The Aussie Immigraton Map

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A Year Down Under

Yesterday was the 1st anniversary of our arrival in Australia. I was going to do a big blog post to mark the occasion but I can't be arsed - too busy working on my website. Suffice to say it's been a fantastic first year - everything we hoped for and more. There are lots of positives and very few negatives.

We do miss everyone but there's definitely no going back!

We're getting visitors!

Our first set of visitors from the UK have been confirmed. Rachelle's sister is coming over with her daughter in November, and my Mum and Dad have booked their flights for next March.

We're really looking forward to having the chance to show people around so they can see exactly why we've moved here.

This is the first place I've ever lived where I can actually say I feel proud to live here. It's such a difference to the depressing drabness of Doncaster and Worksop.

Brisbane is a city of 1.8 million people, yet because it is spread over such a large area it doesn't feel congested. As a relatively new city, you can also tell that some kind of planning has gone into the layout. One advantage of this is that there are lots of parks and green areas. It seems like nearly every street or neighbourhood is separated by a park. And every house, street and neighbourhood looks different. It has variety and colour. You don't drive down a street in Brisbane where every house is the same build and look as in the UK.

I think our love for Brisbane has helped dampen down any homesickness we might otherwise have had, or should I say what Rach might have had. I've moved around regularly since I was 16 so I new I'd be ok. Whereas in Rachelle's case, up until now she's never lived outside of a 20-mile radius of Doncaster, so I was worried that she might find it difficult.

As it happens she's been fine. Both Rach and Lauren have settled in really well.

And as for me, it's now nearly 3 months since we arrived here, and although there are people and things in the UK that I miss, I can honestly say I haven't once had any inkling of regret.

There's no going back!

Our stuff is here!

Our stuff finally cleared customs and arrived at our house yesterday, two weeks after arriving in Brisbane. Unfortunately we were one of the unlucky ones and we got levied for an inspection fee by Customs, which cost us $270.

They didn't do a very good job though because on opening our boxes we found that aftershave, pot-puree, and even a spider that was trapped at the bottom of glass display thing full of stones (I don't know what to call it - it's a woman's thing), all made it through customs.

We now have boxes full of stuff all over the house ready to be sorted out and found an home, so it's not going to be much of a relaxing weekend this weekend.

We need a bigger house, I'm sure we didn't need to ship half of the items we did.

Living the life

After a couple of days of torrential rain and then an unusually cold day, we’re finally back to business as usual – clear blue skies and warm sunshine!

You might have seen on the news that a cyclone has hit New South Wales, including Sydney, and killed a few people. I think we caught the edges of it here. In fact we couldn’t believe how cold it was yesterday. The houses here aren’t prepared for cold weather; they’re built to keep the inside cool and many, including ours, doesn’t have heating. Well I think it might have, just we haven’t figured out how to get it working. The A/C unit is supposedly one of those reverse cycle ones where it can kick out warm air but whatever setting we tried it just seemed to be set to ARCTIC.

Today couldn’t have been more different. It was like a different season never mind a different day.

It’s Queensland Week this week, and with this weekend also being a long weekend due to a public holiday on Monday for the Queen’s birthday (funny how there’s a public holiday for it here yet not in Britain), there’s loads of stuff happening all over Brisbane this weekend.

Today we started off by going to the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre on the South Bank for what was billed as the world’s largest second-hand book sale. There were over 2 million books for sale, starting for as little as 20 cents. We bought a stack of paperbacks and hardbacks, some fairly new, including DVD’s for a total of only $50 (£20).

We then drove over the river to Roma St Parkland where they were holding the Big Queensland BBQ. It’s the first time we’ve visited the Roma St Parkland and we were really impressed. It contains the world’s largest urban sub-tropical garden – and it’s absolutely beautiful.

The Big Queensland BBQ was completely free and there was plenty to see and do (besides eat of course). Lauren loved it. Hi-5 were performing on the main stage, and all around there were tents with different acts and fun for the kids.


More new photo's on flickr.

One of the things I love about this country is that there are always things happening, places to go and things to see, and most of the time it’s completely free. Today, even the parking was cheap.

In other news… (this is the BBC from London).. Rach has got herself a couple of interviews lined up. One next week and one the week after. They’re both for office manager type roles. I’ve proposed the idea of her working full time and me staying at home, writing a best-selling novel or working on my perpetual motion invention, but she’s having none of it. At least if she does get a job it takes the pressure of me a little and will at least pay for the roof above our head. What I’m starting to realise here is that because everyone’s so laid back, everything takes ages to sort out. In the UK, I’d submit my CV for a job in the afternoon and then be following it up with a phone call to the agency the next morning. It doesn’t work like that here. It seems it takes them a week just to check their e-mail.

Patience my dear boy..

We went out for a drink last night at ‘our club’ with our new neighbours Paul and Julie, from Coventry. Paul drove and parked his car underneath some trees brimming with Lorikeets. When we came out the car was absolutely covered in bird shit! It was that bad he had to take it through the car wash there and then, and even that didn’t get it all off. We did laugh!

I’m getting the hang of the language by the way. It’s simple. You just abbreviate everything to the first 3 letters and then add an o. For instance, your car registration over here is rego, an ambulance is ambo, etc (you get the picture).

