G'Day!

Its taken 12,000 miles and 28 hours of flying and 2 years of planning but we're finally here, down under in sunny Brisbane, Queensland, AUSTRALIA! CRIKEY!

We arrived in Brisbane on Wednesday 3rd June after a very quick 3 hour flight from Auckland, and although we were sad to leave New Zealand as we both really liked it there, we were still super excited to finally be coming to Oz. It feels like we have been looking forward to this for ages as we started our visa application back in January 2008 so its been a long time coming. When we sent the visa application off we had hoped we might be getting it approved by now, but as some of you already know, in January this year the Australian Immigration department changed the visa rules which meant the visa we had applied for is now no longer being processed so all people like us who have already applied for this visa are put on hold indefinitely. Stupid isn't it!!! Nothing we can do though except sit and wait in the hope they change there mind before our 12 month traveling visa runs out. But besides that, we intend to make the most of our time here and not dwell on things, so without further a-due, lets start the blog for Oz!

We've been here just over a week now and time has totally flown by and its still hard to grasp for us that we are actually here. We can't stop smiling from ear to ear and keep saying to each other "I can't believe its winter" when its been a pretty constant 24c in Brisbane during the days we have spent here. My god the weather is soooo good and makes such a difference to how you can do things without having to worry about if its going to rain, turn cold or windy etc and we can now really appreciate why people love it here. But the thing we still can't appreciate are the bugs! However much you try to prepare and read up on and no matter how many pictures of Huntsman's you look at on the web, we still spent the first few days checking under EVERYTHING before we sat down, and almost blew all our apartments light bulbs by the constant off/on/off "i saw something move" on/off "there it is again" on/off "something tickled me!" ON!!!!

Emma broke the dreaded spider curse when only 3 days after getting here she got bit on her leg, which then went ultra gammy very quick so we knew something was up. We didn't see what caused it as it happened IN BED GOD DAMIT (after all that checking too) but after the DR had finished wincing and trying to keep her dinner down she told us it was a White Tail Spider which caused it, so Em has spent the remaining days on a course of antibiotics to cure it, which thankfully is doing the trick. Andy tried to go one better but only managed to get a couple of ant bites on his leg (but not in bed though thankfully).

We spent the first few days sorting out the important stuff like getting our bank cards, mobile phones and finding the best local coffee shops, in that order :) Plus, our biggest task was to find ourselves a camper van to buy which we are going to live in for the next 12 months. We had already spoke to a company who sell ex rental campers before we left the UK, so we took the train to see them and quickly realised they were a heap of crap! We trawled the web for some others but typically there were none we could find in our price range in the area, but then a stroke a luck and we found a nice newer one from another company. So off we trekked again and an hour later we left after putting a deposit down on our first camper van! She's a bute but you'll have to wait for the next entry when we pick her up later next week...

One thing that has impressed us with Brisbane actually is the first class public transport they have here. We had read that it was a good system they had here, but using it in person really shows you how good it all is. All the trains, buses and CityCat's (ferries) are run by the city council so you can buy a ticket for the day for about £3 and can use whatever public transport you like all day! Everything is spotlessly clean, on time and just a joy to use and has made getting around for us so easy. We've ended up using it that much that we don't even need a map anymore as we can just look at station names and bus numbers to get around so I think we've settled in pretty well in that respect.

Something else which stands out about Australia is how much like America a lot of things are. Things like road signs, traffic lights, shops, supermarkets and just the general every day way things are laid out. Good for us as its made settling in a little easier rather than longing to be in America still.

Oh yeah, Gluten Free. Australia is seriously good on this area and is again leagues ahead of the UK when it comes to availability of food in stores, cafes and restaurants. We've not actually had to search food out for Em when we've been out as nearly every place you go has at least something advertised as gluten free.

Thats it for now, we'll do another blog with things we've done to try and break it up a bit for you.