New Year's Eve

New Years Eve day was a clear, hot 35C. We spent the evening watching the countdown to New Year's celebration in Sydney, the strange thing is Sydney is 1hr behind Brisbane so the local tv sends out the programme later than its actually filmed. So the tv in Europe sent the show out earlier than here(?)
New Years Eve here is very different to Holland, no one has fireworks themselves they go to friends houses and have a party or go to big firework events in the harbour, river, etc. No one in the street shaking the neighbours hands, etc.
For the 1.2 million people gathered around Sydney Harbour these Midnight Fireworks are the culmination of 12 hours of countdown and celebration.The display, featuring thunder, rain and lightning effects, was the largest ever staged in the city. About 5,000kg of fireworks were used.

The australians really know how to party...with or without alcohol....

Cycling round Edenbrooke

This evening once it cooled down (midday was 30C) we did a small tour of the local Edenbrooke estate on our recumbent bikes. We had to go to the local bike shop today to buy a bicycle pump and some pedals. The bike shops here seem to have either racing bikes or mountain bikes.
Its quite hilly here in the surroundings of Seventeen Mile Rocks/Sinnamon Park so the full range of gears were needed to get up some of the steeper roads. Next time we'll take a map and some water with us and go a bit more off the beaten track.

Byron Bay visit

Today we went to Byron Bay, a 2,5hr drive south from Brisbane. The town is a mix between a surfing haven, backbacker centre and an alternative lifestyle resort, lots of new age shops, mixed in with surfing goods/clothes. After walking round we stopped in a cafe, we read a advert showing a 'Crystal Castle' in the hills 20mins from Byron Bay so we set off to investigate. It turned out to be a beautiful new age/buddhist tropical garden set on a hillside overlooking the bay which contained all sorts of huge crystals from Brazil and large statues, the biggest being a 4m high buddha. The statues were all made in Indonesia around Yogjajarkarta (not good spelling sorry). The gardens were fantastic and well landscaped on the hillside, the garden was 20yrs in the making and you could see that much effort had gone into it. Next to the garden was a replanted tropical forest to wander around but we were a little put off by the signs warning of snakes...!
The drive back to civilisation was through green hills and woodland, with small twisting roads that reminded us both of England. The rain of the last 2-3 months has made the countryside remain green into the summer. It really is quite different here to the dry and parched landscape of Perth, Western Australia where we first intended to move to. Looking at it now the green countryside of Brisbane is preferable to Perth.

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year!

Its Christmas eve and the daytime temperature is a nice and warm 29C with 32C predicted for Chrismas day...lovely!

Tomorrow our Christmas meal will be for dave a not typical seafood feast with local prawns and fettucini. The living room is decked out with lighted christmas trees and looks very nice at night.

In the weekend we will probably take a day trip to Byron Bay which is a 2hr drive south along the coast, it seems Byron Bay is a bit of a 'new age' spot, a report will follow.

Another report will follow about the phenomenen the 'aussie bbq' an event in itself...

We wish everyone a fine and festive Christmas and our best wishes for 2009!!!

Evening in the garden

It really is nice to have a garden again, droelie (our cat) for one really enjoys it and is busy exploring his new domain, including spraying his new territory(not so nice).Inge has been out to the local garden centres and has bought some nice flowering plants to spice the place up a bit. By about 6pm the temperature drops to 22C and you can just sit outside and relax, read the paper and all the doom and gloom stories, ressession, job losses, etc.

Shots inside the House

So here are a few shots of the inside of the house. The main living room, the meditation/relaxation/reading room, the hallway and main bedroom. The majority of the furniture (bookcases, dining table etc) is from the koperwiek with the exception of the chairs and settee in the living room and the rattan chairs in the reading room, the bed is new as well. We are pleased with what we have, maybe not to everyone's taste but we are happy with it, it now feels like home...

