Three Weeks Here
Sep 23rd 2004, 10:57 pm
#1
BE Enthusiast
Thread Starter
Joined: Jan 2004
Location: Mornington, Victoria
Posts: 321
Three Weeks Here
It’s sometime since I did a longish post on this site, but I thought now is the time to throw in my opinions about Oz and Melbourne in particular.
Getting here.
Can only be described as calamitous. How the taxi driver got us to Manchester airport with all our luggage in a Peugeot estate car I’ll never know. We had about 12 cases of varying sizes and of course you can guess what happened at the check-in desk. We were 55 kilos overweight, which would have cost us £900 in excess baggage. Luckily the missus’ friend had arrived to see us off and she was able to take all our excess back with her.
One of our small cases contained lots of expensive jewellery, a collection built up by my late Mother-in-Law but now belonging to my wife. In Singapore, I carried this case into the men’s loo only to leave the loo without it. We got to the hotel before we realised. Luckily there was a customer service officer who was working late at night and a dash back to the airport at 12.30am meant I could recover the case with the jewellery in, as it had been handed in. Needless to say I wasn’t too popular with the missus for a few days for losing it in the first place. The jewellery was insured but we wouldn’t have been able to claim as I had been so careless.
Accommodation
The first two nights in Melbourne we stayed in some serviced apartments called the Clarion Suites Gateway, which despite costing us $150 a night proved to be not to our liking. We requested a room on a high floor to be hopefully away from the street noise, but we were given a fairly cramped apartment on the 5th floor, which was right over the junction of William/Flinders Streets and just across Flinders Street from 6 railway tracks with freight trains thundering along all night. We managed to find somewhere a lot quieter on Southbank, which though nicer the cost of $250 a night is starting to make us really keen to find somewhere to rent in the suburbs.
Rental Properties
Not good so far. The missus is keen to get place to rent with a pool in a quiet area and not too far away from the coast. We’ve seen about half a dozen places so far and they range from drab inside to downright dilapidated. Most of the landlords can’t even make the effort to tidy the place before the prospective tenants come round to look. And the real estate agents never seem to do their homework, because you ask questions about the property and they invariably say ‘I don’t know’ and ‘this is the first time I’ve seen it too’. Unbelievable.
Weather
People are right when they say it’s cooler here than they expect. There seems to be a constant wind chill at temps up to about 21C which we’ve had a couple of days since we’ve been here. We’ve had about 4 or 5 gloriously sunny days but there has been more grey skies than we expected. Worryingly, the missus is starting to think about living in Sydney for the better weather, but is it sunnier in Sydney? The good people at bom.gov.au don’t seem to say on their website. Personally I like Melbourne and I do not want move to Sydney so I can see plenty of arguments brewing.
Getting Organised
Joined the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in the UK and activated the account when we got here. We were given a debit card when we activated the account, however this not accepted everywhere and we can only withdraw up to $800 from an ATM in any one day, this includes transactions also.
Getting a tax file number from ato.gov.au was easier than expected and registering for Medicare was fairly easy as we had got in Oz on the STNI scheme and the State of Victoria had passed on all our details.
Impressions of Melbourne
Giant sprawling Metropolis, with a dynamic city centre and lot’s of parkland with sports grounds and pitches everywhere. Not too bad to get around with trams of all shapes sizes and colours all over the place. We’ve checked out most of the beaches around now, from Surf Beach in Torquay to Mount Martha and we consider the top three are Surf Beach, followed by Carrum Beach followed by Parkdale Beach. The rest all have pretty clean sand and the bathing is pretty safe for young kids (apart from Surf Beach), but they all have some deposits of seaweed on them and not sure if the councils clean them more in the summer?
You’re probably all asleep by now so I’ll stop rambling on.
Neil
Getting here.
Can only be described as calamitous. How the taxi driver got us to Manchester airport with all our luggage in a Peugeot estate car I’ll never know. We had about 12 cases of varying sizes and of course you can guess what happened at the check-in desk. We were 55 kilos overweight, which would have cost us £900 in excess baggage. Luckily the missus’ friend had arrived to see us off and she was able to take all our excess back with her.
