers in the queue who are all pretending they're not watching what you've bought. The shopping is usually packed very well too, with cold or frozen goods packed together and a consideration for individual items that might get spoilt in a bag of heavy things.

The downside is that aisles are really really long and I can't always see down the end of the aisle to the last sign to know whether to bother going down it. Inevitably, I give up and go half way down before realising I don't want to be there but there's still another half mile to go before I can get out. The other thing to remember is that they don't sell alcohol, although there's usually a bottle shop next door or nearby. So you will need to plan this into your shopping trip.

But all things considered, this is a small price to pay in a shopping world of friendly service, fresh (within its sell by date) food and produce that isn't battered beyond recognition from being hurled down a conveyor belt by a sullen, underpaid cashier who doesn't give a monkeys. Eh, Tesco?

Garden creatures in Australia - don't panic!

Well living in the Noosa 'hinterland', near Eumundi, for the last 2 weeks has been interesting. Being in such close proximity to snakes and lizards and stuff has had to make me adjust somewhat!

Mini lizards are cute and interesting to watch until they suddenly disappear into the waiting mouth of a snake you didn't know was lying under the back step. Fortunately, it was 'only' a green tree snake and, although we eyeballed each other suspiciously, it wasn't very interested and slithered back under the step. And at this present moment I can see what I have convinced myself to be a carpet python right outside my window. I would like it to be a carpet python because they aren't dangerous and only bite people when they have been seriously pissed off. They also, apparently, eat the young of other, more poisonous snakes and ensure your mice and rat population are in the past tense. It has fastened itself to the chain which anchors our bird feeder and pointed itself at the bird seed tray, coiled up and ready to spring. It has been in that position all night so we are speculating whether it has in fact died of starvation and rigamortis has set in. It certainly doesn't seem to mind us taking photos of it. Or maybe it's just lulling us into a false sense of security. Either way, our noisy lorikeets and flappy pigeons are notable by their absence! Shame really as yesterday a beautiful king parrot had a nosey at the bird feeder. A sort of grisly curiosity has got me intrigued as to whether a snake of that girth could actually digest a pigeon. Apparently the thing to do if you're worried about having snakes in the garden is to get a dog. The snakes will be put off by the scent.

We've also discovered what has been making the little holes in the front lawn. Not funnel web spiders, as I first worried about after watching a documentary about Fraser Island! But bandicoots! They look like a cross between a rat and a wallaby, and are about the size of rabbit - very odd. And I thought they were just a Sony invention.

(Non poisonous) Snakes and bandicoots I can cope with. Bugs and spiders I'm not very good with, especially if they are flying or running towards me. Redback spiders are ones to watch out for, although I still haven't clapped eyes on one since Diver Dave's been very pro active with the bug spray. They like to lurk about in exterior wall crevices and garden furniture. Like most things, they will only bite if they're upset and you should get immediate medical attention if you're the victim. Huntsman spiders are BLOODY scary looking (especially if you happen to notice one happily sitting on the sanitary bin next to the toilet that you are sitting on in Noosa National Park!), but they aren't aggressive. In fact one Aussie told me about their 80 year old grandmother who would pick them up and lob them out of the window if she ever found any in the house. Since they are about the size and shape of a tarantula, this is no mean feat. She obviously didn't have any fly screens though.

In the evenings we have literally been bombarded with massive suicidal beetles, jovially named Christmas beetles. They seem to bounce off your windows or head and end up breakdancing for hours while they shuffle off this mortal coil. They aren't engineered very well since they cannot upright themselves once toppled over and die if they aren't up righted straight away. What a stupid design fault. I am looking forward to whatever day of Christmas it is when these beetles cease to be.

Meanwhile, we haven't really had any problems so far with mosquitos. this may be because we have a yellow UV light out on the deck which apparently doesn't attract insects (tell that to the xmas beetles). A top tip the estate agent told me was to make sure you empty the water from the trays of any pot plant after rainfall as the stagnant water will attract the mozzies.

