Button brings victory for the Brits!

If you haven't watched the Australian Grand Prix yet... then the title of this blog has probably already spoilt the result for you. Apologies. It was however, such a phenominal race that I couldn't resist blogging about it as soon as we got home!

Tom and I were really excited about going to our first Forumla 1 grand prix, and with the Australian race taking place within walking distance from our apartment, this was a prime opportunity to attend. We bought general admission tickets for both qualifying and race day, and neither visit disappointed.





Qualifying day was great as there were fewer crowds and we had the opportunity to walk around and soak up the atmosphere, as well as get close to the track to practise our photography of fast moving objects (does it get any faster than this?). We decided that standing up in the crowds for the 2 hour race didn't actually appeal that much, so tried and then failed miserably to get last minute grandstand tickets for the race. Oh well, next year.

Go Hamilton!

We were late arriving on race day due to the arrival one of my UK work colleagues, Sam Tomlinson, in Melbourne. After a quick lunch with Sam and some of the rest of the UK-gang, we rushed to Albert Park and staked our (rather late) claim on a small patch of grass by turn 2. The race went by in a flash and thankfully the rain added to the tension of the race more than it detracted from the comfort of our spectating. Jenson's win was a fantastic end to an awesome weekend of motor sport, and we flooded onto the track with the rest of the crowd to celebrate. I was waving a huge Union Flag and as we gathered with the other Britsh supporters outside Jenson's pit garage, the photographers took advantage of the sea of flags!

Go Button!

Here are some more photos from our fantastic weekend:

Tom celebrating on the track

Thank goodness for eBay - the flag was a great thing to have!

The noise was incredible and ear defenders a must

The British fans were very artistic

This is not me, but I liked the idea

Lewis on the parade of drivers, which I missed because I was in the queue for damn ice creams!!

In the general admission 'pit'.. once was enough

Lunch earlier in the day - L-R - Tom, Rob, Jacqui, Sam

Final celebrations before home time

Melbourne City Romp

This week I'm opening up with some statistics - our blog now receives an average of 5 visits a day, except on a day when we've posted a new entry, when we receive around 50 hits! I'm quite pleased with this, so thanks to everyone for continuing to read. Obviously these statistics don't capture our offline readership, and 'Tom and Katie Down Under' is now truely accessible to all through both printed and audio formats. A big thank you to our diligent parents and their hard working printers for distributing printed version of the blog. Perhaps we should seek sponsorship from Hewlett Packard to cover the ink costs?!

We've had a busy week, Tom with two big projects at work (which were very successful) and me with various social activities (a much better type of busy). On the social side, our friendship pool has expanded by two more people thanks to the arrival of one of my colleagues from London and his girlfriend. I never thought I would celebrate the arrival of two more Brits, and I'm sure you think that we should be mixing with the locals, but it's actually very hard to make new friends in a city of strangers, particularly as an adult. Our closest friends mostly hail from North America, the UK or Ireland (Northern or Republic, we're not fussy), however I did break the cycle on Tuesday evening when I caught up with my Aussie-friend Danielle! Is it cheating that I actually met her in London?

Danielle and I went to watch Mamma Mia the musical, which is a light-hearted story of a young bride conveniently written so as to include all of ABBA's biggest hits. Except Waterloo, which the writers couldn't seem to fit into the story so it was the finale song instead. If you haven't listened to the songs (older generation), seen the musical (middle generation) or watched the movie (younger generation, in which I include children), then you must have been living under a rock for the past two to five years. The show was almost a complete package - it had great music, brightly coloured flared trousers, lots of laugher and a sprinkling of rather attractive half naked young men... but was rather short on a decent plot. I've often wondered how on earth the writers came up with a good story that so many ABBA songs conveniently fit into, and I now realise that they didn't...

Having sworn that we would take a break from fundraising for a few years (mostly to recover some goodwill from our very generous family and friends!), we've been tempted back by an incredibly entertaining Melbourne fundraising event called 'The Melbourne City Romp'. Described as part treasure hunt, part amazing race, the event requires teams of 3 - 6 people to race around Melbourne using clues to look for checkpoints and solving puzzles. After much emailing amongst friends for willing participants, we rounded up a team, which was appropriately named 'Spot the Aus One Out', as from 5 people there was only one Australian.

After a late dinner party on Saturday night, we hauled ourselves out of bed early on Sunday morning to meet our team-mates for a power brunch. Then we spent a gruelling four hours racing around the city! It was great fun and an excellent way to get to know Melbourne better. We received free entry to a lot of the attractions and museums, but the competitive spirit got the better of us so we didn't hang around to browse!

