Originally Posted by ozzieeagle

I've got to say Netta yours is a particularly lovely post. I personally find your writing style inspiring, and hopefully I can emulate the way you present and phrase yourself in a couple of years. Thanks


(Yes I am using this BBS as a pleasant educational tool )

Originally Posted by Professional Princess

I am so pleased Branston has made it you know.

Boo sucks to the people that said you should put him down.

Branston Rocks and I shall tell my vet friends.

Originally Posted by Buzzy--Bee

Great Post! Thank you for sharing that. I love the bit about breakfast and drinks outside and about the wildlife. Incidentally are either of you working, or planning on working?

Originally Posted by JohnAndNetta

I can’t believe we’ve already been here nearly a month!

We’ve just been so busy I haven’t had time to post on Expats, plus we’re not even connected on broadband yet so I’ve hardly spent anytime on the Internet.

So firstly, to those of you who don’t know me & John…..we arrived in Brisbane on 9th September and settled on our new property in Balmoral, on the same day. We stayed in a lovely b&b for the first 3 days in New Farm (Willahra House – would highly recommend it). We brought no furniture with us so we moved into our house with an inflatable air bed, a couple of towels, four mugs, and whatever we could cram into our 20kg luggage allowance. We couldn’t make use of the additional migrant luggage allowance as we had already entered Australia in May 2005 to validate our visas, plus we have bought return tickets as we expect to go back to the UK before next September, so we were only allowed the usual 20kg.

Since then we have purchased one bed, a fridge/freezer, washing machine, tumble dryer, and so on and so forth. We got raving deals at Clive Anthony’s for our electrical goods. Thank God the house comes with a cooker. They are amazingly expensive over here. As are secondhand cars. Even at the auction they are unbelievably expensive. So after much deliberation we decided to bite the bullet and buy new. This is amazing since John swore he would never buy a new car in his life, and he hates buying from dealers. He always used to buy at auction in the UK.

Something we didn’t realise, and it was too late by the time we found out, is that secondhand cars in Sydney are far cheaper than Brisbane. Oh well you live and learn. I still haven’t driven out here yet, because John bought a 4wd, and the largest thing I’ve ever driven is a Vauxhall Astra, so I’m terrified. The drivers are all a bit mad in the city, although things are a little less pacey over this side of the river. John just thinks I’m a snivelling wimp. He’s probably right! So we’re going to look for a decrepid old small car for me in the next few days.

We picked up our lovely little diabetic moggy from Sydney a couple of weekends ago. He has been in animal hospital since he arrived in Oz, because his insulin arrived warm, so they had to get him used to a different insulin, and that has been an absolute nightmare. His glucose levels were all over the place, probably down to stress. He has cost us an absolute fortune in vet fees as you can imagine, but now he is one super-chilled out cat, and absolutely loves his new home. Well that was until a couple of days ago when the temperature soared to 36 in Brisbane. We only have air-con in one room, and the ceiling fans just don’t do the trick in those sort of temperatures. So air-con is top on our list of priorities. And meanwhile Branston has taking to sleeping in the bath because he finds it a lot cooler.

Its quite weird because when we arrived it was actually quite cool in the evenings and it was only about 25 during the day. We have already seen fires raging near Ennogerra and the soaring temperature means that Brisbane is now on high bush fire alert.

The drive down to Sydney was beautiful, though Its not something we would like to do at night. Seems like all the big road trains come out once the sun sets and so of-course do the kangaroos. There was plenty of road kill. Its such a shame we had to do the journey in a hurry, but we were aiming to get to Sydney before dark. It took about 12 hours with one ¾ hour stop for lunch and about 5 stops at the ‘driver reviver’ stops. Oooo – free coffee and biscuits – a great idea! I was quite surprised that a large part of the journey from Brisbane to Sydney is on single lane road. We had only got as far as Byron Bay on previous visits to Oz. But there are passing points at least every 5kms and sometimes every 2km, so it doesn’t become tedious.

We’ve seen Sue2 (on the Gold Coast) and family a couple of times – they flew down to Sydney and took the coach back – I think she said it took about 16 hours, but she couldn’t get flights back cos it was holiday weekend so she had no choice.
We went to Australia Zoo yesterday with Sue2 and family. It was absolutely sweltering. I’m guessing that out in the sun it must have been about 40 degrees, but there are plenty of strategically placed water misting fountains to stand under, thank God. The zoo was a lot smaller than I had imagined, but the entertainment was quite good, so we really enjoyed it. There are plans to expand the zoo quite drastically in the next ten years. We didn’t see Steve Irwin but we saw plenty of his crocodile friends….Crikey!


In the last couple of weeks I think me and hubby have been to every major shopping complex in Brisbane. And they are all huge….as big as Lakeside or Bluewater (for the benefit of Essex and kent residents). Furniture is really cheap out here. And the choice is amazing. Something that shocked us was the size of Ikea in Brisbane. Its really titchy compared to the one in Essex (Lakeside) for example. And even the catalogue is very small. But there are some much better stores than Ikea in all the Homemaker cities. You’re really spoilt for choice.

Hubby is a quite a DIY enthusiast, but he was very despondent at the prices of certain things in Bunnings (equivalent of B&Q), but now that he’s found tons of tools, hardware, etc etc at Rocklea Sunday market at about a tenth of the price, he is one happy little bunny. I’m sure we will find other places before too long. We have a long list of markets and hardware stores to visit in the next few weeks. It is amazingly restrictive with regard to the DIY you can’t do out here, because you’re simply not allowed.

John used to do a lot of property redevelopment and we even built our own house in the UK. So he’s finding it very constraining. I think there are some TAFE courses he will go on to allow him to do some certain stuff, but otherwise he’s going to have to pay someone else, which is definitely going to hurt!