Edenbrooke Estate Nature Area

The area that we have moved into is called the "Edenbrooke Estate". There's some really nice houses here, mostly "low-set" which means bungalows. Quite a mix of housing and styles. A small nature area has been kept at the end of our street just 150metres away, its a small creek called the Jindalee, flowing with water and surrounding by lush green woodlands full of wildlife. We've already taken a few walks there in the evening when the temperature and heat of the day cools down. I took a few photos and a video to give an impression. Its really nice that some nature has a chance to develop in the suburbs here.

Moving in day

15 December 2008 we moved into the new house. All our things, 117 boxes in all, arrived and were packed out in about 3hrs. The next day the furniture we ordered arrived together with a new fridge and king sized bed and mattress. So we are finally sorted, its nice to have familiar things around us again. The living room furniture fits into the new living room very nicely, its still a bit untidy at the moment so no photos ust yet

Moving to Backhousia Crescent

So today we got the keys to our new rental home in Seventeen Mile Rocks. We spent the afternoon checking out the defects in the house and making a list for the estate agent for the condition report. Seventeen Mile Rocks is a suburb about 15km from the centre of Brisbane. In the next few weeks we will put up some photos of the surrounding area

SeaWorld at Surfers Paradise

Last weekend we were invited to Van Oord's Xmas dinner at SeaWorld Resort on the Gold Coast, about 1,5hrs drive away from Brisbane, we got complimentary tickets to SeaWorld next door. It was hot and humid, not the usual christmas weather we are used to. We watched a dolphin show before going for a walk on the beach. The view along the beach you could see the high rise blocks of Surfer's Paradise, the Australian equivalent of Blackpool or Scheveningen.

AUSTRALIA the movie

The blockbuster film AUSTRALIA starring Nicole Kidmen and Hugh Jackman is really being hyped here, the most expensive australian movie ever made at 180 million dollars by Baz Luhrmann who made Molin Rouge, seem like every australian is obliged to go and see it.

We heard it bombed at the american box office, probably because the americans cant understand the english and australian accents.

http://www.australiamovie.com/

Its shot in the outback terrotories so gives a good idea of just what the country is (still) like only replace the horses for 4 wheel drives and UTE's.

Inge bought a car...

Today we spent the day visiting auto dealers looking for a car for Inge. A lot of the dealers are located in one road leading out of Brisbane, the so-called "Moorooka Mile". The dealers ranged from out right pushy to quite laid back. We had a budget of 10,000 dollars. This doesnt get too much because a car from 1998 with 180,000kms costs at least 6,000 dollars, 2nd hand cars are quite expensive here compared to Europe and UK. We were quite taken by a Honda Civic automatic, one lady owner with only 78,000km and in beautiful condition but from 1998, only touble was it was 11,000 dollars which we thought a bit too pricy. So off we went to the first car dealer we visited. On the way we saw another and stopped there for a look. They had a Toyota Starlet which was Inge's car in Holland so we plumped for that, a 1998 manual model with air-con (a must here) for 6,150 dollars all-in. So Inge is now mobile and not dependant on Dave or the buses which are very infrequent in the area which we are moving to.

Parenting the Australian way

This story got a mention in the news...

http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2008/11/28/18795_ntnews.html

Storms in Brisbane

This is a link to photos of the recent storm damage when high winds and 110mm fell together in one night. The worst storm and floods since 1974. Inland they had 245mm of rain.....all in one night.

click on the photos to see them one at a time.

http://4url.cc/5H

The damage area is 15km from us.

Luckily we didn't have any damage

Found a House!

Our househunting has continued on Dave's return and we've looked at a few properties now of varying types and styles from the traditional queenslander style with a tin roof to modern houses in new areas. Its been a choice of whether to stay reasonably close to shops, etc or live a bit further away. We are in a very overheated market with people urgently seeking rental accommodation as most people cannot afford to buy a house or want the flexibility of moving around the country. We have decided to rent first and wait to see what happens before we buy. It is quite unnerving to view a house and have to decide on the spot whether you want to commit to rent the house for the next 6 months. Finally we decided on a house in an estate called Edenbrooke in Sinnamon Park which is quite modern and well planted with trees and parkland. Here is a photo of the house on the outside and a look.