I also love some of the shop and brand names over here. I particularly like Coon Cheese and the bedding company - Holy Sheet.

Houston, we have lift-off!

I'm finally up and running on broadband again. It wasn't straightforward though. I went back to 3 on Monday with all the necessary I.D. They spoke to their accounts department and explained my situation. In the end the accounts department just needed some proof of recent income. So I had to go to the Carina Leagues Club (henceforth known as "my club") to use their internet room, which has a free printing service when you purchase the internet card, and print off proof of my income from contracting over the last few months. I took the paperwork back to 3 and eventually, late Monday, I got a phone call from them to say their accounts department had accepted me. Thank god!

I took the new broadband data card home Monday evening and of course - it didn't work.

I rang their technical support line who told me I had to wait 24 hours for the service to be activated. So I waited and tried again late Tuesday.

Come Tuesday it still wasn't working so I rang them again. They told me that the web surfing package had not been activated on my account, they would activate it now but I'd have to wait between 4 and 24 hours before I could use it. So I waited again.

I kept trying all morning and nothing. I rang them up this afternoon and would you believe it, just as I started talking to them I got a blue flashing light on my data card to show their was a network available.

I'm all up and running now, finally, and what's more I'm getting a decent speed - nearly 1Mb. I've also got a 2Gb allowance which is twice what I had with Telstra although not nearly enough for me to download music, podcasts, or movies; or watch Liverpool FC matches streamed on Liverpoolfc.tv, or even use Skype with my webcam, etc. I could, but that would eat up my allowance in less than a week.

Funnily enough, at just about the same time as my mobile broadband started working, so did my landline. We're now up and running on a home phone number so will be calling home over the next few days (we promise not to call in the middle of the night, honest!).

I've just had a call from a recruitment consultant who told me he's working on setting me up an interview with a large security consultant, possibly next week. It doesn't sound like they're recruiting at the moment but he said they were interested in my CV. It could be one of those where they set me on on the basis that I go out and win some business for them.

On Monday we got ourselves enrolled for Medicare. Hopefully, when I'm working full-time we'll be able to top this up with private medical insurance. I still need to read up on how it all works but from what I understand we use our Medicare card to claim back a percentage of any medical fees incurred. Medicare covers 75% of the schedule fee for in-hospital services, 85% of the schedule fee for out-of-hospital services, and 100% of the schedule fee for out of hospital GP attendance items. However, the schedule fee is a fee for service set by the Australian Government and not necessarily what the doctors may charge. A lot of people have private medical insurance here to cover the remaining fees. In fact, the federal government penalises those that haven't. According to a government website:

Lifetime Health Cover is essentially a financial penalty imposed on people over the age of 31 who do not have hospital cover. If a person does not have hospital cover on 1 July following their 31st birthday and decides to take out hospital cover later in life, they will pay a loading of 2% on top of the base premium for every 1st July that has occurred since their 31st birthday.

It looks like it's going to be a bit more expensive for me.

By the way, the heavens have truly opened on Brisbane. It started pelting it down late yesterday afternoon and it hasn't stopped raining since - 24 hours of non-stop rain. The locals are loving it as there has been a drought here for months. I can't say we share their joy.

More technology problems

All was going well with the new wireless broadband USB adaptor for my laptop up until Friday when I broke it! All I did was pull it out of the USB port and the thing came apart on me. I took it into the shop I purchased it from Saturday morning and they told me they couldn't replace it there, I'd have to ring up Telstra and ask them to send me a replacement. So I rang up Telstra and eventually get through (the phone services over here are even worse than in the UK, even worse than BT in fact) only to be told I'd have to wait 5 days for a new one. That's completely unacceptable, I can't afford to wait 5 days especially while I'm looking for work. Anyway, I told them to cancel my account. And I took the adaptor back to the shop and got my money refunded.

I was back to square one - no internet. I then went in Vodafone to sign up for one of their packages but of course I didn't have my passport with me or any other form of identification that they would accept. By this time the shops were shutting up so I knew I'd have to wait until Sunday. So I went back this morning with I.D. and applied for the Vodafone package, only to get refused because I failed the credit score.

They weren't very helpful at all. I explained the situation - it's hard to pass the credit score when I've never had credit in Australia and when I haven't yet got a job. I told them I was willing to pay for 12 month usage in advance but they weren't having it.

I then made my way to the 3 shop to give their package a go. They have different rules and couldn't accept the passport - they needed to see something with my current address on, and it can't be the tenancy agreement. The thing is, we haven't had any bills yet to our new address so I thought I was stuck.

I went home extremely frustrated to say the least. Anyway, luckily, our first bill arrived today for electricity. So I'm going to try again tomorrow. It could still be a problem though with the credit check. I explained to them that while I haven't sorted out employment yet I'm still officially a director of a UK company so hopefully that could be taken into consideration. I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

So to summarise, I still love Australia but they really need to sort their telecommunications out. I'm still without a landline - we've been told it will be fixed on Wednesday. It took us days to activate our mobile SIM's because Vodafone was going through an IT upgrade that seemed to last a week (I don't think much of their change control!). I can't get ADSL to the house, and I'm not having much look with wireless broadband.

