Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Eighteenth Stop Sydney
We arrived in Sydney on the 2nd of December and stayed just over a month. That month was completely different from the previous months travelling as we actually had worries about finding a job and a flat in Sydney in December.
We had been told that jobs in Sydney were plentiful but in December Australian schools and Universities stop for the summer and hundreds of thousands of backpackers arrive for Christmas and New Year. All are looking for jobs.
Another problem is that basically to do most jobs in New South Wales you need a licence. To work on a building site you need to have a green card. Basically to get a green card you pay $130 and sit through pointless legislation for a day and copy answers from a book, which they call a test. It is the exact same for working behind a bar although it is called a RSA (Responsible service of Alcohol) certificate. These certificates are only valid in the state you get them so you could not get the certificate in Sydney and get a job in Melbourne or Perth.
Finding a decent flat in central Sydney is very hard too. We went in not being fussy and thinking we would take anything going as the hostel prices go from $160 per week to $550 per week over Christmas. But when we looked we were a little more fussy than we realised. One flat we looked at had only one room with a curtain dividing the bedroom/living room and the “kitchen”. The “kitchen had massive chunks out of the work top and barley any space for a sink let alone dishes. Another we looked at had three rooms. The rooms were small ands we had to share with 8 other people.
We eventually found a house in Coogee through FPG (The Furniture Property Group). The drawbacks were that we had to pay a $320 bond each and our first weeks rent up front and we had a minimum of 3 months lease.
We had being staying a Sydney Backpackers a good wee hostel with a great location right in the middle of Sydney. The problem was that we had been caught in a trap of a 6-block radius of the hostel. We were only going to the job centre, the cinema, the Internet café and Scruffy Murphy’s (a dodgy pub that every backpacker in Sydney has visited).
Coogee has a good beach and is a walkable distance to Randwick, which has a good selection of shops and restaurants. The house in which we stayed was perfect for us. It was not totally clean but clean enough. Not everything worked (the front door didn’t open with a key so we had to climb in the window), but it did the job. It had 4 twin bed rooms, a big living room, 3 bathrooms, a big kitchen and a good garden with a BBQ.
We were very lucky with our housemates too. There was 6 in the house with us; Ria, Jen, Sylvia, Orla, Adam and Will. We also had Neil who slept in a tent in the back garden.
On the same day we found the house we also found a job. It was casual labour for a removal company, Office Removals. We had to phone up every night to see if there was work for the next day. The first week was quiet but the week before Christmas we managed to get a lot of hours.
It was a good job. The company employed alot of backpackers so every shift you were working with a different person from a diferent country; France, Sweeden, South Korea, Brazil ect. Also, the work was not that strenuous. Anything that was heavey was put on a trolley ( a spuare skatboard) and pushed around.
Although we have been wanting to watch Celtic, they have actually proved very usefull. We had gone to Scruffy Murphy'd to watch the Copenhagan game. When we got there a Scottish guy told us they were only showing the Man U game. The scottish guy turned out to be Prent a friend of a friend from home that we had been in contact withthrough textmessages. It was him that suggested looking for a place in Coogee were he stayed. He also played football for a team too that met for a kick about and a BBQ every Wednesday which he invited us to. We also met Ross, a guy that played for Strathclyde Uni, during the old firm game. He was setting up a removals company in the New Year and because we had 'experence' he offered us both a job.
Christmas and New Year were very strange this year . On Christmas eve one of Andy's friends from home, Lyne, invited us to have Christmas dinner which her and her two friends Debbie and Kerry had made. There was about 15 of us and there was more than enough food. It was erty impressive as they had never made a Christmas dinner before. It had everything Turkey, Ham, 3 types of potatoes, and veg.
After dinner we went out and met our house mates in Bondi Juction. All the pubs and clubs close at 11:30 on Christmas eve so we all went back to the house and had a party. Christmas day was very relaxed. We went to the beach, had a pizza for dinner and watched a DVD at night.
New Year was totally different too. We were sober for a start. We had a job working in a temporary bar at the harbour side. We served untill 5 to 12 and watched the fireworks. Thye were absolutly awsome, they lasted 15 minuets. We had an awsome view. We weere across the river from the Opera House. Fireworks went off from the bridge, from boats, from rofftops and filled the sky all over. After the fireworks we had to clean up untill 1:30 and were shatered when we finished so just went home.
After New Year we decided to leave Sydney to earn some money. To do this we thought it would be better tosplit up. So, I headed to Mildura to do seasonal work to get an other years working visa and Andy to Perth to get some electrian work.
I left Sydney for Mildura on the 4th of January...
Andy stayed for a few more weeks to work with Ross in his new removal firm and left on the 12th of January...
- comments