What's been going on..

I have decorated our house for Christmas! Hello kitchen roll Christmas Wreath! We also have the top of a Christmas tree that is propped up on a chair in the bay window, so I'd say we're in full festive spirit.

When you don't have TV or internet, you have to make do with what you can find. So we've had some very interesting evening entertainment...

We have an oven!! It's very old and very rubbish and is either insanely hot or cold, but it is an oven none the less. So I made cookies =] We have a slight obsession with cookies and cream ice cream (as in we eat half a tub every night, not even bothering with bowls) and hot, freshly baked cookies makes it so much better!! It also makes the house smell much better than the usual boy smell!

A gardener came and cut back our garden. It was an overgrown jungle that we were afraid to set foot in for fear of snakes and spiders. Now we can see it is huge, with different levels, a big washing line, a patio area and even a herb garden and vegetable beds. We also discovered this 'little' fellow.

I've been doing more acro yoga, this time on a very crowded Bondi Beach. Yep, even in December the sky is this colour and even the breeze is hot.

 And the best part...
After a ridiculously long interview process and auditions, I have a job at Luna Park, the iconic theme park down on the water at Sydney Harbour. It's an incredible place to be, looking out on the harbour bridge and the opera house, with boats sailing past. I am a rides operator, so it's my job to check the rides first thing, ensure guests are strapped in properly, start and stop the rides.

The park was first opened in the 1930s, and it has retained all of it's classic charm. All the original artwork and a lot of the rides remain. While it has been done up and reopened after a massive fire burnt the place down in the 70s, it's still very old school.

Today was my second day and I had a man fall down a 40ft slide while attempting to get into his mat. And then, I managed to break an entire ride ! My supervisor who was checking I knew what I was doing asked me to turn it off. I did. But then we couldn't turn it back on. Oops.

Epic in Epping

It's all change again!


I quit my blueberry picking job. It was hard work that I stupidly started doing in the hottest part of the year. But mostly I quit because it was a pay-to-work situation. I was paid $7.50 per bucket of blueberries, then I had to pay $26 rent per night, and $5 each day for the bus to the farm and back. With tax, I was just about floating, but I definitely wasn't saving anything for the big adventures I want to have. So I decided to leave Coff's Harbour and head back to the friends I'd left in Sydney.


I went back to Bayside Conference Centre for a few nights, until WE GOT EVICTED! It turns out our landlady did not get government authorisation for us to live there, and a 'lovely' neighbour over the road decided the best use of his time was to photograph people coming and going and forward it to the council.


So I was very nearly homeless. But I was saved. By a beautiful house in Epping. It's a suburb about 40minutes out of Sydney, with good public transport links and a shopping plaza with an incredible food court about 10 minutes walk away. It is a 3 bedroom house - though we turned the 2nd lounge into another bedroom) with a big garden, and I share it with 2 English guys, Marcus and Will (though he is half Swedish so doesn't completely count as English), 2 German guys and 2 German girls.


Our landlady at Bayside is a property agent for this place and she said we could take anything from the Conference Centre. Will very helpfully drives a dumper truck, so we loaded his van with beds, sofas, chairs, back packs and kitchen equipment and made our way to our new home. Over here if people don't want something they leave it outside on the street for people to take if they want it. We got a table, some speakers and a great corner sofa that had been only slightly mauled by a dog. For the first night we had no electricity so we were walking around with head torches, a bit like camping in your own home.


It's a very nice neighbourhood with big houses, and I'm not sure what they thought about 7 young people using a dumper truck to move in with some slightly bizarre office furniture, a semi-destroyed sofa (now patched up with duct tape), lots of back packs and a spear gun*.

* Will's job requires him to pick up things from construction sites and private businesses and homes. He's always picking up interesting things, chairs, stereo system, and the latest acquisition is a spear-fishing spear gun.