Besides that everything else is good. Rach did a good days work yesterday. She was originally only going to work in the morning helping set up for a wedding reception but she got asked back in the evening to help out. I'm not sure if she'll be doing it again though. She didn't mind setting up, or even helping the soux chef in the evening, but she draws the line at washing pots. I don't blame her - we're not that desperate. Yet.

I'm typing this from the Carina Leagues Club, which we've just become members of. Think Phoenix Nights but less Northern UK. The beer is cheap, so is the food. There's a live band on (sorry, 'turn'), and there's a kids club for Lauren. What more does anyone want from life! I'm going to have to get to grips with the language though. I asked for a beer and they asked me whether I wanted a skooner or a pot. Pot sounded larger so I went with that. I got an half! Skooner is the pint glass.

The first day of winter

It’s officially the first day of winter here today. You wouldn’t know it. It’s a bit weird actually. All the clothes shops are stocking jumpers and other winter clothes and yet it’s 25 degrees outside!

We’ve spent the last couple of days getting into the ozzie lifestyle. We had Kangaroo steak for dinner last night. Very nice indeed. A bit like beef. It’s red meat but apparently it’s extremely lean and quite good for you. There are 53 million Kangaroos in Australia and there’s a debate about whether or not they should be culled back so there’s no qualms here about eating roo. We also had a look around yesterday at a few barbies – you can’t live in Australia and not have a BBQ in your back yard! You ought to see the size of some of them; you could feed a ship’s company! We’re debating whether or not to get a cheap one now to tide us over or wait until I get a job and buy a decent one. I suppose we can wait, after all, there’s a shared barbeque in our complex that we can use, next to the pool, and there’s public barbeques all over the place – down by South Bank, by the river, and in most of the parks.

Talking about parks, we had a walk around the parkland near our house yesterday afternoon. It’s quite beautiful. There’s a nice walk around a large lake in the middle (although the lake is mostly empty due to the drought), and there’s lots of off-shoots to picnic, BBQ and children’s play areas. It’s going to be my local jogging spot starting today. Yes, me, jogging! Rach is starting a Body Pump class tomorrow (Saturday) down at one of the many fitness centres here.

Nothing going work-wise for me yet. I did get one phone call from an agency asking me if I’d be interested in a contract, but unfortunately it was in Sydney. I don’t really fancy the 1200 mile round-trip commute! Most of the jobs I’m seeing are in Sydney. There’s also a lot in Melbourne and Canberra. Melbourne and Canberra are quite cold this time of the year, and Canberra is inland – too far from the beach for my liking. Actually, you get to realise the vast size of Australia when you look at the temperatures. Yesterday, it was 12 degrees in Canberra (South East), whereas it was 33 degrees in Darwin (North).

Rach has been given some work. A friend of Cath’s has offered her some casual cash-in-hand work helping set up for weddings. She’s got a few hours on Saturday so at least there’s some money coming in. Myself and Lauren are going to have a look for a car while Rach is working.

The daylight hours here are taking a bit of getting used to. At the moment it’s dark by 5:30, and it gets dark really quickly – not much of a twilight to speak of. From the minute it starts to go dark it’s pitch black in less than 15 minutes. And then the sun is up and shining again about 5 in the morning. The only problem is that as soon as the sun is up, so are the birds - at 4:30am. You wouldn’t believe the sound of the birds here, it’s like living in a tropical aviary! In the UK I used to go to bed about midnight and get up between 7 and 8am. There’s no chance of that here. There’s a reason why everyone gets up at the crack of dawn and goes to bed at 9:30.

I’m still really peeved about this broadband business. I’ve only had it a few days and I’ve already used 150Mb. That’s just general internet use, without multimedia or downloading. There was a number of podcasts I used to download in the UK which I wanted to continue to subscribe to here but there’s no chance at the moment, it would take up all my allowance.

We were supposed to have our landline connected yesterday but it’s not working. I’m waiting for the phone company to get back to me to tell me why it’s not working. Technology doesn’t seem to work very well over here.

The TV is also doing my head in. I can’t wait until we get Foxtel (Sky) so we can forward through the adverts. They have adverts every 10 minutes here. Honestly, in a 30 minute programme there’s 3 lots of adverts, it’s ridiculous. I used to moan about the licence fee in the UK but now I say god bless the BBC.

It looks like I’m going to miss the England v Brazil match. It’s not being shown on any of the terrestrial channels here and my last attempt at finding somewhere in the city to watch it at 5am wasn’t very successful.

These are only little things in the scheme of things though. We’re here for a change of lifestyle so I’m secretly quite pleased that we’re being forced to watch less telly and use the Internet less. I’m adapting quite well I think. Although I’m not going to be able to live without the footy for too long.

Wireless Woes

So much for the broadband order being processed and activated 10 days after Thursday. After speaking to a neighbour last night (who incidentally has recently moved her from Coventry), it seems that there's no more ports available on the local telephone exchange for ADSL broadband and they're not likely to upgrade capacity for another year.

I rang Optus this morning, the ISP who I had registered with asking them to clarify. They told me they had no way of checking this until my phone line is activated on Thursday and the application begins processing. So I then tried ringing Telstra Wholesale who are responsible for the phone line, but their switchboard just kept putting me through to the ISP. Twice. Even though after the first time I specifically told them I didn't want to speak to the ISP I wanted to speak to the people who are responsible for exchange. When finally they did put me through to the right number I was left in a queue for at least 30 minutes before I gave up and put the phone down.

