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.