One of our small cases contained lots of expensive jewellery, a collection built up by my late Mother-in-Law but now belonging to my wife. In Singapore, I carried this case into the men’s loo only to leave the loo without it. We got to the hotel before we realised. Luckily there was a customer service officer who was working late at night and a dash back to the airport at 12.30am meant I could recover the case with the jewellery in, as it had been handed in. Needless to say I wasn’t too popular with the missus for a few days for losing it in the first place. The jewellery was insured but we wouldn’t have been able to claim as I had been so careless.
Accommodation
The first two nights in Melbourne we stayed in some serviced apartments called the Clarion Suites Gateway, which despite costing us $150 a night proved to be not to our liking. We requested a room on a high floor to be hopefully away from the street noise, but we were given a fairly cramped apartment on the 5th floor, which was right over the junction of William/Flinders Streets and just across Flinders Street from 6 railway tracks with freight trains thundering along all night. We managed to find somewhere a lot quieter on Southbank, which though nicer the cost of $250 a night is starting to make us really keen to find somewhere to rent in the suburbs.
Rental Properties
Not good so far. The missus is keen to get place to rent with a pool in a quiet area and not too far away from the coast. We’ve seen about half a dozen places so far and they range from drab inside to downright dilapidated. Most of the landlords can’t even make the effort to tidy the place before the prospective tenants come round to look. And the real estate agents never seem to do their homework, because you ask questions about the property and they invariably say ‘I don’t know’ and ‘this is the first time I’ve seen it too’. Unbelievable.
Weather
People are right when they say it’s cooler here than they expect. There seems to be a constant wind chill at temps up to about 21C which we’ve had a couple of days since we’ve been here. We’ve had about 4 or 5 gloriously sunny days but there has been more grey skies than we expected. Worryingly, the missus is starting to think about living in Sydney for the better weather, but is it sunnier in Sydney? The good people at bom.gov.au don’t seem to say on their website. Personally I like Melbourne and I do not want move to Sydney so I can see plenty of arguments brewing.
Getting Organised
Joined the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in the UK and activated the account when we got here. We were given a debit card when we activated the account, however this not accepted everywhere and we can only withdraw up to $800 from an ATM in any one day, this includes transactions also.
Getting a tax file number from ato.gov.au was easier than expected and registering for Medicare was fairly easy as we had got in Oz on the STNI scheme and the State of Victoria had passed on all our details.
Impressions of Melbourne
Giant sprawling Metropolis, with a dynamic city centre and lot’s of parkland with sports grounds and pitches everywhere. Not too bad to get around with trams of all shapes sizes and colours all over the place. We’ve checked out most of the beaches around now, from Surf Beach in Torquay to Mount Martha and we consider the top three are Surf Beach, followed by Carrum Beach followed by Parkdale Beach. The rest all have pretty clean sand and the bathing is pretty safe for young kids (apart from Surf Beach), but they all have some deposits of seaweed on them and not sure if the councils clean them more in the summer?
You’re probably all asleep by now so I’ll stop rambling on.
Neil
Sep 24th 2004, 5:57 am
#2
Forum Regular
Joined: Nov 2002
Location: Melbourne, thank Zeus!
Posts: 71
Re: Three Weeks Here
Originally Posted by Neil S
It’s sometime since I did a longish post on this site, but I thought now is the time to throw in my opinions about Oz and Melbourne in particular.
Neil
Neil
GETTING HERE.
Hired a car from Hertz for one way drive from Bristol to Heathrow. Got upgraded to a Range Rover for free due to lack of cars! M4 was blocked due to road works and a crash so we were pretty late to Heathrow but made it just, in spite of the UKs Third world transport infrastructure. Flew by Cathay Pacific who were generally pretty good.
Had an 11 hour stop in Hong Kong so we managed to to take the kids up the cable car for lunch on a mountain. Nice place.
ACCOMODATION.
Pre booked a seviced flat in Southbank through Short Stay Appartments. Got a special internet rate of $169 per night. Our appartment was two beds and was really nice. We were on the 30th floor with a fantastic view of the skyscrapers. The complex also has a pool,gym and tennis court which kept the kids happy. It also had broadband in the appartment which was invaluable considering we'd never been to OZ before. We hired a car, again from Hertz which was located nearly next door. We used the first week to scout around Melbourne in some of the areas we had liked the look of on the web from the UK. We also bought a car.