I tried looking on the web via my phone but I couldn't get a web connection. After speaking to Vodafone (I can't even be bothered to go into the problems we've been having with Vodafone Aus over the last few days) it turns out that may PAYG package doesn't include web. So I had to purchase an 'Extras pack'.

I tried navigating to the Telstra Wholesale pages on my phone but it was like pulling teeth so I gave up in the end and we drove to our local shopping centre to use the internet kiosks.

Anyway it turned out that yes, there are no more available ports on our local exchange, and the same is true of much of Brisbane due to the massive growth it is experiencing (probably due to the thousands of Brits that are descending here at the moment).

There's no Cable in this area either so that left me with only one choice - 3G data card.

At least I'm up and running on the internet now from home, even though I am restricted to 1Gb per month usage and the maximum speed I can get out of this thing is 200kbps - half the speed of basic ADSL. It's ok for surfing the web but I guess I have to forget bit torrent downloads for a while. I also need to test Skype as I'm not sure if I have enough bandwidth to make VoIP calls back home, never mind using the webcam that we purchased before we left so our parents can regularly see Lauren.

If I'd have known this was the situation with broadband beforehand I probably wouldn't have signed the tenancy agreement, I would have looked elsewhere.

Oh well, I'm sure I'll adapt.

Besides that, everything else is good. Mind you, we had our first day of rain today - they didn't put that on our visa!

We've nearly finished putting the house together, only one more bedside table to put together. I've also applied for a couple of jobs. I'll ring round the agencies tomorrow to suss them out. I'll also catch up on my e-mail tomorrow and reply to those of you who have e-mailed me. Sorry I haven't replied yet.

Another hectic couple of days

Well we're in the new house now. We've made the major purchases and everything we ordered has been delivered. Yesterday we bought a nice new telly and a few other things like a hoover, ironing board, kitchen stuff, etc. Our fridge, freezer and washing machine came today. We've also been given a form to claim back $200 off our washing machine as it's a front-loader. There's still a lot of top-loaders in Australia so there's a government scheme to incentivise people into purchasing front-loaders because they're more environmentally friendly.

Our phone line is being connected on Thursday, but I have to wait 10 days after connection until broadband is activated. Gutted. It's making things very difficult not having broadband. I suppose I can at least use dial-up when the phone line's connected on Thursday. I'm typing this at a shopping mall near where we live as Rach does our first big shop - at Woolworths of all places. Woolworths is one of the big supermarkets here, although I've been reliably informed that it's not the same woolies as on the high streets in blighty. She told me as it's the first food shop and everythng is different here she's likely to be in there at least 2 hours. I've promised to join her after an hour - 2 hours in a supermarket is not my idea of a good time even if everything is 'new'!

We seem to have spent most of the last 2 days building flatpacks and shopping. There's still a load to do, the house is upside down.

I plan to start looking for a job tomorrow.

Besides that everything is great. The sun has shined every day since we've been here - 25 degrees. It's forecast to be 27 deg next week even though we're getting towards Winter! The area where we live is absolutely beautiful. We're next door to parkland and there's the Bulimba Creek (river) very close where you can apparantly canoe up to the main brisbane river.

I'm still pinching myself that we're actually here.

Today (Saturday 25th May)

We've spent most of today shopping for our new house.

We went down to IKEA first thing, arriving for opening time at 9am. The IKEA in Brisbane is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and is absolutely huge. What's more it was pretty quiet and quite an enjoyable experience, unlike the last time I visited the Leeds IKEA!

We managed to pick up a bed for Lauren (which she chose herself) along with decent mattresses for us all (no good buying a cheap matress if you value your sleep!), a coffee table and other bits and bobs.

We got back to our new house at lunchtime to await the delivery of our new bed, which arrived on time just as they had said.

We then went to Cannon Hill Shopping Centre in Brisbane to look for a fridge/freezer and washing machine. We managed to pick these up at what I think is a really good price after a bit of haggling. The Salesman welcomed us with open arms and quickly told us he is Welsh, from Cardiff, even though he has lived here for 25 years!

We also bagged ourselves a real bargain. We had no intentions of getting a Dining Table set yet but we saw one we loved on a Manager's Special. It's a dark wood table with 6 dining chairs with Suede back, and what's more the whole lot only cost us $499 (2 hundred British pounds (I'm going to have to work out how to input the British Pound symbol from these Ozzy keyboards)).

We returned at 5pm to our new house to await delivery of the Sofas which again turned up on time.

So far, touch wood, everything in Australia has been a breeze. The people are fantastic. Everyone is friendly and can't do enough to help you. It must be the sun. It's so uplifting waking up to clear blue skies and glorious sunshine every morning.

It's quite funny really. It has been about 25 degrees each day while we've been here but the ozzies have been moaning that it's cool while we've been sweltering. Some are even wearing coats!

Anyway, this looks like being our last night at Cath's. She's been great letting us stay her (again) and I know Lauren's loved it playing with Bonnie and their dog Lucy.

Tomorrow's going to be another busy day building our bed and other flat pack furniture, while we're awaiting our IKEA delivery. We're also going to have a look for a telly. I very nearly bought a 40 inch Plasma with built in HD tuner today but I decided to be sensible. We may have made quick decisions so far with everything else but I'm not taking any chances with a telly, I'm going to have a good look round.