The final results were released today, and we visited 16 checkpoints in 4 hours, earning us 320 points. Topping this up with 14 points for sponsorship money raised, we clocked a total 334 points which placed us 363rd out of 2,400 teams! We were very pleased with this placing, especially as we only raised $14! Discounting the fundraising part of the points tally, we placed 21st - not bad for a bunch of newcomers?!

Katie, Tom, Jacqui, Rob, Erinn - can you spot the Aus one out?

Other recent highlights have included Skyping into Tush's hen weekend, which was fantastic (second to actually being there in person of course), and completing our camera course (watch this space). This weekend it's the Melbourne Grand Prix, and next weekend we are off to Brisbane to visit Tom's second cousin Merryl, so lots more to blog about in the near future. Many thanks to Florence for responding to my question about the official name for Tom and Merryl's family link!

That's me on the computer screen!

Until next time... G'Day!

All Hail!

Today is Labour Day, an annual holiday celebrated all over the world that resulted from the labour union movement and celebrates the economic and social achievements of workers. At the risk of bringing politics into this blog, I’m not exactly a Labour voter, but obviously am happy to support the public holiday regardless. The celebration of Labour Day originated from the ‘Eight Hour day’ movement, which advocated eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation and eight hours for rest. Given the hours that British employees work, this might explain why Labour Day is not celebrated in the UK!

In order to take full advantage of the long weekend, Tom and I had long ago booked a trip to Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula. Sorrento is a popular beach destination for Melbournian’s to escape city life, and the rich few have fantastic holiday homes along the beach and in the hills. We were looking forward to a piece of this, and were really disappointed when the weather forecast for the whole weekend was rain and thunder storms! We chose to ignore the quiet sniggering from folks back home, who perhaps thought it quite amusing that we were on the end of a bad weather forecast for once, and ploughed ahead with our plans regardless.

After a leisurely drive along the coast and a stop off for breakfast by the beach, the sun decided to show it’s face - hurrah! Tom and I didn’t hesitate to jump on a boat for a seal and dolphin cruise. We sat on the top deck and sweltered in our trousers and jackets as the sun was beating down on the water. Why on earth did I insist on bringing all this gear with us when half of the other cruisers were in bikinis? Anyway, 15 minutes out into the bay and we were treated to the sight a manmade island full of Australian fur seals. The sight was incredible, but the smell was putrid. I can’t begin to describe the stench, but the fact that some people wanted to swim amongst the smell was beyond me! I had incredible flash backs of watching ‘Doctor Dolittle’ as a child and the Doctor walking around with a seal in a pram and then throwing it off a cliff into the sea. Bizzare.

Next up were the dolphins, which I promise were much better than the photos suggest! It’s very hard to capture the graceful dance of a Dolphin, or as we found, even capture them at all... Here is the single best photo of a bad bunch (of about 60!):

No sooner had we left the dolphins behind but the heavens opened! We had thunder, lightening, and lots of rain. Tom was miserable, I was miserable – but at least we had plenty of layers! We got utterly soaked traipsing from the boat back to the car, and by the time we got into our hotel room I was ready for a hot bath and a lie down. Unfortunately there was only a shower, but before I had a chance to complain we turned on the news to see that the city of Melbourne had been hit by a freak hail storm with hail stones the size of golf balls! The city was flooded and many cars had been dented or had windows broken by the hail. All of a sudden Tom and I stopped caring about the rain in Sorrento, and were very very glad to be out of the city at least.

We were really lucky the next day and managed to fit in some scenic walks and a trip to the local hot springs, which was not a patch on Bath, but I’m not sure why I thought it might be. The sun made a very well timed appearance for lunch at a beautiful winery, and thankfully the rain managed to restrict itself to times when we were in the safety of our car. This morning was even better, and we caught some beautiful early sunshine during a beach walk, which gave Tom a chance to put into practise some new skills learnt on our photography course.

Contrary to my appearance in this photo, I'm not pregnant or fat!

The next public holiday will be Easter, only one month away! We have a trip to Brisbane planned, so I will update you all then, if not before....

Obligatory sunset photo to close!

