Work Work Work

April 23 – May 13 – work

Over the past three weeks we worked at a call center as inbound customer services representatives for a shopping rewards program. Our first week was absolute madness. The phones were ringing off the hook and we had no idea what we were doing. The first day consisted of us with our hands up for help. After the first week or so there was a noticeable difference in call volume. There were e-mails sent out asking who wants to go home early or wants unpaid breaks. We also had to adhere to an “average handling time” or AHT which was how long you were supposed to be on a call for and for after call work; the AHT was 155sec. So we had about 2.5 min to find out why they were calling and to answer their questions and get them off the phone. Since Beau and I are such helpful people we didn't have very good AHTs. Oh well. During the last week of work I had about 22hrs and Beau had about 30hrs. We decided this wasn't enough to keep us in town anymore. We told our boss we were leaving and thanked them for the opportunity. They were already starting to lay people off so I'm sure they weren't too upset about it. It's nice to be unemployed again.

The Great Ocean Road Part 2

April 17 – 19 – Back to the real world

We picked up Monique and Ingo from the airport and our two weeks of alone time was over. They had a pretty good trip in Tahiti but had a few bumps along the way with stuff breaking. Their return was timed very well though because we started work training this week too. Training was painfully boring and also not all that informative. We are going to be working at an inbound customer service center for a program called Flybuys. Which is a shopping rewards program through a grocery store. Training just reminded me how much working sucked.

April 20 – To Apollo Bay

Today we were supposed to have a short day of training. As usual things did not go according to plan. The trains were running a little late in the morning so we didn't arrive as early as we'd hoped. The day was pretty useless though we spent some time waiting for our computers to get unlocked. Then we did some silly training and we sat around some more. We eventually got signed into a training version of the program we were doing but the rest of the systems were down so we couldn't really see too much. We had been promised a pizza lunch but as 1:15 rolled around we had to boot it out of there since we had to catch a train to Apollo Bay at 2pm. We went to the train station and bough our tickets and then asked them to best way to get to Southern Cross station to catch our V-Line Train, assuming these people would know best. The sent us up to one station, North Melbourne, to come back down to Southern Cross. We got off our train in Southern Cross and booked it to where we thought our train would be, the platform was not printed on the ticket. We arrived at our platform as the train was pulling away. It was so frustrating. We had to wait 40min for the next train and would miss our connecting bus to Apollo Bay. We weren't going to get to Apollo Bay till about 8pm now. When our train did arrive it's first stop was at North Melbourne! I don't understand why the stupid woman that sold us the ticket couldn't have told us that!! (We also could have walked faster that the train took). The stupid woman also sold us a ticket for the next day and the ticket guy gave us a hard time about it too. Not impressed with my day. We had about 2 hours to kill in Geelong before we were able to catch our bus. We arrived in Apollo Bay around 8pm and called the mechanic. He picked us up in Dotti and then we went back to the shop to get the payment sorted out. It was nice to have Dotti back! In Apollo Bay though there was a music festival going on and the holiday parks were all at peak rates! We were disgusted with a $50 campsite. We ended up parking in a grassing parking area with a few other camper vans. The down side of this was that we were parked next to other vehicles that drunk people were sleeping in. We were woken up around 1am by the crazy chick in the next vehicle banging on the windows of her partners car, yelling at him over the phone and letting air out of his tires. It was not a restful night.