NL
Onze huizen zoektocht werd voortgezet na Dave's terugkeer en in de afgelopen week hebben we diverse huizen bekeken variërend van een traditionele queenslander met een tinnen dak tot moderne huizen in nieuwe wijken. Het werd een kwestie van het maken van een keus om redelijk dicht bij winkels en andere faciliteiten te wonen of net iets verder weg daarvan. De huizenmarkt is “oververhit”; vele mensen zijn naarstig op zoek naar een geschikte huurwoning omdat kopen niet betaalbaar is dan wel dat ze flexibel willen zijn om te kunnen wonen waar ze willen in het land.
We hebben besloten om eerst te huren en intussen zien wat de markt gaat doen voordat we gaan kopen. Het is best wel om zenuwachtig van te worden om ter plekke na het zien van een huis te moeten besluiten of je die wel of niet wilt huren voor de komende 6 maanden.
We hebben vandaag besloten om een huis te gaan huren in de woonwijk Edenbrooke, in Sinnamon Park. Het is een moderne wijk met veel groen. Zie foto.

Week in Karratha

Week in Karratha
Dave spent a week in Karratha, Western Australia working on the Pluto LNG project site staying in the Karratha International Hotel (only one of two in town). It was a 6hr direct flight from Brisbane across the entire country. Karratha is a real pioneer mining town which deals with the export of iron ore to China and Japan as well as the oil and gas industry pipelines which come through here. There's a huge shortage of accommodation and labour with lots of jobs on offer. A bed house costs 900 euros a week to rent and a nice simple house with pool can cost a $1,000,000 ! A lot of the local jobs are done by backpackers who stay a few months to earn enough money to travel around the rest of Australia. Inge stayed in Brisbane and had the company of an unexpected guest from Holland (Arianne) who turned up on our doorstep after a brief introduction via our estate agent in Woerden

NL
Dave heeft een week in Karratha doorgebracht, west-Australië; waar hij aan een project gewerkt heeft. Karratha heeft slechts 2 hotels en hij verbleef in een daar van..
De directe vlucht van Brisbane naar karratha duurde 6 uur en in die tijd vlieg je het hele land over. Karratha wat een mijn-dorp is, exporteert ijzererts naar China en Japan. Olie en gasleidingen komen hier het land binnen.
Er is een schreeuwend tekort aan accommodatie en mankracht met vele beschikbare banen. Een huurhuis met 4 slaapkamers en een zwembad kost 900 euro per week en een soortgelijke koopwoning kost je 500.000,-- euro en dit midden in de rimboe! Veel werk wordt dan ook gedaan door rugzaktoeristen die daar dan een paar maanden verblijven totdat ze genoeg geld verdiend hebben om verder te reizen door Australië. Inge verbleef intussen in Brisbane en had gezelschap van een onverwachtse gast vanuit Nederland (arianne) die na slechts een korte vooraankondiging via onze makelaar in Woerden, een week kwam logeren.

House Hunting

Dave heard this week that Foxton Street might be needed in Jan-Feb for someone who will be posted to the Brisbane office so today we've spent house hunting for a rental house in the suburbs on the south side of the Brisbane River.
The process involves receiving an email alert when new houses come on the market. If you are interested you can attend a House inspection when the rental house is made available for people to inspect, you do this as a group so 3 or 4 groups of other interested people inspect the house at the same time...competition is fierce and we've been finding that good houses go within 1 day of being posted on the internet, it seems people submit the detailed paperwork before seeing the house so they have it ready before other potential renters.
We've seen a few houses already but nothing that meets our wishes. So we are still looking. The long term hope is to buy rather than rent but we want to see what happens with the house market first, hopefully it will go down but by how much?