Unfortunately, this week Diver Dave had to dispatch a cane toad right outside our front door. Cane toads are officially a pest in Australia and you are supposed to get rid of them straight away by any means possible to try and stop them spreading, which they are doing anyway in their thousands. It's not really their fault. They can blame the farmers in the 1930s who introduced them to eradicate pests in the cane fields. This exercise failed monumentally and only served to introduce a non native species which is seriously poisonous to other, native species.

We had to consult the world wide interweb to confirm identification first though to make sure we weren't about to eliminate a cute native frog. It certainly didn't look very cute. It looked shifty. When they are croaking, these toads are bleedin obvious. They sound like mini jack hammers. But this one wasn't croaking, probably because it knew it was about to. Diver Dave identified it by its poison sacks on either side of its 'shoulders' and promptly used a rake handle. Yuk.

I will update this post with any further worrying wildlife developments!

Selling your house (UK): a cautionary tale

Selling a house in the UK is incredibly stressful where the odds are always stacked in the buyer's favour and people can mess you about for months. This has happened to me with two different house sales in the UK. In Queensland it's dead easy. You get tied into a contract within a week of making the offer, subject to satisfactory survey, and it is possible to have it all done and dusted with you safely in your new house within four weeks. Australia 1, UK 0.

When immigration gives you the go ahead to drop everything and bugger off to the bottom of the world, DO NOT do what I did in selling a house!

Having decided to leave in January so I could start the Australian academic year, I put my house on the market at the end of September and accepted an offer within a week. By the start of November everything was going well, the survey had been done and we were negotiating what I was going to leave behind. So I booked my flight. The sharp eyed savvy readers amongst you will have noticed a fatal flaw in my plans, ie. 'what if the sale doesn't go through?' I know.

By the end of November my estate agent had received a worrying phone call from the buyer saying that her circumstances had changed, she wasn't sure about going through with the sale and needed a few days to think about it. The estate agent and I agreed that I didn't have a few days to give her and we slapped the house back on the market.

At the end of that week my solicitor contacted me. The buyer's solicitor had rung them to ask why the house was being remarketed as the buyer had not said she didn't want it (?!). The estate agent checked and it transpired that the house sale was going to go through after all. A settlement date was agreed and we took the house back off the market. This was around the 2nd week of December. Did you spot another mistake there?

By Christmas, things had gone quiet again and the buyer was not responding to my emails about furniture and stuff. On the 28th December she emailed the estate agent and I to say that she really didn't want the house at all this time, three months after the sale had been agreed. My flight was booked for 13th January.

I am very fortunate to have a supportive family who stepped into the breach when they sensed that I could be about to have a nervous breakdown. I was even more fortunate to be able to accept another offer on the house within days. So thankfully I was able to get my flight and give my Dad power of attorney over my house sale. And this time it remained on the market until the contract was signed and sealed! The lady who bought it was a lovely local who will make full use of the pub next door (see above photo of lovely Greens Norton, Northants)!

So if your name is Hannah James, you know what I've been talking about, and you've just googled your own name and found yourself famous on the world wide interweb for all the wrong reasons, I hope you are very ashamed of yourself. Although we could speculate all year over whether this could in fact be possible.

OBVIOUSLY the moral of this story is not to make any plans until your buyer signs on the dotted line - duh! And keep your house on the market until then. Any serious buyer will understand why and probably won't object. This should save your time, money and nerves from being wasted by any selfish, useless, lying, two faced, schizophrenic f***wits.

Setting up home: Ebay Australia!

If you arrive in oz empty handed and homeless like me you'll want to set up home asap with minimum amount of expense, especially if you aren't sure whether or not you'll be staying. Enter ebay - ta da!