I suppose I also ought to think about looking for a job so I can pay the rent on our new house in the coming weeks!

Our third day in Oz (Friday 25th May)

Can you believe it. We arranged to see a couple of houses early that day. We loved the second place we saw, put in an immediate application, paid the bond and picked up the keys that afternoon!

It's a 3 bedroom house on a gated community in Carina - a really nice part of Brisbane. We've got a garage (with remote control electric door and everything!), a separate laundry room, en-suite master bedroom, the second bedroom has got it's own balacony, fitted kitchen with dishwasher, the lot. There's a shared pool near enough next door to our house along with a BBQ area. Only problem - it's unfurnished.

After picking up the keys we immediately headed down to Capalaba to a couple of furniture stores we had been recommended. Within the 2 hours we had before they closed we managed to buy a really nice sofa (or lounge as they call them over here) and Queen size bed. We actually got 2 sofa's - one 3 seater and one 2 seater, both in Coffee coloured suede fabric.

I'll post photo's when it's all set up. We managed to get free delivery for the sofas to be delivered the next day.

We stayed another night at Cath's and managed to stay up until 10pm this time!

Our second day in Oz

I got up at 4:30. I had already planned to do this because I wanted to be in Fortitude Valley to watch the Liverpool v AC Milan Champions League Final. Someone had told me on BritishExpats.com that I’d be able to find at 24/7 Sports Bar in Fortitude Valley in Brisbane which would be showing the match.

Having never been to Fortitude Valley before I wasn’t fully sure where I needed to be but I looked all around there and could I heck as like find a sports bar that was open. There were a few restaurants that were open at that time in the morning, strangely enough, but no sports bars.

I quickly jumped back in the car and headed back to Cath’s as I new it was being shown on terrestrial TV on SBS. Why didn’t I just get up and watch it on the telly in my wangers in the first place rather than venturing into Brisbane in the middle of the night trying to find a sports bar! It was about a 20 minute drive back to Cath’s so I searched the radio waves trying to find a radio channel where I might be able to listed to the match while I was driving. I did find a channel, but unfortunately the commentary was in Italian. I couldn’t believe it, I was in Australia and the only radio channel that I could listen to the match on was in Italian!

I was pretty pissed off (with myself) but I figured that at least I’d make it back to catch the second half. However, I had made another fundamental mistake. I had assumed that we were 10 hours ahead of the UK as last time when we visited in January, but I didn’t take into account British Summer Time. So we were in fact only 9 hours ahead. Meaning I got back just in time to see AC Milan score their second goal 10 minutes before the final whistle. Liverpool lost and I went back to bed. I’m strongly considering following Aussie Rules football from now on!

Later that morning we went into Brisbane CBD (Central Business District (city centre)). I opened a bank account with Bank of Queensland. This was pretty straight forward and only took about 20 minutes, as opposed to the 40 minutes it took when I went into Worksop to close my Barclays account before we left the UK. We also went to a Starbucks where I got online and applied for a Tax File Number for me and Rach. A TFN is like a National Insurance number in the UK and is needed for everything in Australia. We also had a quick search for rental houses and wrote down a few numbers to arrange a viewing for the following day.

Cath made us a lovely meal in the evening with an obligatory bottle of wine. We were still jetlagged though and in bed asleep for 9pm.

Our first day in Oz

We didn’t do much at all on our first day in Oz. I think we were in bed before 9pm that night (even though we did have a bit of a kip as soon as we got there). Jetlag had fully kicked in!

Our long weekend in L.A.

I haven't posted for a few days as it's been a bit hectic emigrating and all that. I'll try and catch up now starting with our stopover in LA. Also, I haven't had chance to upload the photo's yet so I'll update this post with our photo's in a few days...

We started our first day in LA with an American breakfast at Mel’s Diner in Hollywood – famous as being the location for much of American Graffiti starring Ron Howard, amongst others (although I believe most of that footage was actually shot in a studio, not the diner itself). My breakfast included French Toast which I’ve never had before – it was lurveleeey! Rach and Lauren had ‘a stack’ (pancakes). Not very healthy I know but when in Rome and all that.

We spent the rest of the morning taking in some of the sights of Hollywood. We had a walk up and down the Walk of Fame looking at the celebrity stars. We went to the Foyer of Mann’s Chinese Theatre to look at the hand and footprints of the likes of Gregory Peck, Tom Hanks, etc. We also went in the Hollywood Wax Museum and Guinness Book of World Records. The Hollywood Wax Museum was basically a second-rate Madam Tussauds, and the Guinness Book of World Records was a poor relation to the one that used to be housed in the Trocodero in Piccadilly Circus in London. A bit of a let down really.

The Walk of Fame was full of ‘look-alikes’, some better than others, along with people trying to sell you tours and hip-hop artists trying to get you to listen to the CD they’ve created in the hope that they’ll be discovered.

Hollywood has supposedly been cleaned up in recent years but it still seemed quite dirty and tacky to me. The same can be said of LA in general. I don’t think I once saw any street cleaners the whole time we were in LA.