Australia Day

Next weekend will mark the four month anniversary of our arrival in Australia, and we can’t believe how fast it’s gone. After one month of temporary accommodation, another month of visitors and a third month of hectic work, month number four has been all about settling into our new life. Both Tom and I have been working hard to establish ourselves in our new jobs, which has taken Tom to Australia’s capital city, Canberra, and me to Melbourne’s industrial eastern suburbs (yay!). We’ve clocked up 5,000 km on our car, registered a boiling 45 degrees on the thermometer and made a start on filling out phone book with numbers that don’t start ‘+44’ for the UK.

It was very hot getting in the car after work!

January 26th was Australia Day, which according to Wikipedia.com is the official national day of Australia (really? Gosh I would never have guessed!). Tom and I embraced this holiday whole-heartedly, not because we were well versed in it’s historical meaning, but because we got a much needed day off work. At bit of Googling now has told me that it commemorates the proclamation of British sovereignty over the Eastern Seaboard of Australia, which really makes me think that it should be a public holiday in Britain too! Either way, we celebrated in true Australian style by (1) eating lamb and (2) going to the beach. We even combined the two by eating lamb on the beach, and flew some Australian flags for good measure. It was a beautiful sunny day and we joined our Canadian friends Rich and Tamara for the occasion. Tamara brought temporary tattoos of the Australian flag which we all displayed with pride – I think Tom’s has only just worn off!

Tom and Katie on the beach for Australia Day

The Brits and the Canadian's.. flying the Aussie flag!

Katie

Also at the end of January was the Australian Open tennis championship – and Melbourne was buzzing with excitement for the event. Tom and I were both keen to experience a grand slam other than Wimbledon, and the Australian Open didn’t disappoint. Really it was just a blue version of what we know and love in the UK, perhaps with a slightly more rowdy crowd - I lost count of the times I said, “This would never be allowed at Wimbledon!”. We had tickets to an evening session at Rod Laver Arena (the Centre Court equivalent) but arrived early to soak up the atmosphere on the outside courts. After meeting Richard and Tamara to watch a doubles match featuring a very attractive Russian lady (something tells me the boys collaborated on that decision) we went to find our very expensive seats in the Rod Laver. It turns out however that ALL of the seats are expensive and ours were in the back row! Unfortunately we didn’t get to watch Andy Murray play, but we did follow him closely throughout the tournament and were very sad to see him lose in the final.

Rod Laver Arena

Enjoying the view from the back row..

We’ve just started a photography course for our Digital SLR camera, so hopefully the quality of the photographs featured here will improve over the next 6 weeks - I’ll let you be the judge of that. We are hoping to meet some new people as well as learn more about our camera, and given that Tom hasn’t done his homework yet for this week the former may well be a more achievable objective! We have lots planned in the near future also – a long weekend on the Mornington Peninsula, a wine tasting course and Easter in Brisbane with distant-relative Merryl (if anyone can define the relationship please let me know – Merryl is Tom’s Dad’s cousin).

We are very excited to be coming back to the UK for the first two weeks of June 2010, which is timed for Tush and Andy’s wedding (yay!) but also designed as an opportunity to catch up with friends and family. We hope to see as many of you as possible if you are free when we are in your area – we will be whizzing around the country making stops to shake hands and kiss babies. All good practise in case either of us decide on a late career change to politics!

Here are a few more photos to close:

Valentine's Day BBQ - this is my attempt at making a heart shape from the sausages!

Sampling the local fish and chip shop - where *everything* was deep fried!

Purple sky at night...?

We made a friend at the beach!

I never tire of watching the sun!

Back to the Blog

I must start with an apology for the long delay in this blog entry, and a thank you for your concern that perhaps Tom and I had dropped off the face of the earth. Given that we are now Down Under and live life upside down, this could have been a perfectly plausible explanation for our absence, but in fact the gravitational pull has done it’s job and brought us right back down to earth. With a thud. Yes, the honeymoon period and fairytale hot Christmas is well and truly over, being replaced by the stressful and time consuming part of year known in my profession as ‘busy season’. Over the past two weeks, my Australian dream has comprised working in the glamorous locations of Melbourne’s industrial suburbs, the home office and the real office. I’ve experienced these delights at all hours of the day and night, as well as the wonders of Sunday working! I’ve learnt bad things (like that the office air conditioning is not turned on during weekends) and good things (like being 12 hours ahead of Europe allows Australian’s to work through our night time and still meet a deadline!). All in all, I’ve learnt that Australian’s work just as hard as Londoners and anyone who thinks Tom and I have come here for a couple of years chilling on the beach is mistaken!