April 21 – The Twelve Apostles and Gibbons Steps

After our not so restful sleep we woke up the an overcast grey day. It did not look like it was going to be a promising day. We had some oatmeal and tea for breakfast and then picked up a few groceries at the overpriced Apollo Bay IGA. Fortunately by the time we headed out the skies had cleared and the sun had come out. We started our drive and made it past Bimbi park this time. Our first stop was a look out along the side of the road. It gave a very nice view of the coast line. Our next stop was Gibbons Steps, obviously this was a stair case but it lead down to the beach. We got a pretty close look at one of the lime stone formations but I don't think it was technically part of the Apostles. We had a nice walk along the beach in the warm sand before heading back up the car. We continued along to the Twelve Apostles. There was a huge information center and parking lot. While parked we made ourselves some lunch in the van. This was much easier to do than it had been in the car. We then walked down to the Apostles viewing platform. The view was amazing but the sun wasn't in the greatest position for taking pictures. The place was also packed with Asian tourists. We felt like a minority. I think I enjoyed the Gibbons Steps more since there weren't many people on the beach and you could get all kinds of different views. After the Apostles we headed to the Loch Ard Gorge. This area was named after a ship named the Loch Ard which crashed on the cliffs near by back in the late 1800s. The gorge was very nice and there was a few different and gorgeous views to be had. By this time we were feeling a little foot sore and had had quite a bit of sun. We decided to call it a day for checking out the coast. We had talked about going down to London Bridge but since the bridge part collapsed in the 90's we figured it would be a similar sight to the ones we had just seen. We decided to head up to Colac to spend the night there. Once in the town we headed to the information center and a very sweet and helpful lady gave us all kinds of information about the area and things to see and do. We decided to drive up to the Red Rock Scenic Reserve since it was still pretty nice out. The scene at the top wasn't all that great and it was a actually a little bit hazy. This area claims to be the youngest volcano in Australia. We headed back down and checked into a motor camp. Unfortunately we forgot our golden rule and didn't really check it out too closely before paying for a night. Not quite sure what we were thinking since the camp was right next to the highway. They also only had an outdoor kitchen with no stove, fortunately the BBQ had a burner on the side. We made ourselves a soup concoction for dinner and then watched a movie called the Decendants. The movie wasn't really what we expected, it was a bit of a tear jerker and a drama. After the movie Beau had a bit of a headache so he went bed while I read for a little bit.

Gibbons Steps

The 12 Apostles

Loch Ard Gorge

April 22 – Back to Melbourne

We meandered back to Melbourne and stopped into a brewery and a winery. The Otway Brewery had some very nice beers and we picked up a couple of whit's for Ingo. They were pricey but were very nice. We tried to go to some wineries on the way back but only 1 out of 3 we tried to go to was open. They wine was okay but nothing specially. We pulled into an empty motel parking lot and popped the top to make ourselves lunch. We arrived back into Diamond Creek and Beau went off to badminton with Ingo while I was lazy at the house. Tomorrow is our first day of work.

The International Comedy Festival

April 1-5

The International Comedy festival was in town and we decided to take advantage of the free shows downtown. We headed DT on a Sunday Saver train ticket and caught the tail end of a French acrobatic/comical show. Afterwards there was a pair who did a random improv show with some very strange props. Beau got picked out of the crowd to join them on stage. He did some improv with news paper and got a sucker out of it. I was laughing so hard I was crying! A guy in the crowd had taken a video of it and sent it to Beau. Check it out here! (the video isn't amazing but you can get an idea of the shenanigans Beau was put through) After that show there was another one later with short performances from the two groups we saw as well as a Swedish Elvis impersonator and a hoola hooper. We were very entertained that day and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful although Beau did buy a guitar from Costco. It's not the greatest but he's excited to have a guitar to play.

Monique and Ingo headed off on their holiday to Tahiti this week. They have been lovely, gracious host but it is nice to have a little time on our own again. We do have Snow and Juneau to look after.

The French group - Five Foot Finger

Beau making his stage debut with Funny Bone

Getting his sucker reward

The hoola hoopest

She had all these hoola hoops going around here at once

The Swedish Elvis Impersonator

April 6 - 9 Happy Easter

The weather was really nice on Friday so we took the dogs down to Brighton Beach. Google took us down a fairly busy route so it took about an hour or so to get there, probably should have taken less. There were a bunch of dogs at the beach, Juneau and Snowy had a ball. We brought camp chairs with us so we were able to relax without getting bowled over by dogs. We enjoyed the beach for a couple of hours before heading home. It was nice to get out and enjoy the sunshine.

The rest of our Easter weekend was pretty uneventful. We mostly did some more work on the deck. We did hit up a farmers market while walking the dogs and picked them up some homemade treats at Monique's requests. Gotta say they love the homemade goodies. On Monday we made the mistake of going to Westfields Shopping center and it was packed. It was sooooo hard to find a parking spot and sooo frustrating. We picked up some coffee and cheap sweat pants from Big W, think Walmart. It's been disgustingly cold the past two days I think it was a high of 17. We had to turn the heat on.