NL
Huizen-jacht
Dave heeft deze week te horen gekregen dat Foxton Street waarschijnlijk per januari/februari beschikbaar moet zijn voor iemand die werkzaam zal zijn bij het kantoor in Brisbane dus zijn we vandaag op “huizen-jacht” gegaan voor een huurwoning in de buitenwijken ten zuiden van de Brisbane River.
Het proces houdt in dat je per e-mail een alert bericht ontvangt zodra er nieuwe huizen op de markt komen. Indien je interesse hebt kun je een zogeheten huis inspectie bijwonen Je loopt dan samen met nog 3 a 4 groepjes van geïnteresseerden door het huis heen om te bepalen of je het wat vindt of niet. De competitie is groot zo hebben we gemerkt dat mooie huizen binnen een dag nadat ze op het internet verschijnen verhuurd zijn. Het blijkt dat mensen voordat ze een huis gaan bezichtigen het nodige papierwerk aangeleverd hebben bij makelaars; dus zij zijn al op de hoogte gebracht voordat het op de markt komt.
We hebben inmiddels wel wat huizen gezien maar nog geen die aan onze wensen voldoet. Dus kijken we intussen verder. Op termijn willen we liever een huis kopen dan huren maar eerst willen we zien wat er op de huizenmarkt gebeurt; hopelijk zakken de prijzen maar met hoeveel?

Botanic Gardens

On Sunday we visited Brisbane Botanic Gardens. It is located on Mount Coot-tha about 3km from us. It is mainly a tropical garden with a rain-forest section with some strange fruits/bulbs hanging down from the trees. It was interesting to see some plants that are house plants in Holland growing wild here. When we were walking on the path a wild bush turkey strolled out of the undergrowth.

NL
Zondag zijn we naar de Botanische tuin van Brisbane geweest. De locatie is Mount Coot-tha en dat is slechts 3 km van ons vandaan. Het is voornamelijk een tropische tuin met een regen-woud gedeelte waar we vreemdsoortig fruit/bollen aan bomen zagen hangen. Het was een bijzondere gewaarwording om kamerplanten van Nederland hier in het wild te zien groeien. Toen we rondliepen kwam een bos kalkoen uit de bosjes tevoorschijn.

Balinese Statues

Balinese Statues
Today we visited a Balinese garden centre on the other side of Brisbane.(we saw it advertised in the newspaper) The owner imports various statues and stone carvings from Indonesia. They were all laid out in a tropical garden. We couldn't resist buying a buddha head carved from volcanic stone. The other bigger statues were tempting but not practical to buy yet, they were too heavy for us to take home and seeing Foxton Street is only temporary means we'd have to move them twice.

NL
Balinese beelden
Vandaag zijn we naar een Balinees tuincentrum geweest gelegen aan de andere kant van Brisbane (we zagen een advertentie hiervan in de krant staan). De eigenaar importeert verschillende soorten beelden en beeldhouwwerken vanuit Indonesië. Ze waren tentoongesteld in de tropische tuin. We konden het niet nalaten om een boeddha hoofd uit vulkanisch steen te kopen.
Andere grotere beelden waren erg aantrekkelijk echter niet praktisch om nu al aan te schaffen ; gezien het feit dat ze gewoonweg te zwaar voor ons zijn om mee te nemen naar de Foxton Street en aangezien we hier maar tijdelijk verblijven zou dat betekenen dat we ze dan 2x zouden moeten versjouwen.

Australian Wildlife

Dave visited the gliding club on Friday, the day was hot 29C and sunny but too stable for good flying so he was home again just after lunch. The highlight of the day was the encounter with the local wildlife. A brown snake (poisonous), see photo, appeared from nowhere and took up home next to the entrance to the gliding club's hanger. Despite attempts to shoo him away he was having none of it and wouldn't leave so everyone gave the entrance a wide berth. So Rob was right you do come across snakes and other dangerous things when you go flying!.De pilots said it is most unusual to come across snakes like this. It is not a normal course of events.

NL
Australische natuur
Dave is vrijdag naar de zweefvliegclub geweest; het was een zonnige,warme dag met een temperatuur van rond de 29 C; helaas was het te stabiel om goed te kunnen vliegen; Dave was dan ook na de lunch weer thuis. Een slang (brown snake – giftig), zie foto, dook uit het niets op en zocht een schuilplaats naast de ingang van de club's hanger. Ondanks verwoede pogingen om de slang weg te jagen liet deze zich niet vermurwen en bleef rustig liggen met als gevolg dat iedereen met een wijde boog erom heen ging. Rob had dus gelijk; je komt dus slangen en andere gevaarlijke dingen tegen wanneer je gaat vliegen! De vliegers hier gaven wel aan dit dit een ongebruikelijke situatie is; normaal gesproken kom je geen slangen tegen.

