Perth: Home Sweet 3 Month Home

Downtown Perth from across the Swan River
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When we were travelling through New Zealand we were spending much of our time on a bus travelling from place to place.  It was a lot of fun, but there were definitely days where we were sick of being toted around on an old convict transporter (yes, believe it or not, our tour company, Stray tours, used an old prison bus in their fleet...in fact, our trip back to Auckland was the last trip for that bus which could barely make it over a speedbump...but I digress...).  For the first portion of our Australia visit we figured that we would "settle down" a bit and stay in one place for a while.

Downtown Perth
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So here we are in Perth.  Considered one of the world's most remote cities, the nearest major city (Adelaide, South Australia) is over 2500 km away.  You would think that the isolation would result in a bit of a back water city, but that's totally not the case.  Perth is really quite a great, vibrant city.

It took us a little while to get used to the feeling of driving on the opposite side of both the road and the vehicle. Shifting gears using our left hand was different too. That all feels like second nature to us now, but there has still been a couple of occasions where we found ourselves on the wrong side of the road.

Another view of downtown Perth, taken from King's Park. I wish I could say that this is the view from our apartment, but we're not that lucky. Still, our place is less than a 5 minute drive from downtown.
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We decided to stay for around 3 months, figuring that that would give us enough time to really "get a feel for the city".  As I write this we are about half way through our stint and so far so good.  We've done lots and seen lots, as you'll be able to check out in the following journal entries.

We were able to find a great furnished apartment that was available for short term leesees like us, which was perfect.  We didn't even need references.  We saw the ad in the newspaper classifieds and drove by that night.  As we were checking out the building from the sidewalk one guy sticks his head out of his apartment window and asks if we were wanting to rent the vacant apartment.  He even invites us into his place to show us what they look like.  What a nice guy!  Turns out he's from Toronto (!!!) so that's pretty cool that we have a neighbour from Canada here on the other side of the globe!

Our apartment washroom. Shower on the left.
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We also landed ourselves a used car.  Interestingly enough the guy we bought it from: his girlfriend is from Vancouver.  We now own a 1989 Toyota Camry.  It took us a little while to get used to the feeling of driving on the opposite side of both the road and the vehicle.  Shifting gears using our left hand was different too.  That all feels like second nature to us now, but there has still been a couple of occasions where we found ourselves on the wrong side of the road.  Nothing serious though, thankfully.

Heather in our "dining room"
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Job hunting was somewhat stressful and frustrating at times, particularly in the first couple of weeks.  Since then we have had better luck though.  Heather is signed up with an office recruitment agency has been very busy working at a couple of different places doing receptionist work (and doing a great job at it too!!).  Overall she really enjoys it although there has been a lot of new information to learn.  Meanwhile, I've (Michael) managed to get part time work with an agency called Kidsafe inspecting and installing child car seats, similar to what I've been doing as a health inspector back in Canada.  I'm also signed up with an industrial recruitment agency which has thrown me a couple of odd jobs as well.  One night I worked from 6:00PM til 4:00 in the morning loading and unloading train cars.  Currently I am working from 2:00 in the afternoon til 10:00 at night at a factory that galvanizes steel.  Easy, yet dirty work.  Oh yeah, can't forget that we worked at a major outdoor New Years celebration doing bartending.  And our crowning achievement thus far...we've sold official glow in the dark products for Australia Day on January 26th (the same as our Canada Day that we celebrate on July 1st).  Neither of us want to get into that right now though (we're still a bit embarassed).

Our kitchen
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So, anyhoo, life is good here in Western Australia for the Newells.  The weather is usually sunny and hot (being summer down here in the southern hemisphere), and there's lots to see and do.  We hope that whereever you're reading this, you're all doing well too.

Ciao,

Michael & Heather