RENTED PROPERTIES
The basic rule in Melbourne seems to be that the Eastern suburbs are good (in general) and the Western suburbs are worse/bad (In General) being more industrial. We have ended up in a Suburb called Viewbank in the North East which is about 16 Km from the center. Our 3 bed rented house is nearly new and very nice ($260 a week) in a very quiet area which is great for the kids. The Real-Estate agents have all be really helpful and friendly. One of them actually put us in contact with a competator so that we could get this house, which we didn't know about! Swimming Pools are now unpopular in Melbourne so don't expect to come here and get one by default. This is party due to the maintainence costs, water restrictions, and the fact that most people don't think the weather in Victoria justifies it. The public transport is way better than in the UK. There are the trams, and there are little train stations all over the place. I can jump on a train at a station 5 mins down the road and be in the center in less than 30 mins. Very clean and civilized.
WEATHER
Not much to add here although to be fair it is very early spring here. We have already had a couple of lovely warm days (24c) which would do justice to a British summer. The recent rain here means that everything is nice and green.
GETTING ORGANISED
We have an HSBC bank account in the UK so it was easy to set one up over here as HSBC is in Melbourne, although there are not as many branches as other banks. The bank staff here have been really helpful to us and we have
had few problems. We transferred our money from the UK to our OZ account using a currency trading company called HiFX who were really great. It meant that we got a much better exchange rate than by transferring through the bank direct.
IMPRESSIONS OF MELBOURNE
We love it here. It's a city of many contrasts. The beach in St Kilda in Melbourne reminds you of being in Torquey or Paingnton in devon although as lot less crowded during the day. Within 10 minutes you can drive into what looks like New York although with a continental feel with people sitting outside cafe's by the river on Southbank. The center has areas which have quite a lot of victorian architecture so it all seems quite familiar somehow. For a city of it's size there is far less traffic then you would have in the UK, although the locals still complain about it. Go futher north and some of the inner suburbs can be variable, and others nicer. Towards the suburbs where we are, it starts to spread out with lots of green areas, parks, and newer bigger houses. Lots of little local high streets with a good selection of local shops, and shopping areas. Some of these areas can remind you of England slightly being quite green, while other look more like small town America complete with American style level crossing for the trains. There are also loads of massive shopping Malls, far bigger than we have in in the UK on average. We have been very surprised at how good the food shopping is with fresh produce again being much better then the UK. The fresh veg and fruits are HUGE which has been making us laugh. The UK is ahead on the processed microwave food type stuff which we don't like anyway. One thing that was very important to us was the Schools and sports facilites/parks having 2 young children. Melbourne wins hands down on all of these compared to the UK. We have enrolled ours in a local State school which is 2 mins walk from where we live. The class sizes are much smaller being about 22-24 in size and with much better facilities. Every school has the Australian flag flying in the playground which we like as a positive attitude to their country. We have also found the Australians we have met to be really friendly. We have already been round to both our neighbours for drinks and a chat, in fact one of them came out and invited us in while we were still unloading the car! The people in Melbourne are very proud and fond of their city, and it makes such a refeshing change from being in the UK where most people (like us) had got to the point of hating it. We can see why Melbourne got the award as the worlds most livable city.
I can't promise to answer any questions people may have because we are still very busy!
BB
Sep 24th 2004, 7:02 am
#3
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Oct 2003
Location: Nappyland
Posts: 2,886
Re: Three Weeks Here
Originally Posted by Bluebristolian
I thought I add our initial impressions as we have also been in Melbourne for 3 weeks.
GETTING HERE.
Hired a car from Hertz for one way drive from Bristol to Heathrow. Got upgraded to a Range Rover for free due to lack of cars! M4 was blocked due to road works and a crash so we were pretty late to Heathrow but made it just, in spite of the UKs Third world transport infrastructure. Flew by Cathay Pacific who were generally pretty good.
Had an 11 hour stop in Hong Kong so we managed to to take the kids up the cable car for lunch on a mountain. Nice place.
ACCOMODATION.
Pre booked a seviced flat in Southbank through Short Stay Appartments. Got a special internet rate of $169 per night. Our appartment was two beds and was really nice. We were on the 30th floor with a fantastic view of the skyscrapers. The complex also has a pool,gym and tennis court which kept the kids happy. It also had broadband in the appartment which was invaluable considering we'd never been to OZ before. We hired a car, again from Hertz which was located nearly next door. We used the first week to scout around Melbourne in some of the areas we had liked the look of on the web from the UK. We also bought a car.