In the afternoon we went on a couple of guided bus tours, taking in the ‘homes of the rich and famous’ as well as some other sites such as Hollywood Bowl and some of the film studios. Again this was all a bit of a letdown really. Most of the tour around Beverly Hills and Bel Air involved looking at large gates and trying to peer through trees to see a corner of a roof of a Hollywood star’s home. As for the Hollywood Bowl, ok I appreciate that it’s the largest naturally configured concert venue in America but it’s not half the size of Milton Keynes Bowl even, and it’s still only a stage and rows of seats. I can’t image wanting to go on a tour of Sheffield Hallam Arena so I’m not really sure why Hollywood Bowl is a tourist attraction.

We also drove around some of the movie studios. Well actually we drove past the front door of buildings that used to be famous as being the home of movie studios. Most of the big movie studios are actually no longer in Hollywood, they’ve moved down to the San Fernando Valley.

Why did we feel that we were always getting ripped off?

Another thing that got on our goat was the obsession with tipping. I appreciate that many in the service industry get paid pittance so work off tips but it has got ridiculous in LA. For instance on the tour bus not only was there a big sign saying tips are appreciated (after already paying more than it’s worth for a crap tour), there was even a guide to how much we should tip. $10 for an OK tour, $20 for ‘will come again’, etc. I didn’t see anything saying we could get our money back if we thought the whole tour was overrated!

I must have spent a fortune on tips. For instance you’re supposed to tip the porter $1 per bag. We had 7 cases. It’s not like he had to individually carry them all up to our hotel room. I even helped him put them on the trolley. They’re not subtle in their quest for tips either. They went as far as standing in front of us with their hand out before they left the room.

The one that had me flabbergasted was on Santa Monica Pier. There was a street entertainer that was doing some kind of balancing act. We started watching as he did his piece and then before he would continue he made it known to everyone that he expected his tip in advance. He stood their and even pointed people out who where standing in the audience and yet hadn’t tipped, saying ‘if you want to watch show you must tip’. I think he was Korean. Can you imagine that in Covent Garden – the street entertainers asking for money before they did their show? I thought sod him and started to walk away but Rach reined me back because Lauren wanted to watch the show. So I begrudgingly put a dollar in his bucket. His show was crap, I’m sure anyone could have done that after just half an hour practice. I should have put my hand in the bucket and reclaimed my dollar!

Anyway I digress. At the end of the first we were absolutely exhausted so had an early night.

Day 2

We spent day 2 down by the beach. The day didn’t start well. When you look at a map of LA things don’t look that far apart. This is deceiving because actually LA is enormous; it’s a huge sprawling area of disconnected areas that make up greater LA. To give you an idea, Sunset Boulevard alone is 28 miles long. After figuring out the distance to Santa Monica from Hollywood we realised it would be expensive in a taxi so we’d try public transport. We worked out we’d have to get 2 buses.

We must have waited at the bus stop for half a hour before giving up. I thought sod it and went back to our hotel lobby to get a taxi. The taxi was roughly $50 and took about 25 minutes. Actually, if it takes 25 minutes in a taxi imagine how long it would have taken getting 2 buses. We would have spent half the day travelling there and back.

On arrival at Santa Monica we started out on the Santa Monica Pier. This was one of the best bits of the trip. Think Skegness Pier but much larger, less dirty and tacky, better weather and a better view! The view down the coast and the view out to the Pacific was spectacular. We spent a couple of hours on the pier taking in the sights as well as taking Lauren on some rides in Pacific Parc – a fairground on the pier.

On leaving the pier we then headed off to find a bus to take us down to Venice Beach. We had a long walk before we eventually found one. It was a really hot day and it wasn’t long before Lauren was moaning that her feet were hurting her.

Venice Beach was packed, not the beach itself which was largely empty, but the promenade. There were hundreds of stalls set up, mostly selling hippy paraphernalia. We walked along the Venice Beach promenade down to Marina Del Rey. Actually, we didn’t reach the Marina itself. We stopped short and went for a meal at a local fish restaurant, after which went and had a hour on the beach. We hadn’t brought our swimming cosy as no one in their right minds goes swimming in the Pacific in May. We did dip our toes though. The water was freezing!

We then took a taxi back to the hotel. Another $50 plus tip of course.

Day 3

We spent the Sunday at Disneyland. Again, the day didn’t start well.

We bought tickets from the Hollywood tourism office the day before along with what I thought was a reservation on a tour bus for the 3 of us to get there. Apparently it would have cost us approx $80 each way in a taxi. They recommended that we either hire a car for the day or they could book us on one of the tour buses at a reduced rate. Not wanting to drive in LA we decided to book the seats on the bus.

We walked around to the pick-up spot on the Sunday morning to go to Disneyland. We stood their for a while next to the tour ticket booth and after realising we were the only ones there we thought we ought to double check that the bus is on time. We spoke to the tour operators and they told us that the bus was full and had already left. It turned out that we didn’t have a reservation after all, it was a referral. What we should have done was contact the tour operator straight away after purchasing the Disneyland tickets and booked seats on the tour bus.

We were stumped. We walked around looking for a car rental agency but being a Sunday they were all closed. So we made our way back to the hotel to speak to the concierge to see if she could help. It was only then that we noticed there was a Hertz rental desk in the hotel. The concierge tried ringing the tour operators for us to see if there were any other buses that we could get a seat on. No luck. So in the end we had to hire a car after all. As we were leaving the next day we figured we might as well hire the car for 2 days – returning the car to the airport the next day.