Snowy and Juneau

Juneau drying off

Snowy and Me

Tues April 10 - Will Anderson, Wilarious

We spent the morning doing some much needed house cleaning. Man can those dogs shed. I made us crepes for lunch and then we had squash soup for dinner. Since the International Comedy Festival is going on we decided to get tickets to see one of the shows. While in Christchurch we had seen on TV a show called the Gruen Transfer and it was a comedic talk show about ads and marketing hosted by Will Anderson. We found him quite funny on the shower and since he had a show, Wilarious, with the Comedy Festival in Melbourne we decided to go see him. It was fun to get out and do something quite different, I have never been to a stand-up comedy act before. Will put on a really good show and we were really happy we decided to go.

April 11 – 16

I know I keep saying this but we are pretty boring. We've been continually working on the deck. We've been taking the dogs for walks and Beau's been practising the guitar. I decided I needed a creative outlet and I've taken up crocheting. I've been working on slippers with my first one not turning out quite right. Typical me, I wanted slippers so I make myself some. The internet is a gold mine of information, go YouTube! I did get a short day of work in on the 11^th. One of the agencies needed a body fast in a near by location so I got the call and had a 5hr day in a housing development sales center doing mostly nothing. But hey they paid me about $24/hr for it so I'm not complaining. On the Friday Monique's friend Sarah stopped by with her two dogs, Lucy the Great Dane and Layla the Boxer. She stops by fairly frequently to let the dogs all play together and wear them out. While there she offered us some tickets to a comedy show. She had won them but she and her husband couldn't attend. The comic was a Canadian named Mike Wilmot. We attend the show on Sunday evening and had a good laugh. He was funny and vulgar but it was all good natured. Beau was in stitches laughing.

Painting the rails

A work in progress

Removing a rotted post

Post Gone

New post!

 Now be prepared to be grossed out by the common house spider, a huntsman

He was about the size of my palm, YUCK

Nothing too interesting

Mar 22 – 31

We've done lots more job hunting and actually had a meeting with two agencies and had a job interview. Beau and I both got jobs at an inbound customer service call center for 5 weeks starting on April 18^th. The pay is pretty good and hopefully we'll get lots of hours.

Beau had been very diligent about engine hunting too. Turns out the engine in Dotti was only used in the Urvan for about 2-3 years so it's been difficult to find one from an auto-wrecker, aside from the fact that it was also 30 years ago.  However it was used in a lot of forklifts and we were able to find a forklift engine that will work in our van. After talking with the engine guy and our mechanic it will be about $3000 for the engine replacement. It's a lot of money but it's back to the idea if we don't do this we are still in need of a vehicle. Anyways it seems things might be looking up. We have work and will get our van back.

We've been helping Monique and Ingo out with fixing their deck. Part of the railing needed to be replaced and everything need a new coat of paint. Beau's been doing the fixing and I've been doing a bunch of painting.  I'll post some pictures when it's done

We did go to The Hunger Games and I loved it. I thought they did a pretty good job of translating the book into a movie although they did miss out a few pieces of information.

Melbourne to Albury and Back

Mar 16 – 19

It's been hard to write about things that we ourselves don't want to dwell on too much. We've been feeling a little sorry for ourselves and kind of home sick with the way things have been working out. Or rather how they haven't been working out. We've been applying to jobs and trying to get in touch with some agencies. We did go into to town on Sunday the 18^th, it's a much cheaper fare. We checked out the Queen Victoria Market. It reminded us of the markets in Asia although a lot more expensive and a lot cleaner. If needed we'll come back here to pick up some warming clothing. You can buy a hoody for $10-20. But honestly we've been pretty boring. We have been walking the dogs though and in one park there are kangaroos. I got some pictures of them on one of our visits.

Mar 20 – To Albury

Today we are driving to Albury, New South Wales with Monique so we can put the van in our name. Monique is going there for a conference so fortunately we have a ride. During the day though we got a very unfortunate phone call from the mechanic. Turns out that one of valve sleeves had fallen into the engine and had been rattling around (at least that's my understanding of what happened). The engine needs to be replaced or reconditioned....shit. The mechanic said he was pursuing all the contacts he had to see if he could find an engine. This put a huge damper on our day. We were traveling to another state to change over a van into our name and it may never run again but it needs to be done. We picked Monique up after work and started the three hour drive to Albury. Along the way we called some places to stay, we hadn't pre-booked, and of course the place we had been looking at was full. We contacted a hostel and they wanted $35/person for a 4 bed dorm! We figured we'd find something once in town or worse case scenario go stay at the hostel. On the way into Albury we saw a sign for a motel room for $70/night and it included breakfast. We dropped Monique off at her hotel and then checked into the motel. We walked down the main street from the motel and got some stirfry noodles for dinner. We were feeling pretty down about everything so to cheer us up we decided to go see a movie. “21 Jump Street” was playing at the theatre across from the restaurant so we decided to go to that. It was also cheap night Tuesday which was a plus. The movie was pretty funny and our night ended on a laughing note.

