al_and_lucy

Hello again everyone!

Well things have moved on since we last posted, last time we had not long arrived and staying in short term accommodation. That was in August- now in mid November we are living in a nice 2 bedroom rental apartment in East Perth. We had some trouble at first with trying to get an apartment as we didn't want to just throw money away by putting bonds down on too many places at once, but in the end we were third time lucky and we have a apartment in the location we were after, paying a reasonable amount.

One thing we a]have found though is living in the city can be a bit noisy! This is something we are now considering as our lease will be up at the end of February, then we will have the dilemma of either staying within the city or maybe moving out to the suburbs.

Job-wise, I (Lucy) have been working as a medical scientist looking after point of care testing in the remote areas of WA, very interesting, and very different to lab-based work! It was very handy that I was able to secure the role before we came as having an income straight away removes a lot of the stresses that would have on us if we only had savings to rely on.

Alan managed to get a nicely paid job working for the Department of Environment and Conservation as an IT manager, it was the really the first thing he properly went for. As I was working full time Alan spent the first few weeks securing us our apartment, and then once we had somewhere to live he could then start looking around for work. He sent his details to an agency on the Wednesday, the rang him asking him did he want to go for an IT Manager role, and was employed by the following Friday!

Things have become more routine for us now. We are waiting for our new car to be delivered so we can explore where the buses and trains don't reach. We have decided to go for a Toyota Rav4 though it will only be ever used as a street car! Handy though as its space should keep us happy for a fair while.

We have so far managed to visit the Zoo, Cottesloe Beach, Fremantle and Hilary's but with us finally getting some transport we will now be able to go much further away from home and see all the different places around us.

Some quick thoughts:

• Food is certainly not as expensive as some people seem to think with the posts on here, you don't need to be a millionaire just to have dinner.
• The flies are very annoying.
• Public transport around Perth is very good, its clean and quite reasonably priced.
• If you have the skills finding work is not that bad.
• You won't get tired of seeing all the multi-coloured birds flying around - like the Rainbow Lorikeets - but the Crows are just annoying with their cawing.

That's all we can think of for now but there is probably loads of things we could add, any questions just ask and we will answer them if we can.

We will also update our blog with similar though will be adding some piccies once we process them off the camera.

Lucy + Al

Bermudashorts

Glad it is going so well for you, hope it continues to do so. :sunglasses:

beachlady

Lovely update. It's encouraging to see that it is possible for things to fall into place fairly quickly.

Kapri

Thanks for the update, glad it's going well

Vey

Nice to know that you guys are doing well. All the very best for your future and enjoy the ride