RENTED PROPERTIES
The basic rule in Melbourne seems to be that the Eastern suburbs are good (in general) and the Western suburbs are worse/bad (In General) being more industrial. We have ended up in a Suburb called Viewbank in the North East which is about 16 Km from the center. Our 3 bed rented house is nearly new and very nice ($260 a week) in a very quiet area which is great for the kids. The Real-Estate agents have all be really helpful and friendly. One of them actually put us in contact with a competator so that we could get this house, which we didn't know about! Swimming Pools are now unpopular in Melbourne so don't expect to come here and get one by default. This is party due to the maintainence costs, water restrictions, and the fact that most people don't think the weather in Victoria justifies it. The public transport is way better than in the UK. There are the trams, and there are little train stations all over the place. I can jump on a train at a station 5 mins down the road and be in the center in less than 30 mins. Very clean and civilized.
WEATHER
Not much to add here although to be fair it is very early spring here. We have already had a couple of lovely warm days (24c) which would do justice to a British summer. The recent rain here means that everything is nice and green.
GETTING ORGANISED
We have an HSBC bank account in the UK so it was easy to set one up over here as HSBC is in Melbourne, although there are not as many branches as other banks. The bank staff here have been really helpful to us and we have
had few problems. We transferred our money from the UK to our OZ account using a currency trading company called HiFX who were really great. It meant that we got a much better exchange rate than by transferring through the bank direct.
IMPRESSIONS OF MELBOURNE
We love it here. It's a city of many contrasts. The beach in St Kilda in Melbourne reminds you of being in Torquey or Paingnton in devon although as lot less crowded during the day. Within 10 minutes you can drive into what looks like New York although with a continental feel with people sitting outside cafe's by the river on Southbank. The center has areas which have quite a lot of victorian architecture so it all seems quite familiar somehow. For a city of it's size there is far less traffic then you would have in the UK, although the locals still complain about it. Go futher north and some of the inner suburbs can be variable, and others nicer. Towards the suburbs where we are, it starts to spread out with lots of green areas, parks, and newer bigger houses. Lots of little local high streets with a good selection of local shops, and shopping areas. Some of these areas can remind you of England slightly being quite green, while other look more like small town America complete with American style level crossing for the trains. There are also loads of massive shopping Malls, far bigger than we have in in the UK on average. We have been very surprised at how good the food shopping is with fresh produce again being much better then the UK. The fresh veg and fruits are HUGE which has been making us laugh. The UK is ahead on the processed microwave food type stuff which we don't like anyway. One thing that was very important to us was the Schools and sports facilites/parks having 2 young children. Melbourne wins hands down on all of these compared to the UK. We have enrolled ours in a local State school which is 2 mins walk from where we live. The class sizes are much smaller being about 22-24 in size and with much better facilities. Every school has the Australian flag flying in the playground which we like as a positive attitude to their country. We have also found the Australians we have met to be really friendly. We have already been round to both our neighbours for drinks and a chat, in fact one of them came out and invited us in while we were still unloading the car! The people in Melbourne are very proud and fond of their city, and it makes such a refeshing change from being in the UK where most people (like us) had got to the point of hating it. We can see why Melbourne got the award as the worlds most livable city.
I can't promise to answer any questions people may have because we are still very busy!
BB
GETTING HERE.
Hired a car from Hertz for one way drive from Bristol to Heathrow. Got upgraded to a Range Rover for free due to lack of cars! M4 was blocked due to road works and a crash so we were pretty late to Heathrow but made it just, in spite of the UKs Third world transport infrastructure. Flew by Cathay Pacific who were generally pretty good.
Had an 11 hour stop in Hong Kong so we managed to to take the kids up the cable car for lunch on a mountain. Nice place.
ACCOMODATION.
Pre booked a seviced flat in Southbank through Short Stay Appartments. Got a special internet rate of $169 per night. Our appartment was two beds and was really nice. We were on the 30th floor with a fantastic view of the skyscrapers. The complex also has a pool,gym and tennis court which kept the kids happy. It also had broadband in the appartment which was invaluable considering we'd never been to OZ before. We hired a car, again from Hertz which was located nearly next door. We used the first week to scout around Melbourne in some of the areas we had liked the look of on the web from the UK. We also bought a car.
