Our new home in Chapel Hill

Finally I managed to take and upload a couple of pictures of our new house. It’s not as new as the old one, but has heap of Seventies charm and we are very happy here. Beautiful suburb, very close to the city and friendly neighbours. There are also some pictures from Finlay running through the sprinkler and on his slide.

Heatwave

It’s still the middle of winter here and the temperatures should be in the low twenties but this weekend is just hot! We have about 31 degrees here at the moment and the next two days are expected to be even hotter. If thats ‘how winter is over here, I don’t know what to expect for the summer.

Brisbane Weather

Anyway Finlay loves it, he sits in his little shell filled with water and is splashing around. And I sit in the shade and enjoy an ice-cold beer. What a life!

Bloody Telstra (3)

The never-ending story has another chapter.

After many attempts to organise for a Telstra technician to come out to us and set up our telephone line, finally last week somebody showed up. He wasn’t from directly Telstra but a contractor … fair enough.  He had quick look at the cables coming out of the wall and than said something like “… oh no, not again…”. Well that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Apparently the cables are stuck in the wall, so he can’t pull them out enough to install the Telstra box… Long story short, he couldn’t do anything. He told me to ring the owner and they have to send the builder out here to put a hole in the wall. Great!

But there are some good news aswell. The builder came out today and put the needed hole in wall. I rang the technician and he will be here tomorrow morning to install the line. I won’t say anything but with a bit of luck we have a line by tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed.

Our new home

Finlay is having his afternoon nap and I used the time to take some pictures of the house. Excuse the mess, but I’m still adjusting to my new position as a houseman

Our new house @ picasaweb

Bloody Telstra (2)

Another two weeks have passed and what can I say … the situation hasn’t changed. We still don’t have a telephone line and we still don’t have a home phone. Not even to mention a proper Internet connection. I can’t really tell you what the problem is, because noboby tells me or is able to tell me. Everytime you call these people, it’s a different person at the other end and they promise you, that everything will be fine within a couple of days … but nothing is fine! The best of them promise you to call you back within the day, but of course as soon as you hang up, they have forgotten you. Hard to say if we ever get connected here. There is still this bunch of cables coming out of the side of the house (See the picture).

Anyway, the UMTS connection I use right now isn’t really an alternative because the signal strength is a bit to weak out here, but I tried Skype last night to call Germany and it worked quite alright. Only via voice-call of course. So we are at least able to call home from time to time.

Interesting products from the local grocery store

While walking trough the local Woolworths (a big grocery store chain) I came across some funny products. They actually sell poor Berliner made into a sausage. And the only alcohol-free beer you can buy at this supermarket is German too. The famous Schlossgold (Never heard of it). Here are some pictures of these two product. Sorry for the picture quality, the pictures were taken with a mobile

Bloody Telstra (1)

It seems that Telstra over here is just as bad as Telekom in Germany. Although there are many different companies out here who offer telephone and internet deals, Telstra is the only one who can actually install a telephone-line to a new house. And that’s where the problem starts. For 3 weeks now, I try to get a Telstra technician (so-called) out here to connect this little box, so we can have a home phone and better internet. But it seems that it is just not possible. The hotline is either busy or you have an incompetent idiot at the other other end, who hardly speaks any English.

Anyway, this all means, that we have to wait even longer to get a proper internet-connection and a home phone. The wireless broadband we use right now works ok, but is just a bit expensive.

To be continued…

Arrived in Brisbane

Well, actually we are living in Ipswich right now and not Brisbane. But it’s only a 20 – 30 minute drive to Brisbane.

We moved in last week and slowly the new place becomes a home. Unfortunately we don’t have a home phone yet and no fixed internet connection. Just this slow wireless connection I use right now. As soon as we have internet and a phone again I’ll post more often.There will be new pictures very soon  too.

Not much else to tell. Nat starts her new job this Monday at St. Andrews Hospital and I will play the houseman for a while.

That’s all for now.

We got a car and a new home

Took me a while to blog again, but here we go:

We bought ourselves a nice car the other day. It’s a Mazda 626 hatchback, ’94 model. I uploaded some pictures of the car so you guys can get an idea of what it looks like. There are also some good news about our search for renting a house down in Brisbane. Finally one of our applications got approved and we’ll move next week.  Nats dad and me will drive the car down and Nat, her mum and Finlay fly down. It’s a 4 bedroom house in Redbank Plains, which is south-west of Brisbane. The house is brandnew which is really good and we are happy we got this one.

Here is a link to the description of the house from the real estate agent. I don’t know how long the link will work, but it’s still active at the moment.

Our new home

First week down under

Hello everyone,

nearly one week ago we arrived here in Townsville Australia. Finlay is finally himself again. His red cheeks lasted a couple more days but are gone now. Although his sleeping pattern isn’t back to normal, he still sleeps his 10 hours at a time.

Nat and me are now in the progress to organise a place to rent in Brisbane. It seems that there is a huge market with many place to choose from. Still all the owners want references from previous landlords , but we can only offer German ones. Let’s hope that this won’t be a problem.

Finlay and me already got signed up for medicare which is the Australian health insurance, so we are cover from now on here in Australia. I also opened up a bank account which was no problem at all. To get a Queensland drivers licence is a bit trickier because I need a official translation of my German licence, but there are many people out there who can do that. Will cost me around 30 AU$ for the translation. The good thing is, that I don’t have to do any kind of test.

Alrighty so much for now. Hope everybody is fine back in Germany. Don’t hesitate to write us a comment or a mail with some news from back home.

PS: We found a nice car as well, which we will probably buy. More about that in the next days.