Contrary to what you might think from the above, I am really enjoying my job, in which long hours in January and February are just par for the course. Tom has managed to keep himself entertained during my absence and this weekend I’m taking some time away from work to relax. We have tickets for the Australian Open and will be watching Hewitt v Bagdatis tonight in the Rod Laver (Melbourne’s centre court). The last time these two players met at the Australian Open, their match ended at 4.30am! If we see a repeat performance I fear I may not last the duration!

We have also experienced Melbourne’s hottest night on record, when after reaching 45 degrees in the daytime, the temperature didn’t fall below 30 degrees overnight, and that was at 8am the following morning. It was a challenge to say the least, as we only have air conditioning in our main living area and not the bedroom. I ended up sleeping on the sofa in the direct firing line of the aircon unit, and Tom had a fan blowing in the bedroom!

In the absence of any non-weather related tales to tell you from the past two weeks, I will complete the story from our Christmas holidays, when we took a four day road trip with Sue and Peter (Tom’s parents). We drove east from Melbourne along the coast for about 200 miles, to the beach town, Lakes Entrance, where the Gippsland Lakes connect to the Bass Straight seas, and to the famously beautiful Ninety Mile Beach. Whilst we didn’t cover the full 90 miles on foot, we tackled a 5km walk and the sights and sounds of a totally empty, sandy beach with huge crashing waves and warm water was breathtaking. That evening we drove just 20 minutes to our accommodation – a small bed and breakfast run by a lovely couple Les and Darrylin in the middle of the forest. Driving along the dirt track to this little purpose built house in the middle of a dense forest made our car filthy, but it was worthwhile for the fantastic accommodation that awaited us. We enjoyed a beautiful home cooked meal by Darrylin and were taken on a tour of the forest by Les. There was wildlife, lovely smells, beautiful surroundings and we were all thinking just how heavenly it was. And THEN.... I saw it. The spider. The HUGE huntsman spider. Not outside, not on the ceiling but in the very room that Tom and I were supposed to sleep in that night. (New paragraph required here as I have a lot to say about this.)

I walked into our bedroom and saw this huge intruder on the patio door, but I couldn’t tell if it was on the outside (fine) or the inside (total disaster). So I shouted for Tom who I think could tell from the tone of my voice what the problem was. I asked him if the spider was inside or outside and after going in for a closer look he told a small white lie and said, “It’s on the outside, now GET OUT OF THE ROOM NOW!”, before physically removing me from the room and shouting “Les, Les - can you come here please?!” I had cottoned on the reality of the situation by this point and run into the lounge area.

Just to clarify, a Huntsman spider is not poisonous, but will bite and is the size of the palm of an adult’s hand, with very chunky legs. Les is an experienced spider handler after living in the forest for 30 years, and didn’t think twice about picking it up with his hands. He also didn’t think it was a problem when he dropped the spider on the floor of our room and it started crawling around in our belongings! Eventually, after the spider bit him, he tried to show it to me and I ran away screaming, the spider was returned to the forest. I was still a quivering wreck however and so I proceeded to make Les check every corner of our room and also spray it with insect killing formula. Tom then had to go around and do a second check, including shining a torch under bed. Let’s just say it was in uneasy night for me!

The next day we continued our trip by driving inland in a northerly direction, along the Great Alpine Road which traces the slopes of Mount Hotham. In the winter time this is Victoria’s top skiing destination (only skiing destination?), and in the summer it makes for a beautiful drive (unless you don’t like heights, sorry Peter). At the end of our drive was a pot of gold – well almost. Our destination was Beechworth, and old gold mining town where I was to get my first taste of the intense Australian heat, and where Peter was due to meet an old friend from his schooldays who had emigrated to Australia. Whilst the olds caught up on, well, old times, Tom and I did what holidays were intended for – we relaxed by the pool! In what was probably our first day doing nothing of the whole Christmas break, and in such intense heat, we really enjoyed soaking up the sun and swimming! Just in case you are worried, we didn’t find any spiders in our hotel but I did make sure Tom did a thorough check, just in case!

We then drove inland back to Melbourne and Sue and Peter departed the next day. We thoroughly enjoyed their visit and were so glad that they liked our new home and surroundings. Peter I owe you a huge thank you for teaching me how to use cruise control on our car – it has revolutionised my long commute to clients.

There is so much more to talk about but I’ll leave it here for now and save the rest for when other news dries up! We read the UK news online every day and so are acutely aware of the dramatic snowy weather that you have all endured and are probably fed up of now. Visitors to Melbourne are welcome to escape the UK winter!