The original plan was to be at Disneyland before 10am. By the time we got the hire car (we must have spent at least half an hour in a queue) it was already gone 10am. That’s when the fun began. Not having the American maps for our Tom Tom, and with the hire car we hired (a Ford Taurus) not having SatNav we had to rely on the old-fashioned method – maps.

Normally this wouldn’t be a problem if I was navigating (being a bloke of course), but as Rach refused to drive in L.A. the driving was left to me and the navigation was left to her. We headed off in what we thought was roughly the right direction looking for a sign to the nearest freeway. I kept calling out street names and avenue names to Rach but she couldn’t seem to find any of them on the map (to be fair the maps that Hertz gave us were pretty crap). I had a rough idea that we were heading west towards the coast so I figured we just needed to turn south to be heading in the right direction. Unfortunately before we new it we was surrounded by skyscrapers smack bang in the middle of downtown LA. We carried on through and out of downtown LA, still looking for a freeway, and drove through one of those areas that tourists really need to avoid. We couldn’t believe it, it was just like in the movies. The sidewalks were littered with black homeless people with shopping trolleys full of their possessions. There seemed to be gangs and druggies all over the place – it was like Boys ‘n the Hood. It was one of those places that you definitely shouldn’t stop and ask for directions. Rach was papping herself. I must admit I did step on it a bit, expecting to be carjacked any second.

We eventually found the freeway. I was driving along the freeway for about 30 minutes, putting my complete trust in Rach that she was navigating us in the right direction, when we came across the turn-off for Malibu. Now I can’t say I’m all that familiar with LA but I was sure that Malibu was north of LA, whereas Disneyland is in Anaheim which is south of LA. We were on the right freeway, it was just we’d been travelling in the wrong direction for half an hour!

We realised our mistake, turned around and eventually made it to Disneyland – for 1pm!

Disneyland was ok, but it didn’t seem to be half as good as how I remembered Orlando, Florida when I visited a few years ago in the Navy. It just didn’t seem to be as spectacular – there weren’t half as many shows or big rides as I had expected. The other problem was that it was really busy. If it was that busy on a Sunday in May I dreaded to think what it would be like in the middle of the school holidays! We queued for the first couple of rides but after that we really couldn’t be bothered. There was no way we was going to queue 60 minutes for the big rides - which last all of 60 second. Lauren was moaning after queuing for 10 minutes, and even when we eventually made it on to the rides she didn’t particularly like them. She told me that she doesn’t like rides that are fast, dark, loud, that turn, spin, or go up and down - which pretty much rules out all the rides. We did find a few that she enjoyed – that we all enjoyed in fact. They were the jungle cruise where you go on a river boat through a ‘jungle’ and see lots of animals and tribes on the riverbanks and in the river. It was pretty impressive. The special effects were good and the animals were quite lifelike. We also all enjoyed the Buzz Lightyear ride where you get to control your car and shoot things at the same time.

The day ended with a spectacular fireworks display set to music which was very impressive and worth the entrance money alone. Not sure it was worth all the hassle in the morning though! Only problem, by that time Lauren was absolutely exhausted and was falling asleep towards the end.

Day 4

We had the hire car for our final day and with our flight not leaving until 9:30pm our original intentions was to make the most of our last day and see more of the sights. But we were that exhausted after Disneyland that we couldn’t face it. Our feet were killing us so we decided to just hang around the hotel until it was time to leave for the airport.

Getting to the airport involved more fun and games. We found the airport pretty easily but it was a different matter finding the place we had to return the car to. We followed the signs for rental returns but we missed the sign for Hertz completely and ended up on another freeway taking us away from the airport.

LAX is massive. As such the place where you drop off your hire car is about a mile away from the terminals. When we did find it they had there own fleet of coaches to take you to the airport.

It was a bit confusing at the airport as they do things slightly different to what we’re used to when we’ve travelled in other countries. For a start, when we went to check-in, we got our luggage checked in but then had to take them over to another part of the building to put through security, rather than the bags being whisked away straight away on the conveyer belt at check-in. Once we got rid of the bags at security we then had to go out of the building and then into another building adjacent to it for us to go through security.

Anyway, we made it in good time and boarded our flight to Auckland, New Zealand.

We had a 12 hour flight to Auckland, one hour at Auckland and then boarded our final flight to Brisbane.
Crossing the International Date Line in the pacific immediately put the clocks forward 24 hours and meant that we left LA on Monday evening and landing in Brisbane on Wednesday morning. For us, Tuesday never existed.

I wish we had chosen a relaxing beach stopover in Hawaii! We're all absolutely exhausted after a long weekend in LA, much of which wasn't that great if I was honest.

Disneyland was pretty good yesterday, although we nearly never made it (more about this later), and we enjoyed Santa Monica pier, but the rest of the experience was generally overrated and disappointing. I haven't got time to go into now as the battery on my laptop is about to run out and Rach has packed away the travel adaptor in one of the cases, which are in storage until we head off to the airport later today, and I can't be bothered to go searching for it.

Next stop Brisbane!