Mar 21 – Back to Diamond Creek

After our included breakfast, toast and cereal, we walked down to the vehicle registration offices and got Dotti put in our name. We headed back to the car and ran some errands in town. Then we headed back to the main strip and walked around the down town a bit. I was able to find a kangaroo charm for my charm bracelet. We met up with Monique around 5pm when her conference had ended and then headed back to Diamond Creek. We were glad to have our little trip over and done with.

The Great Ocean Fiasco

Mar 13 – Headed to the Great Ocean Road

Beau and I got the van packed up this morning and were going to start our Great Ocean Road (GOA) trip. Beau still wasn't feeling 100% but he was much better than he was. We had to move the furniture out of our room because new carpet is being installed tomorrow. We hit the road but had to pick up some groceries and a few odds and ends. It was about a 2 hour drive till we technically hit the GOR. We got some pictures with the GOR archway as well as made several stops along the way for some scenic pictures. In the town of Lorne we stopped into the information center to find out about the local waterfalls. We got directions to Erskine Falls. Ingo had actually recommended it to us. The road was quite steep up and then back downwards to get to the falls. The brakes were smelling a bit by the time we arrived. It was a bunch of stairs down to the bottom but the falls were quite pretty. They weren't powerful but were very elegant. From there we continued along past Apollo Bay to Bimbi park campground. We had been told by Monique and Ingo that if we stayed here we'd for sure see Koalas. We got a powered site and figured out how to get the interior lights working. We used the park kitchen to make dinner but had to make several trips because we kept forgetting bits and pieces. On one of the trips Beau spotted a koala in the tree next to the kitchen. She actually had a baby clinging on to her. It was sooo cool. We had overly chickened pasta for dinner. Then we got the camper set up for bed and watched an episode of Son's Of Anarchy before bed. We heard some interesting noises in the night that sounded like a pig crossed with a donkey, turns out it's the koala's mating call.

The Great Ocean Road archway

One of many great views from the road

Erskine Falls in Lorne

Another road side view

Ditto

Koala and her baby

yummy leaves

Pretty cool how the baby just clings on to her

Mar 14 – Our luck runs out

We slept not to badly in the camper although it was quite warm last night. We had some breakfast then reorganized for driving mode, it definitely takes less time than the tent or car did. We hit the road and drove out to Cape Otway. There is a light house but they wanted $18.50 admission so we said no thanks. We stopped to take some pictures of some more koalas they were just hanging out limply in the trees. When we started Dotti back up she started making some loud clicking/clanging noises... not good. Beau had a look at the engine but we couldn't see what the problem was. We were made it back to the campsite and used their phone to call a tow truck since we had no cell service. We finally got picked up by the truck and headed back into Apollo Bay. We had to wait a little bit for the mechanic to have a look at the van so in the mean time we ate lunch in our camp chairs on the side of the road. When dude had a look at the van Beau check it out with them. Turns out we had no compression on one of the cylinders and the head needs to be machined. The mechanic said it could take 2 weeks and cost $1500. We discussed it and the way we look at it is if we don't fix this then we are out $4000 and still need another vehicle. We had to pack up our belongings and walk to the information center to buy bus tickets back to Melbourne. Fortunately the tickets were relatively cheap and the lady at the center helped us find the “cheap” accommodation in Apollo Bay, which wasn't very cheap. We got checked into a hostel and then went for a walk on the beach. Back at the hostel we made dinner then watched another episode of Son's Of Anarchy. We went to bed feeling pretty down.