RENTED PROPERTIES
The basic rule in Melbourne seems to be that the Eastern suburbs are good (in general) and the Western suburbs are worse/bad (In General) being more industrial. We have ended up in a Suburb called Viewbank in the North East which is about 16 Km from the center. Our 3 bed rented house is nearly new and very nice ($260 a week) in a very quiet area which is great for the kids. The Real-Estate agents have all be really helpful and friendly. One of them actually put us in contact with a competator so that we could get this house, which we didn't know about! Swimming Pools are now unpopular in Melbourne so don't expect to come here and get one by default. This is party due to the maintainence costs, water restrictions, and the fact that most people don't think the weather in Victoria justifies it. The public transport is way better than in the UK. There are the trams, and there are little train stations all over the place. I can jump on a train at a station 5 mins down the road and be in the center in less than 30 mins. Very clean and civilized.
WEATHER
Not much to add here although to be fair it is very early spring here. We have already had a couple of lovely warm days (24c) which would do justice to a British summer. The recent rain here means that everything is nice and green.
GETTING ORGANISED
We have an HSBC bank account in the UK so it was easy to set one up over here as HSBC is in Melbourne, although there are not as many branches as other banks. The bank staff here have been really helpful to us and we have
had few problems. We transferred our money from the UK to our OZ account using a currency trading company called HiFX who were really great. It meant that we got a much better exchange rate than by transferring through the bank direct.
IMPRESSIONS OF MELBOURNE
We love it here. It's a city of many contrasts. The beach in St Kilda in Melbourne reminds you of being in Torquey or Paingnton in devon although as lot less crowded during the day. Within 10 minutes you can drive into what looks like New York although with a continental feel with people sitting outside cafe's by the river on Southbank. The center has areas which have quite a lot of victorian architecture so it all seems quite familiar somehow. For a city of it's size there is far less traffic then you would have in the UK, although the locals still complain about it. Go futher north and some of the inner suburbs can be variable, and others nicer. Towards the suburbs where we are, it starts to spread out with lots of green areas, parks, and newer bigger houses. Lots of little local high streets with a good selection of local shops, and shopping areas. Some of these areas can remind you of England slightly being quite green, while other look more like small town America complete with American style level crossing for the trains. There are also loads of massive shopping Malls, far bigger than we have in in the UK on average. We have been very surprised at how good the food shopping is with fresh produce again being much better then the UK. The fresh veg and fruits are HUGE which has been making us laugh. The UK is ahead on the processed microwave food type stuff which we don't like anyway. One thing that was very important to us was the Schools and sports facilites/parks having 2 young children. Melbourne wins hands down on all of these compared to the UK. We have enrolled ours in a local State school which is 2 mins walk from where we live. The class sizes are much smaller being about 22-24 in size and with much better facilities. Every school has the Australian flag flying in the playground which we like as a positive attitude to their country. We have also found the Australians we have met to be really friendly. We have already been round to both our neighbours for drinks and a chat, in fact one of them came out and invited us in while we were still unloading the car! The people in Melbourne are very proud and fond of their city, and it makes such a refeshing change from being in the UK where most people (like us) had got to the point of hating it. We can see why Melbourne got the award as the worlds most livable city.
I can't promise to answer any questions people may have because we are still very busy!
BB
So in summary, most people in the UK hate 'the UK', the shopping malls in Melbourne are bigger than the malls in 'the UK', the fresh fruit is bigger than 'the UK' and the traffic in Melbourne is far less than 'the UK'.
I guess you're not one to moan about generalisations!!
Sep 24th 2004, 10:58 am
#4
Forum Regular
Joined: Nov 2002
Location: Melbourne, thank Zeus!
Posts: 71
Re: Three Weeks Here
Originally Posted by HiddenPaw
interesting comparisons between Melbourne and 'the UK'. Do you mean the whole of the UK?
So in summary, most people in the UK hate 'the UK', the shopping malls in Melbourne are bigger than the malls in 'the UK', the fresh fruit is bigger than 'the UK' and the traffic in Melbourne is far less than 'the UK'.