Live from Smog City

I'm pleased to say we've safely made it to L.A. with all 7 cases. I admit it was a bit of a nightmare yesterday. Why oh why did we take the train and not get a hire care or taxi (my fault)?

I'm just glad we made the decision to get the earlier train. We left Retford at 9:30. The train arrived into Kings Cross 9 minutes late (no surprises there). We then had to queue for about half a hour for a taxi. It then took another half hour just to make the 2.8 mile trip over to Paddington Station, crawling in heavy traffic. It wasn't even rush hour - so much for congestion charging. From Paddington, we took the Heathrow Express to Heathrow central station. We then had about a 10 minute walk to Heathrow terminal 3.

When we got to the airport we were very surprised to find that there were no queues for check-in. We got checked straight in (relieved to get rid of the suitcases) and proceeded to Security. Unfortunately, the reason why there were no queues at check-in was because everyone was already queuing at Security. It must have took us nearly an hour to clear. It was really hot and stuffy, with little or no air conditioning. One of the walk-through detectors was broke which added to the delays. Everyone was extremely pissed off to say the least. One guy lost his temper and started shouting at the officials, as they seemed to be standing around not doing anything to make things go quicker. I'm surprised he didn't get shot - you know what they're like at airports these days after 9/11.

Once through we went to TGI Fridays for some lunch, seeing as though it was Rachelle's birthday. We were in there for about an hour, and then came out to find that our plane was already boarding - an hour before take off!

The flight was ok. I took about 11.5 hours (for some reason I thought it was going to be 13). The plane had a video on-demand service with plenty of the latest films. I watched Music and Lyrics with Hugh Grant which was a bit cheesy but funny nonetheless. Rach also watched Freedom Writers which she said she enjoyed. Lauren must have slept for at least 5 hours.

One of the best bits about flying to America for me is flying over Iceland. The view is absolutely spectacular. I took these two photo's with my camera phone (in Flight Mode of course):


After arriving at L.A. we got a taxi to our hotel. I got slightly worried after about 20 minutes into the journey because we seemed to be heading into really rough areas, with no signs of Hollywood or downtown LA to be seen. I guess I've watched too many films but I imaged us being taken into some rough area like Inglewood and then robbed by some Mexican family. Anyway, we made it safely to our Hotel. It took about 40 minutes and cost roughly $50. After checking Google Maps this morning I don't think we were taken advantage of. The route that he took looks about right.

As I'm typing this it's now 06:45. We've all been awake since 4am. Damn jetlag! We've woken up to find L.A covered in fog (or is it smog), and there seems to be a giant Elephant outside our window.

The hotel seems ok so far. Wireless internet in the rooms, most importantly, as well as a good coffee maker and large TV with loads of channels (shame about the wall-to-wall adverts though). Not that we're planning on spending much time in the room. We've got a fun packed 4 days planned.

All packed and ready to go

We've said the final goodbyes today and now we're all packed and ready to go. The taxi is booked for 9am tomorrow to take us to the station - us and our 7 cases. That's going to be fun and games tomorrow getting to Heathrow. I thought it would be fun (for Lauren) to get the train instead of getting a hire car down to Heathrow. That's a decision I'm sure I'll regret tomorrow. Us and our 7 cases will be getting a taxi to Retford train station, then the train to Kings Cross, another taxi across to Paddington, and then the Heathrow Express to the airport. I suppose we could have made it even more of an adventure and decided to get the tube to Heathrow but I'm not that much of a sucker for punishment!

I'm not sure how I feel. I should be excited about our first trip to LA tomorrow and then on to Oz to start our new life, but at the moment I just feel a bit numb - the last few days have been a whirlwind.

Rach is sat on the settee still sobbing after just saying goodbye to her family. They came over to spend an hour with us. It was purposefully short - neither Rach or her Mum could have stood it any longer, it was heartbreaking.

I'm glad we're doing this now while Lauren is only 5 and she doesn't really understand the enormity of what we're doing.

So that's it. Nothing left to say except Farewell England.

Goodbye beloved

I've said goodbye to my family and friends, with much heartache, and now it's time for the worst goodbye of all - I have to say goodbye to my Lexus!

It's the first really nice car I've owned, albeit only on a 12 month lease. It's the new Lexus IS 220d - it has a Start button and everything!

Given that I'll probably be earning pittance in Oz (presuming of course I manage to get a job in the first place), I'll probably have to settle for driving around in Joe Mangle's Ute from now on...sob sob.

I hate goodbyes

We've just said goodbye to my Mum and Dad as they set off on their hols to the Dominican Republic. It's bad timing on all of our parts but I guess we had to say goodbye sometime, it wouldn't have made any difference whether it was today or Thursday.

I've been feeling sick all morning knowing what was to come. This morning we went up to see my Grandma in her care home. She's 91 and has dementia so can't even remember who I am. It still upset me though knowing it could possibly be the last time I would ever see her. And then it was time to say goodbye to my parents, which left me crying like a little girl. It's not just the fact that we're going to miss them; I also feel guilty about the fact that we're taking their granddaughter away from them.

In fact, today has been a lot worse than I expected. After my time in the Navy I thought I was emotionally hardened against this kind of thing but I was wrong. Rach is going to be an emotional wreck by the time it comes to saying goodbye to her family on Wednesday.