Poor Dotti

Mar 15 – Back to Melbourne

The hostel provided us with breakfast which consisted of cereal or toast. After breakfast we were off to catch the 9am bus back to Melbourne. We spent about 3 hrs on the bus to Geelong then had to take the 1 hr V-train back to the Melbourne CBD and then another 1 hr train ride back to Diamond Creek. We arrived back around 3pm feeling depressed and exhausted. We'll have to wait and see what happens with Dotti now.

Around Diamond Creek

Mar 10

This morning I went to the mall with Monique to go to a specific store which is going out of business. There I bought a lovely navy blue suit for $60. It's great quality and obviously I'm going to need something to wear to job interviews. I also picked up $8 black flats from K-Mart. Monique was meeting a friend for coffee so I took a little wander of the mall on my own and picked up camp chairs for Beau and I. After we finished we headed back to the house. Beau and Ingo had gotten started on fixing the deck. Monique and I then cleaned out her study. The room was quite a disaster and they have new carpet coming in a few days. We emptied the room and then started sort through some of the papers. Ingo made a yummy slow cooker stew for dinner.

Mar 11

Today Beau and I planned to go into town since there are cheaper train tickets. Unfortunately Beau felt like crap so we figured it would be better for him to sleep. He's got a cold or something. After breakfast I went with Ingo to Costco. It was very much like Costco at home with slightly different things in it. It also sold beer, wine and spirits. I grabbed a few essentials like peanut butter, although you can buy much bigger peanut butter at home. When we had gotten back to the house Beau had woken up a short time before. I made us some lunch. Since it was such a beautiful day Monique suggested we take the dogs to the dog beach. We loaded the two dogs into the car and set off. It was a little ways away but the dogs loved it. Neither of the are very good at fetch but they had a lot of fun chasing other dogs around. Once they were sufficiently tired out we headed home. Of course right before we pulled into the driveway Juneau felt the need to shake and sand went flying all over the car. Beau and Ingo had been working on fixing the deck railing and one section of it was really coming along. We ended up going out for Vietnamese and I got a delicious vermicelli bowl. How I missed them. Afterwards we went to a very busy cafe for some dessert and coffee. I think we have eaten out in Australia more than we did our whole time in New Zealand.

Mar 12 – Bendigo

Beau still wasn't feeling well this morning so he stayed at the house while I accompanied Monique and Ingo to Bendigo. Bendigo is a small town outside of Melbourne.  They had plans to meet another couple there. We met up with their friends, a German couple, outside of the information center. They had their 6 month old boy, Henrik, with them. We went to a cafe for a coffee and sat outside so Snowy and Juneau could join us. Then we went for a nice stroll through the park. In one section there were a ton of bats hanging from the trees above us. It was bizarre. It was getting to be close to our ticket time for the Bendigo Art Gallery Exhibit. The exhibit was “Grace Kelly: Style Icon.” The girls went to the exhibit while the guys had a beer outside. I enjoyed the exhibit. There were many of Grace Kelly's dresses from throughout her life an career. It was interesting to see how the styles changed throughout the decades and how some design elements are coming back into fashion. I'm not sure how much the other two women liked it but it was definitely my niche. The exhibit could have had more photo's of Grace Kelly in the outfits shown, it would have given a more complete idea of how the garment looked on a person. We met back up with the guys outside and then the German couple had to be on there way. Monique, Ingo and I had some lunch at a burger joint that served amazing looking burgers. We then headed back to Diamond Creek. Beau had been pretty productive today even though he's still under the weather. He got our hinged table rigged up, which is pretty cool. Beau and I had some dinner and then got most of our stuff moved out to the car, we plan to drive down the Great Ocean Road the next few days. After getting packed away we watched an episode of Sons of Anarchy on the big tv.