I guess you're not one to moan about generalisations!!
So in summary, most people in the UK hate 'the UK', the shopping malls in Melbourne are bigger than the malls in 'the UK', the fresh fruit is bigger than 'the UK' and the traffic in Melbourne is far less than 'the UK'.
I guess you're not one to moan about generalisations!!
Sep 24th 2004, 11:14 am
#5
Guest
Posts: n/a
Re: Three Weeks Here
Originally Posted by Bluebristolian
Oh yeah, I forgot to add that most people in Melbourne are nowhere near as pedanitic and humourless as some people in the UK. It's another thing that most people (Like us) are really glad to leave behind.
Sep 24th 2004, 12:59 pm
#7
Forum Regular
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 113
Re: Three Weeks Here
Hi Neil and BB,
thanks for taking time to write so detailed about your experience.
Can't speak for the others, but I just love hearing about the first days or weeks of other expats. Can't wait until its my turn!
Lavinia
thanks for taking time to write so detailed about your experience.
Can't speak for the others, but I just love hearing about the first days or weeks of other expats. Can't wait until its my turn!
Lavinia
Sep 24th 2004, 1:31 pm
#8
Forum Regular
Joined: Dec 2003
Location: Bris!!
Posts: 241
Re: Three Weeks Here
Originally Posted by Neil S
Getting Organised
Joined the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in the UK and activated the account when we got here. We were given a debit card when we activated the account, however this not accepted everywhere and we can only withdraw up to $800 from an ATM in any one day, this includes transactions also.
Joined the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in the UK and activated the account when we got here. We were given a debit card when we activated the account, however this not accepted everywhere and we can only withdraw up to $800 from an ATM in any one day, this includes transactions also.
Muzzman
Sep 24th 2004, 1:54 pm
#9
Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 12,063
Re: Three Weeks Here
Originally Posted by Bluebristolian
Oh yeah, I forgot to add that most people in Melbourne are nowhere near as pedanitic and humourless as some people in the UK. It's another thing that most people (Like us) are really glad to leave behind.
and good on yer mate sounds fantastic so nice to hear something positive
Sep 24th 2004, 2:45 pm
#10
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Aug 2003
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 2,389
Re: Three Weeks Here
Originally Posted by Neil S
It’s sometime since I did a longish post on this site, but I thought now is the time to throw in my opinions about Oz and Melbourne in particular.
Getting here.
Can only be described as calamitous. How the taxi driver got us to Manchester airport with all our luggage in a Peugeot estate car I’ll never know. We had about 12 cases of varying sizes and of course you can guess what happened at the check-in desk. We were 55 kilos overweight, which would have cost us £900 in excess baggage. Luckily the missus’ friend had arrived to see us off and she was able to take all our excess back with her.
One of our small cases contained lots of expensive jewellery, a collection built up by my late Mother-in-Law but now belonging to my wife. In Singapore, I carried this case into the men’s loo only to leave the loo without it. We got to the hotel before we realised. Luckily there was a customer service officer who was working late at night and a dash back to the airport at 12.30am meant I could recover the case with the jewellery in, as it had been handed in. Needless to say I wasn’t too popular with the missus for a few days for losing it in the first place. The jewellery was insured but we wouldn’t have been able to claim as I had been so careless.
Accommodation
The first two nights in Melbourne we stayed in some serviced apartments called the Clarion Suites Gateway, which despite costing us $150 a night proved to be not to our liking. We requested a room on a high floor to be hopefully away from the street noise, but we were given a fairly cramped apartment on the 5th floor, which was right over the junction of William/Flinders Streets and just across Flinders Street from 6 railway tracks with freight trains thundering along all night. We managed to find somewhere a lot quieter on Southbank, which though nicer the cost of $250 a night is starting to make us really keen to find somewhere to rent in the suburbs.
Rental Properties
Not good so far. The missus is keen to get place to rent with a pool in a quiet area and not too far away from the coast. We’ve seen about half a dozen places so far and they range from drab inside to downright dilapidated. Most of the landlords can’t even make the effort to tidy the place before the prospective tenants come round to look. And the real estate agents never seem to do their homework, because you ask questions about the property and they invariably say ‘I don’t know’ and ‘this is the first time I’ve seen it too’. Unbelievable.