I am a self confessed ebay addict. Like the UK one it's possible to find some really good deals on second hand and new stuff. Plus if you were a member in the UK you can transfer it and all your feedback over to oz, although you may still find that your 'my ebay' section still sends you messages from the UK site which can get confusing. Whilst you can still use your Paypal account anywhere in the world, it may be better to set up an Australia one linked to an Australian bank account so that you don't have to pay commission on the currency exchange. In this case Paypal advises that you shut down your original Paypal account before you open a new one.

The good thing about ebay Australia is that you can get some billy bargains (especially if you use a bid robot to bid at the last minute!) which is useful in a land where furniture and appliances can be ridiculously expensive, unless you're lucky enough to live near Ikea and/or like Chinese branded washing machines. People are usually pretty friendly and polite, and are often fairly new to the game since ebay is a more recent phenomenon in Australia than in the UK and bid robots are not widely used - yet.

The drawback can be that ebay newbies often want to sell their goods for as close as possible to their original purchase price, even if it's a 30 year old wood effect melamine set of 'draws'. If it's in star quality condition some sellers may want their money's worth. I recently had a bad experience with an ebay newbie who tried to tell me that the $1000 dining table I'd won for $50 had been 'sawn through' whilst being used a workbench, even though it was advertised as being dismantled. It seems she hadn't heard of reserve prices and was highly disappointed with the price it sold for. So steer clear of an ebayer called lady*beetle84 -she's a big fat liar who I reported to ebay for seller non performance!

Also, the geography of Australia means that unless you want to travel for a week across country and back again to pick up that essential crystal chandelier, you will either have to restrict your search to a more manageable geographical radius or arrange for your goods to be couriered at great expense. Obviously, the closer you live to a highly populated area, the more choice you'll have.

One of the first things I bought on ebay Australia was a desk chair that I eventually had no need for. When I sold it on ebay I got back almost exactly what I paid for it. So if I ever need to get rid of my entire household contents in a hurry, I reckon I can get my money back by flogging it all on ebay where I bought it in the first place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYokLWfqbaU

Banking in Australia

Oh god, banking in Australia.

Right, so in the UK we pretty much all have VISA debit thingies on our bank cards and when we go shopping these days all you do is give the card to the cashier and type in your PIN number, yes? Now, if you try to use your debit card in Australia you will have to treat it as a credit card and put your autograph on a slip of paper the old fashioned way.

There is a sort of chip and pin style of system available in Australia known as EFTPOS which is common to all Australian bank cards. This is OK although it doesn't have your account number and sort code details on it for security reasons which means you will have to hunt around for it should the need arise. But the biggest drawback is if you are trying to buy something or guarantee a booking over the phone or internet, say for a hotel room, plane ticket or something you bought on Ebay!! In this case your EFTPOS is useless -a bit like those Electron things you used to get on Barclays Bank cards. So you need a VISA or Mastercard to be able to buy/book these things.

When Diver Dave and I opened a joint account for household stuff, we discovered that you can get a VISA debit card if you ask nicely but they don't like combining it with your ordinary EFTPOS card like you would get in the UK. You pretty much have to go down on your knees for one of those but it is possible, so the nice Westpac lady said.

Another unwelcome surprise is the fact that not only do the banks profit from the interest on 'looking after' your money, but they do not give you any interest on a cheque (current) account AND they charge you a monthly amount for the privilege. Presumably, they spend all their profit on ATMs (cash machines) since on any given stretch of street in a highly populated area there can be a line of them representing all the high street banks. This is because none of the banks have reciprocal arrangements with their competitors and as such you will be charged a fee if you use the wrong ATM.

The best thing I did before I left Blighty was to open a bank account with a well known UK high street bank, ending in '..wide' (!) which does not charge commission on overseas transactions such as VISA and ATM withdrawals. This has served me very well in Australia when my EFTPOS is no good, although I have yet to find out what their rate of exchange is!

Driving in Australia

Hang on to your eskies, it's going to get rocky... in yer Holden ute.

In SE Queensland at least driving is generally less manic than in the UK but can be stressful for different reasons. You can use your UK licence for driving through Australia but if you settle here you will need to apply for the relevant state licence.