Camper Van Hunting

Mar 6 – Into town

This morning an Australian couple came by to show us their van, a 1981 Nissan Urvan. They were doing what backpackers do just in their own country. The van looked pretty good. It drove well and had a pretty good layout. They were traveling with their dog, Banjo, and he played with Snow and Juneau while we checked out the van. We took it for a test drive, Beau and I were quite interested in it. After they left we headed into town to check out the CBD. We went into the visitors center to get some info on where to go and what to see. Then we went back to the little Indian place for lunch. It was yummy and cheap so why mess with a good thing. After lunch we walked through the botanical gardens and over to the war memorial. This is apparently a great place to get an awesome view of the city. Unfortunately it was about 5pm and the memorial closed to visitors at that time so we couldn't go up it for the great view. We decided we'll have to come back. We had been planning on meeting another girl and her van this evening but she couldn't meet until 7pm and wasn't willing to meet us at a train stop on our line. It would have taken about 2hrs to get back to Monique and Ingo's if we met up with her so we decided against it. We really just wanted another comparison, we weren't super interested in this van. It was blue with clouds on it. We headed back and were just in time for dinner. We spent the rest of the evening with Monique and Ingo. Beau and Ingo have been having fun playing soccer on Playstation. Beau and I thought the van this morning looked best of any of the ads we had seen and the guy seemed like he had taken good care of it. We got in touch with him about taking the van to a mechanic tomorrow.

Melbourne CBD

The city and Botanical Gardens

The War Memorial

Mar 7 – Checking the van out

Beau spent some of the morning finding a mechanic in a town called Geelong. That's where the van couple is staying, they were just in Melbourne for a few days. Geelong is about an hours drive from here but it's a two hour train ride as you have to go into the city and then back out again. Beau set off on his merry way and I picked up some groceries. I had a quiet day to myself. Beau got back just in time for dinner. The mechanic thought the van was in good condition for it's age and couldn't see any problems with it. We had decided that if the van was good we'd buy it so Beau had given them a deposit. We were pretty excited about our new van.

Mar 8 – Picking up Dotti

We made arrangements with the van couple to meet part way between Melbourne and Geelong at one of the train stations. Beau couldn't have taken the van yesterday because we had to wait for today to get the cash out. We are only allowed to take out $1000 each per day with our bank cards. So I had $4000 in 50's on the train. One of those times you really hope you don't bump into the wrong people. We met up with the couple no problem. Beau and the guy talked about the van a bit then we made the money exchange. We felt pretty conspicuous counting all that money out. But it was all there and Beau and I had our “new” van to drive back to Diamond Creek. We were discussing names for the van, Urv was one option but vans tend to be girls. We settled on “Dotti” since she's technically a Datsun, what Nissan was formerly known as. Once back at the house we set about the task of cleaning out the van and figuring out what we need for it. We decided we want to make a little folding table and we discussed ways of accomplishing that. We made bean burgers for dinner and while Monique and Ingo were a little skeptical when we told them what was for dinner they really enjoyed them. I also made greek salad to go with.

 

 

Mar 9 – The Movies

Beau and I had planned on going into town today. Unfortunately right before we were going to leave we double checked our train tickets and we could find Beau's anywhere. We search high and low but to no avail. It must have fallen out of his pocket on the train. We were both pretty bummed because those tickets hadn't been cheap. Since it was already afternoon we decided we'd go into town earlier tomorrow. Instead we decided to work on some modifications to the van. We want to build a cover for a shelf area that doubles as a table. We headed to the hardware store but their main car park is underground and we weren't sure how tall the van is with the roof cage on it. She's quite long especially with the bike rack on the back and pretty tall with the roof rack. We'll have to measure the height to see where we can fit. After the hardware store we headed to the grocery store and had similar problems parking. We barely fit in a stall, the bike rack had to hang over the center median. Back at the house Beau started trying to figure out the best way for him to create his shelf/table. Monique and Ingo got home and suggested we go to a movie. Ingo had been planning on going with some guys from work but their plans fell through. We had a look at movies that were playing, Monique doesn't like violent movies, so the girls were going to go to one movie and the boys another. We had some dinner at the food court before hand. Ingo and Beau went to see an action movie called Contraband while Monique and I went to a chick flick called The Vow. It was a sweet and sad movie, think the Notebook or Timetravellers Wife (all with Rachel McAdams). After our movie Monique and I got a very decadent hot chocolate while we waited for the guys movie to finish. They really enjoyed their movie and we enjoyed ours.