Weather
People are right when they say it’s cooler here than they expect. There seems to be a constant wind chill at temps up to about 21C which we’ve had a couple of days since we’ve been here. We’ve had about 4 or 5 gloriously sunny days but there has been more grey skies than we expected. Worryingly, the missus is starting to think about living in Sydney for the better weather, but is it sunnier in Sydney? The good people at bom.gov.au don’t seem to say on their website. Personally I like Melbourne and I do not want move to Sydney so I can see plenty of arguments brewing.
Getting Organised
Joined the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in the UK and activated the account when we got here. We were given a debit card when we activated the account, however this not accepted everywhere and we can only withdraw up to $800 from an ATM in any one day, this includes transactions also.
Getting a tax file number from ato.gov.au was easier than expected and registering for Medicare was fairly easy as we had got in Oz on the STNI scheme and the State of Victoria had passed on all our details.
Impressions of Melbourne
Giant sprawling Metropolis, with a dynamic city centre and lot’s of parkland with sports grounds and pitches everywhere. Not too bad to get around with trams of all shapes sizes and colours all over the place. We’ve checked out most of the beaches around now, from Surf Beach in Torquay to Mount Martha and we consider the top three are Surf Beach, followed by Carrum Beach followed by Parkdale Beach. The rest all have pretty clean sand and the bathing is pretty safe for young kids (apart from Surf Beach), but they all have some deposits of seaweed on them and not sure if the councils clean them more in the summer?
You’re probably all asleep by now so I’ll stop rambling on.
Neil
Getting here.
Can only be described as calamitous. How the taxi driver got us to Manchester airport with all our luggage in a Peugeot estate car I’ll never know. We had about 12 cases of varying sizes and of course you can guess what happened at the check-in desk. We were 55 kilos overweight, which would have cost us £900 in excess baggage. Luckily the missus’ friend had arrived to see us off and she was able to take all our excess back with her.
One of our small cases contained lots of expensive jewellery, a collection built up by my late Mother-in-Law but now belonging to my wife. In Singapore, I carried this case into the men’s loo only to leave the loo without it. We got to the hotel before we realised. Luckily there was a customer service officer who was working late at night and a dash back to the airport at 12.30am meant I could recover the case with the jewellery in, as it had been handed in. Needless to say I wasn’t too popular with the missus for a few days for losing it in the first place. The jewellery was insured but we wouldn’t have been able to claim as I had been so careless.
Accommodation
The first two nights in Melbourne we stayed in some serviced apartments called the Clarion Suites Gateway, which despite costing us $150 a night proved to be not to our liking. We requested a room on a high floor to be hopefully away from the street noise, but we were given a fairly cramped apartment on the 5th floor, which was right over the junction of William/Flinders Streets and just across Flinders Street from 6 railway tracks with freight trains thundering along all night. We managed to find somewhere a lot quieter on Southbank, which though nicer the cost of $250 a night is starting to make us really keen to find somewhere to rent in the suburbs.
Rental Properties
Not good so far. The missus is keen to get place to rent with a pool in a quiet area and not too far away from the coast. We’ve seen about half a dozen places so far and they range from drab inside to downright dilapidated. Most of the landlords can’t even make the effort to tidy the place before the prospective tenants come round to look. And the real estate agents never seem to do their homework, because you ask questions about the property and they invariably say ‘I don’t know’ and ‘this is the first time I’ve seen it too’. Unbelievable.
Weather
People are right when they say it’s cooler here than they expect. There seems to be a constant wind chill at temps up to about 21C which we’ve had a couple of days since we’ve been here. We’ve had about 4 or 5 gloriously sunny days but there has been more grey skies than we expected. Worryingly, the missus is starting to think about living in Sydney for the better weather, but is it sunnier in Sydney? The good people at bom.gov.au don’t seem to say on their website. Personally I like Melbourne and I do not want move to Sydney so I can see plenty of arguments brewing.
Getting Organised
Joined the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in the UK and activated the account when we got here. We were given a debit card when we activated the account, however this not accepted everywhere and we can only withdraw up to $800 from an ATM in any one day, this includes transactions also.
Getting a tax file number from ato.gov.au was easier than expected and registering for Medicare was fairly easy as we had got in Oz on the STNI scheme and the State of Victoria had passed on all our details.