Traffic on motorways is usually less congested -unless some plonker in a ute has caused a pile up - but inevitably there can be rush hour jams in the CBD like all cities. While British motorists can be at worst arrogant, vengeful (!) and aggressive, and at best polite, Queensland drivers seem to drive as though they have never encountered other drivers on the road before. Use of mirrors is limited, there is no real recognition of the needs of other road users and don't even get me started on roundabouts!!

Beautiful Noosa appears to be the first region in oz to introduce the revolutionary (geddit?) concept of roundabouts. The only thing is, knowing how to use a roundabout correctly is not part of the driving test and consequently nobody knows how to use them properly unless they've bothered to look up the road rules. Every time I tentatively enter one of these roundabouts I feel I'm risking life and limb, and have seen many hair raising moments. My advice is to expect the worst and indicate as though your life depends on it because it just might!

To bring or not to bring: Washing Machines!

Now, at the risk of conforming to stereotype and having a right old moan, appliances in Australia, compared to the UK, are either Not Good or criminally expensive. I’m not sure what the reason is for this but it took me by surprise when I was in the process of shacking up with Diver Dave. I bemoaned my fabulous no nonsense dyson that my Stepmum had volunteered to ‘look after’ and my beautiful sleek Hotpoint washer dryer with blue digital display-à-la-volkswagen-dash that I’d had to flog in a hurry on ebay for only £100 before I came away!! Yes - you read it right folks - unless your ebay user name is treadtrader you missed out on a billy bargain there. For the equivalent money on the Australian ebay I had to settle for a very inferior plain old washing machine with absolutely no digital display whatsoever and some of the little symbols rubbed off. Apparently we paid a premium for this unknown make because it’s a front loader.

Front loaders are new in Australia and seem to be viewed with a great deal of suspicion. The average aussie home will usually have a laundry secreted somewhere, sometimes quite cleverly (although not when it’s in the bathroom), which consists of a washing machine -often the sort of top loader that you may not have seen since the 1970s - a wall mounted tumble dryer and a funny looking basin unit that your washing machine pipes have to be attached to. I have yet to see a front loader in Australia installed under a counter with hidden plumbing like in the UK and so laundry apparatus seems to take up lots of space unnecessarily. But as far as aussies are concerned, the only saving grace of front loaders is the fact that they are highly water efficient and you get a rebate from the government (in Queensland at least).

So my Top Tip re washing machines is that if you were considering emigrating with a great big container of belongings, remember to pack your washing machine. You won’t find another one like it for the same price.

Halloween in Australia

I guess some things stay the same between different countries. The other week the doorbell of our first floor apartment rang and I looked down to find a motley assortment of trick-or-treaters, some of whom had actually bothered to dress up. I’d forgotten it was Halloween. Now that I’ve not been teaching for almost a year, I’m truly out of the loop when it comes to important calendar events, kiddie wink wise.

I’m not sure I really approve of the whole going round to strangers’ houses and begging for stuff idea (or am I just turning into my mother?), but if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. However, I never give out money (in case they shout down the street to all the other mini scaries that number 10 is where the money’s at), and I never give out sweets (so that they shout down the street that it’s really not worth going to number 10, etc).

The ghouls and goblins waited patiently while I scrabbled around the apartment frantically for something to give them, rather than risk losing our rent deposit through having our windows/doors/walls egged. Not being prepared for the big grab-and-go occasion as I usually am, the only things I had more than one of to give out were..er.. kiwi fruit. Well? They ARE a bit scary looking, with their brownish green hairiness. And, as a primary teacher, I wholeheartedly approve of their vitamin content, in sort of vaguely killjoy-ish way. I duly dished them out: “What is it?” asked a pint sized skeleton. To give them their credit, the group all politely said thank you and I left them explaining to the skeleton how to eat a kiwi fruit.

Next year I will be truly amazed if we get any trick-or-treaters as we are about to move to the countryside, up an unsealed road with an acre of land around us!