Australia

Mar 3 – To Oz

We were up at an ungodly hour this morning to catch the bus to the airport. Our flight was at 7:30am and we had to be there about 2hrs before so we caught the bus at 5am. Our bags were the right weight (yay) and we got on the flight no problem. The flight was uneventful but we were a little delayed arriving. We got through customs no problem but then the bags were delayed coming off the carousel. A whole bunch of other aircrafts had arrived around the same time and there were several huge lines to get out of the baggage zone, we still had to go through bio-screening. Since we had been hiking in NZ we had dirt on our shows and the Australians are as strict as the New Zealanders in controlling foreign organic substances entering the country. We then had to line up to get our shoes cleaned. We didn't get out into the public area until close to 2 hours after our flight had landed. The poor Dutch couple, Monqiue and Ingo, who had been so kind to pick us up from the airport and offer us a place to stay had been waiting for us for over an hour. We felt so bad even though there wasn't much we could have done about it. They drove us to their place where we got to meet Snowy and Juneau who are two Samoyd-Retrievers. They are beautiful! Snowy is 3 and is bigger than Juneau who is 2. Snowy's father was a retriever and looks much more like a Golden Retriever than Juneau whose father was Samoyed. They are both lovely. We had breakfast and spent most of the day chatting with Monique and Ingo. They had plans to go for dinner with some friends of theirs and invited us to join them. We went along with them to an Italian restaurant that had good prices and huge portions. Beau and I shared a pizza and had to take some home for leftovers. Our day started early and was annoying for a little while but ended with new friends.

Mar 4

We slept well last night finally a night in a real bed. We had some breakfast then Beau and Ingo took the dogs for a walk. Monique and Ingo went out for the afternoon to a friends birthday party. Beau and I spent the afternoon doing some research on campervans and set up a few meets. We were pretty lazy most of the afternoon. Once Monique and Ingo returned we went with them to badminton. Every Sunday night there is drop in badminton at the local rec center. We played a game against Monqiue and Ingo as well as played with one other random people. It was a lot of fun. I don't think I've played badminton since the cottage with Elaine, Mike and Kate.

Mar 5 – The HelpX

After breakfast we finished repacking our bags, we were leaving some stuff at Monique and Ingo's, and headed out to catch the train to go to our HelpX for the week. We had been doing some journey planing to figure out our route but as it turns out the schedule we were looking at was for the next train station, not the Diamond Creek one so we missed the train. The next train wasn't for another 40mins so we were a little behind schedule by the time we got on the train. It took about an hour to get into Melbourne CBD. It's quite the metropolis and I am looking forward to exploring it later this week. We got off the train at one of the downtown stations and then hopped on a tram headed for Kew like the HelpX lady told us. We got off at the specified stop then headed down the road. We found the house no problem and could see she needed a lot of help in her yard. We knocked on the door and to our dismay there was no answer. We knocked several times and waited around for about 45min before getting fed up. We couldn't understand it, while we were about 30min late since we missed our train she had specified the times to come and there was a car parked in the driveway. Frustrated we headed back towards the main road. An older gentleman started talking to us asking us where we were from, he knew where we were supposed to be staying. He said there had been two girls staying there recently but he thought the host was a bit of an odd duck. No kidding. Monique and Ingo had given us a mobile phone that one of their previous backpackers had left behind so we bought a SIM card for it and attempted to activate it. I spent an hour on the phone to some moron at Telstra while he tried to verify my identity. Apparently one international passport wasn't good enough for him he needed another form photo identification and it couldn't be my drivers license! Fortunately I have two passports so he finally was able to activate my SIM card although he did say it could take 2-24hrs to become active. We had been hoping to call Monique or Ingo and double check it was okay if we returned to their place. They had already invited us back for after the HelpX. Feeling a little defeated and hungry we stopped into Subway and split a footlong. Then we bought a week long train pass since we want to explore the city this week and we figured we'd be at Monique and Ingo's. We took the tram back into town and through the use of wifi and skype we confirmed the cell was working and bought some credit for it. We got in touch with Ingo who said it was no problem for us to come back to their place tonight. What a relief! We then decided to get in touch with some of the campervan people who were in town and headed off the St Kilda to see a camper van. The van turned out to be a dud. It had a bad set up, hadn't been looked after properly, some strange gimicks with the driving and was smelly. It was good to check it out though since it gives us something to compare it too. We also set up with another couple to see their van tomorrow. We headed back into the CBD and were tired, sore and hungry. I was pretty fed up with hauling my pack around all day and can see how an extra 10kg can really affect your body. We had dinner at an Indian restaurant that was really good, cheap and right across the street from the train station. We then caught a train back to Diamond Creek and turned up back at Monique and Ingo's around 10pm. We hung out with them for a little while, while watching Seinfeld then headed to bed.