Hi everyone

Happy New Year to you all and we hope you had a Merry Christmas.

Well we are now officially living in Perth, but before we get to that we are going to tell you all about the labour camp...sorry, vineyard we visited! We caught a bus then a train south to the quiet little town of Balingup, where we first met the local swarms of flies, then our host for the week, Fran, and her 6 year old daughter, Isabella. It was the child's last day of term, so we met them at the school as they were having a fun day with water slides, go karts etc, so we spent a couple of hours there and had free ice cream and stuffed ourselves at the buffet! So far so good. 3 pm came so we all jumped in the family ute and drove home to Tupelo Springs, which was the name of the vineyard, and met Frans husband John, and the 2 dogs , 3 cats and a goat they kept as pets. Couldnt see any grapes though...the vineyard turned out to be a farm with a few acres of vines growing at the far end. Blair's vision of a drunken week wine tasting and jumping on grapes was slowly being shattered! Anyway we settled in to our lodgings which consisted of a homely little caravan and had a relaxed evening with our new family. We also witnessed the first stages of the transformation of Bella from the shy little girl we met into the child of the devil!

The next morning we were surprised to find it raining, which apparently is very uncommon in this part of the world at this time of year. Over breakfast, Blair felt Sarahs eyes burn a hole in his skull as he uttered the immortal words...''its ok, we dont mind getting wet''. This comment earned us both a highly pleasant day weeding in the cherry tree plantation(and no they werent in season) in the rain. Unaccustomed as he is to manual labour, this caused Blair to fall ill with a severe case of man flu, so the next day while he rested up Sarahs duties were to look after the Problem Child for a few hours, after which it was her in need of a lie down!

It turned out that Fran and John were simply warming us up for the really back breaking stuff! We spent the remainder of our stay doing yet more weeding before we helped John build a dry stone dyke in front of the house. 2 days of shovelling sand and dirt and lifting huge boulder in and out of a trailer...and you all think we are on a 9 month holiday! We were given our last day off however in order to do some much needed laundry and check out the limited sights of downtown Balingup. Then it was a bus and train north back to Perth where there are people, buildings and things to do!

When the joy of being back in civilisation had wore off, we realised we were once again homeless, so we booked a hotel for a couple of nights which gave us the whole day to do some serious flat hunting, after which we viewed a house in Kewdale, in the Perth suburbs, where a couple of kiwi blokes had a spare room they were letting out. It was a nice place, John and Mark seemed like nice people and the bus and trains ran nearby so we moved in the next day. We have settled in well and it was nice to have a proper home to spend xmas in. Also, the day after we moved in Mark bought a huge inflatable 3m x 3m swimming pool, so it got even better!

Christmas day was spent sunbathing, cooling off in the pool and drinking cold beer in the 44 degree heat! A very unusual christmas day for us but it was brilliant. Of course for dinner we had the obligatory barbie! We also managed to give each other presents despite our poor traveller budgets. Blair got new sunglasses (to replace the ones thrown under the train in Malaysia!) and a hat and Sarah got earrings.

Since settling back in Perth we have also finally managed to see some sights. We took a bus up to Kings park on xmas eve and got some great photos of the city and on New Years day we went with John down to the port town of Fremantle, where we had a walk around looking at all the old buildings and harbour, then had fish and chips and a pint at the local brewpub, Little Creatures.

Anyway thats all for now, we are away to try and find some gainful employment for the next 2 months, or we will be homeless once more!

Best Wishes for the New Year

love Blair and Sarah xx