We are slowly getting used to the wildlife in our garden, and we have named certain characters that we see on a regular basis. We have Karen and Kevin our two resident Kookaburras, Larry and Larissa, two relatively big blue tongued lizards, one in the front garden and one in the back garden, then there’s Pete and Polly the possums (though I actually think there are a lot more than two judging by the thumping on the roof at night). The pestman says we will probably see a tree python or two at some stage. Although we live in the city, and have quite a small garden, there are loads of trees, which make our garden look something like a private rainforest! So snakes apparently will frequent, though thankfully these tree pythons are pretty harmless.

I had no idea that kookaburras make a racket at any time of day or night. I used to love the noise they make but now I’m having a few second thoughts….I guess like everyone else I’ll just get used to them.

Something I will NEVER get used to is the bloody cockroaches. I have only seen one so far, and it was in the garden. Hubbie passed me a big wooden mallet and prompted me to hurriedly seek and destroy. It was HUGE!!!!! And it splattered everywhere. Yeeeuuucchh. Thank God we have just had the house treated. You’re supposed to get it done once a year, but I think I’ll be inviting the pest man in on a more regular basis.

Our first BBQ was a simple affair. We invited Sue2 and family to be our first Aussie BBQ guinea pigs. We hadn’t had our container arrive at this stage, so I didn’t have too many plates and things, in fact Sue had to bring some bowls with her!!! Nonetheless it went ok and Sue is returning the compliment next weekend! I can’t wait to start doing some regular BBQ’s now that all our kitchen stuff has arrived.

We used Crown as our shippers. The only problems we had were three of the most minor breakages (a glass cocktail stick, a cheap glass, and a piggy key hanger who had a broken ear). The guys at the Australia end were superb. Quarantine have been rather stupid about certain things. We brought along three wooden items, which have obviously been previously treated ready for import to the UK. In fact these items are on sale all over Australia. But they charged us £120 dollars to fumigate. But here’s the most incredible thing….they were going to charge us £300 dollars to treat an ornamental grass display… but the ornamental grass is PLASTIC!!! The plastic grass is set in clear resin in a vase and was originally purchased in Australia for $10. We asked how much it was going to cost us to have the product destroyed, and this turned out to be free. So naturally we went along with the destruction route!
A word of warning ……if you need your stuff quite quickly upon arrival in Oz then you would be better off with a sole use container. All our stuff went into a 20ft container and arrived in Brisbane before we did (3rd Sept). There was no delay at the UK end. The container left UK virtually as soon as it had been packed. There were two weeks to wait whilst our stuff went through Customs clearance in Brisbane, and that was it.

However Sue didn’t have as much stuff as us and has therefore shared a container and their stuff isn’t due to arrive until the beginning of November!!! And she left the UK a good couple of weeks before us.


John’s mum is arriving from the UK on Tuesday and she is staying with us for a month. So we’ve got plenty of sightseeing in store. I’m really looking forward to spending some time familarising myself with Queensland at a more leisurely pace than on previous visits to Oz. I will start her off gently with a visit to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, and coffee at Mt Cootha, but then we’ll move on to whale watching quite swiftly.

Every day since I’ve been here, I keep pinching myself to make sure its real. I just can’t believe how wonderful life is at the moment. Now I know that sounds really corny but its true. Every morning starts with breakfast on the verandah, and every night finishes with a cool glass of Chardonnay on the “entertaining deck”! Now who can say that back at home!?!? I certainly couldn’t have imagined something like this in my wildest dreams.

I am awake most mornings by 05:30am. Not because I can’t sleep, but because the mornings are just so lovely here. I watch tons of dog walkers, joggers, power walkers flitting past at 06:00am and I watch the hot air balloons going out for their champagne breakfasts in the distance, over the CBD. John quite often goes down to Oxford St. for fresh bread in the morning at 06:00am. He used to HATE getting up early in the morning.

I know that reality will eventually kick in once the work starts, and we become part of everyday life in Brisbane, but even then I think I will have a totally different feel about things. Its quite sad to think that I haven’t missed England at all. I phone home regularly but as of yet I don’t miss anything (except friends and family of-course), but even then I find that I’m not thinking about ‘home’ hardly ever.

Apologies to all those people I promised to PM just as soon as I arrived. Things have been so manic for us and I haven’t had proper internet access, I haven’t had time to blink. I will be in touch and will try and arrange a meet in the not too distant future. At the moment I’m focussing on John’s mum’s arrival, which will keep me busy for a bit.


So that’s it for now…..I’m sure I’ve forgotten to mention loads of things, but I’ll sign on soon with another update and I’ll be in touch with those of you I’ve written to previously.

Best wishes to everyone at British Expats…… now you really must excuse me while I go and ‘put another shrimp on the Barbie’!!!!!. Tee hee

Netta
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Originally Posted by the-travelling-wilburys

Fab info,we were really in a turmoil where to go there's so much info,but this place sounds great.Are there alot of places to rent?we get to Brisbane Feb 06.Nothing organised yet but dont know whats best to do.Thanks great post

Originally Posted by the-travelling-wilburys

Hi Netta,the family consists of three kids,well two teenagers and a ten year old.Difficult pleasing them all,so need somewhere near to centre but not too far from coast so we can go at weekends if not working.We are struggling to sell our house here so may have to come and leave our house rented out otherwise we would have liked to buy.We have promised kids a pool so this is important ,but we want to feel as if there's lots going on around.Would you say we should be emailing estate agents in good time before we set off?It would be great if you would keep us posted.Thanks for your help,much appreciated.