Impressions of Melbourne
Giant sprawling Metropolis, with a dynamic city centre and lot’s of parkland with sports grounds and pitches everywhere. Not too bad to get around with trams of all shapes sizes and colours all over the place. We’ve checked out most of the beaches around now, from Surf Beach in Torquay to Mount Martha and we consider the top three are Surf Beach, followed by Carrum Beach followed by Parkdale Beach. The rest all have pretty clean sand and the bathing is pretty safe for young kids (apart from Surf Beach), but they all have some deposits of seaweed on them and not sure if the councils clean them more in the summer?
You’re probably all asleep by now so I’ll stop rambling on.
Neil
Sep 24th 2004, 2:48 pm
#11
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Aug 2003
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 2,389
Re: Three Weeks Here
.thanks for sharing your views.
Do go to Britvics and register - your views - and Neils will be appreciated on Britvics by those of us still researching and waiting to get to Victoria
Do go to Britvics and register - your views - and Neils will be appreciated on Britvics by those of us still researching and waiting to get to Victoria
Sep 24th 2004, 2:50 pm
#12
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Joined: Aug 2003
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 2,389
Re: Three Weeks Here
Originally Posted by Bluebristolian
I thought I add our initial impressions as we have also been in Melbourne for 3 weeks.
BB
BB
Sep 24th 2004, 3:32 pm
#13
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Oct 2003
Location: Nappyland
Posts: 2,886
Re: Three Weeks Here
Originally Posted by Bluebristolian
Oh yeah, I forgot to add that most people in Melbourne are nowhere near as pedanitic and humourless as some people in the UK. It's another thing that most people (Like us) are really glad to leave behind.
. it's great that you are enjoying melbourne as it is an amazing city in which to live.
Sep 24th 2004, 4:55 pm
#14
Bite my shiny metal ass!
Joined: May 2004
Location: Surrey UK
Posts: 73
Re: Three Weeks Here
Thanks very much to both of you, this is really useful and interesting stuff to those of us who are planning on going to Melbourne.
I wouldn't worry about people who don't like generalisations - you can hardly do a blow-by-blow listing - Melbourne is nicer than Scunthorpe but not as good as Towcester, etc. Anyway, let's face it, not many places can beat the nicer bits of Britain in terms of fantastic scenery and historical architecture, but when you're talking about the weather, the people, the shops and the politics... It depends on what you are talking about. The point is, Melbourne is better for YOU and it's your impressions we're talking about.
(I'd send you some karma but I'm afraid it ran over my dogma.)
I wouldn't worry about people who don't like generalisations - you can hardly do a blow-by-blow listing - Melbourne is nicer than Scunthorpe but not as good as Towcester, etc. Anyway, let's face it, not many places can beat the nicer bits of Britain in terms of fantastic scenery and historical architecture, but when you're talking about the weather, the people, the shops and the politics... It depends on what you are talking about. The point is, Melbourne is better for YOU and it's your impressions we're talking about.
(I'd send you some karma but I'm afraid it ran over my dogma.)
Sep 25th 2004, 10:46 am
#15
Forum Regular
Joined: Nov 2002
Location: Melbourne, thank Zeus!
Posts: 71
Re: Three Weeks Here
[QUOTE=HiddenPaw]sorry i should have said i liked both posts about melbourne....but i just don;t see how you can compare one city to a whole country .
Fair enough but I was only trying to give a general impression. If it helps put things in context, then I have been living in Bristol and working in Bath for the last few years, but have also lived in Hendon London, Camberly in Surrey, Billericay in Essex, and Lancaster in the North.
One other thing I really like over here is that the music on the radio is miles better (for me) as I really dislike Rap and most R&B music which is relatively rare here, whereas I love rock and alternative rock music which is played far more here than in the UK.
BB.
. Fair enough but I was only trying to give a general impression. If it helps put things in context, then I have been living in Bristol and working in Bath for the last few years, but have also lived in Hendon London, Camberly in Surrey, Billericay in Essex, and Lancaster in the North.
One other thing I really like over here is that the music on the radio is miles better (for me) as I really dislike Rap and most R&B music which is relatively rare here, whereas I love rock and alternative rock music which is played far more here than in the UK.
BB.