Foxton Street views

Here are a few views of Foxton Street looking up and down the hill...yes its quite steep certainly different to Holland. The buildings at the top of the street are the doctor's on the left and the shopping mall complex. The older building is a typical “Queenslander” with a tin roof.
Just down the road is an accountant were Dave got some advice about business issues.

NL versie
Hierbij een paar uitzicht foto's van Foxton Street met zicht de heuvel op en neer ...ja het is zeker stijl te noemen; wel wat anders dan in Nederland. De gebouwen gelegen boven aan de weg zijn die van de huisarts en dat van het winkelcentrum.. Het oud uitziende gebouw is een typisch “Queenlander” met een tinnen dak.
Om de hoek zit een accountant waar Dave is langsgeweest voor advies omtrent zaken.

Droelie

In answer to a request as to how Droelie is doing here are a few photos. He has settled in well here in Foxton Street after his quarantine in Perth. Shortly after these photos were taken he jumped in the bushes chasing after a large lizard......

NL versie

In anwoord op een vraag hoe of het met Droelie gaat; zie hier een paar foto's. Hij is goed gewend op de Foxton Street na zijn quarantaine in Perth. Kort nadat deze foto's waren genomen sprong hij in de bosjes en zat achter een grote hagedis aan........

Boonah Gliding Club

On Saturday 25 October Dave went gliding at the Boonah Gliding Club which is located 1 hours drive south of Brisbane. The club has about 100 members and they have a hanger, clubhouse and grass strip runway just outside the small town of Boonah. The location is in what's called the “scenic rim” which is a range of mountains which are part of the main range of mountains which run down the east coast of Australia. The club website is here : http://www.boonahgliding.com.au

The atmosphere was very relaxed and laid back compared to the gliding club in Holland which suited Dave, he had two flights where the instructor wanted to see how he flew and whether he could locate the airstrip on the ground when he was flying. He passed the test and joined the club so now when he visits again he can fly solo as long as he doesn't go too far from the airfield.
The landscape was quite a suprise, once you drive 20 minutes out of Brisbane you are really out in the countryside, farmland with wide open spaces. Almost 80% of the population lives within 30km of the coast so the inland areas are quite empty. It really is a vast country and we haven't even scratched the surface of visiting anywhere yet. So something to do in the coming months.

NL VERSIE
Op zaterdag 25 oktober is Dave gaan vliegen bij de zweefvlieg club in Boonah, gelegen op een uur rijden ten zuiden van Brisbane. De club heeft ongeveer 100 leden, een hanger, clubhuis en een grasvliegstrook gelegen net buiten het dorp Boonah. De locatie is bij de “scenic rim” is een berglandschapgebied dat een onderdeel uitmaakt van het berglandschap dat loopt langs de Oost kust van Australie. De website van de vliegclub is: http://www.boonahgliding.com.au.

De sfeer was erg ontspannen en relaxt in vergelijking met de zweefvliegclub in Nederland hetgeen Dave wel goed uitkwam. Hij heeft 2 vluchten gemaakt onder toezicht van een instructeur die wilde bepalen of Dave kan vliegen en of hij in staat is om de vliegstrook te localiseren wanneer hij aan het vliegen is. Hij is geslaagd voor de test en heeft zich vervolgens aangemeld als lid van de club zodat hij bij een volgend bezoek solo mag vliegen zolang hij niet te ver van de vliegstek vandaan vliegt.

Het landschap was niet wat je ervan zou verwachten; zodra je 20 minuten met de auto buiten Brisbane bent bevindt je je op het platteland, een wijds open landschap met weilanden. Bijna 80% van de bevolking woont op een afstand van 30 km van de kust hetgeen inhoudt dat het binnenland erg leeg is. Het is een groot land en we hebben tot op heden nog maar nauwelijks iets van het gebied gezien. Genoeg te doen de komende tijd.