Nothing but mountains - the view from Mount Hotham, along the Great Alpine Road

Peter enjoying the view - and staying away from the edge!

Tom on the Great Alpine Road

Our tour of the forest involved a bit of wildlife spotting up a ladder...

.. waiting at the top were these little lovelies! Sugar gliders.

Enjoying the tranquility on Ninety Mile Beach

Walking to Ninety Mile Beach at Lakes Entrance

Back home, a beautiful sunset over Port Philip Bay

2009: What a year!

As 2009 draws to a close and I see in the New Year so far away from friends and family, I have been thinking about some of my personal highlights of the past 12 months...

1. Snow Day

The second of February 2009 made history for the monumental snowfall that graced the UK. In London, Tom and I were snowed in at our flat in Belsize Park and with no tubes and no buses in operation we settled down to ‘work from home’. I use inverted commas because there was more snow fighting than working taking place that day, and we were lucky enough to live walking distance from Primrose Hill, which had turned into a sledgers delight! We saw people sledging on roadsigns, blue Ikea bags and even an ironing board! The best sight of the day though was a man in a giant inflatable sumo suit. I’m not sure if it was for function or fashion....?


2. Claridges

In late 2008, Tom and I, plus his sister Anna and our friend Sally organised The Big Pink Ticket – a raffle to raise money for Cancer Research UK. Tom’s grandmother Florence was the lucky winner of the first prize – a meal at Claridges! Florence is in her nineties but still made the trip from Norwich to London, along with her sister Marian. Tom and I were invited too, along with his parents. We had a delicious Sunday lunch and were looked after very well by the staff!



3. Take That

Continuing the theme of winning prizes, Anna won tickets to see Take That at Trafford Park in June of 2009. The Circus tour was one to remember and we both had an absolutely fantastic night re-living our younger years and screaming for Mark, Gary, Jason and Howard. It was an outdoor event and we had a perfect summers evening for it!



4. Joining the Property Ladder

When Tom and I have a big decision to make, we don’t usually take long over it – and that was certainly the case with our first house purchase. One minute we were on a fun day trip to Walton on Thames, and two weeks later we’d bought a house there! We got the keys in July and embarked on a stressful few weeks of renovating as we co-ordinated three sets of builders (one cowboy set, others ok), two sets of extremely helpful parents and our jobs all at once. We didn’t anticipate how long it would take, how incompetent our builders could be, or that we’d also fit in a hen weekend, a stag do and a birth (Lucy’s daughter Dora) during the process! The finished product is wonderful however and we are very proud of the transformation – plus very grateful to our parents, without whom we would never have finished in under a month.






5. Babies

2009 brought babies into the lives of my friends for the first time, and consequentially into my life too. I was honoured to be present at the birth of baby Dora to my oldest and bestest friend Lucy on 18th July, and I enjoyed a wonderful three months of cuddles with Dora before we left for Australia. Either side of Dora’s birth, Louise and Dyfed welcomed Benjamin and Ella and Andy brought the world Amelie – two more gorgeous little bundles of joy! Just after we landed in Australia, Eleanor was born to Rachel and David, and I hope to meet her at some point in 2010!



6. Kate and Chris’ Wedding

12th September was a good day, because it was the day that my first university girlfriend tied the knot!! Kate very appropriately married BA pilot Chris in match that I truly believe was meant to be! They had a picture perfect ceremony in Dummer village church before a sun-drenched reception. I was delighted to be part of the wedding party as a bridesmaid for Kate. Part of the fun was getting together with all of the crew from Norwood halls of residence – who would have thought it’s over 9 years since our first day together at Bath university. It makes me feel old, but it’s great to see how far everyone has come, and there will be two more Norwood weddings next year – Tush will marry Andy and Ben will marry Sarah. With Allen already married to Faith, that’s 50% of us married off!



7. Friends and family

With our move to Australia pending, Tom and I made an extra effort to spend time with friends, and family before we left the UK. I wish we all made that much effort all the time – because it made for a fantastic summer, full of laughter, good food and good company. You all made so much effort to fit in seeing us before we left, and we were so flattered that some of you wanted to see us again after we’d said goodbye (Tush and Andy that’s you!). 2009 was also a good year at work, with Tom finding a job he loved, and me getting the Manager promotion I’d been after.

8. Moving to Australia

Buying a house together was a big step for Tom and I, but moving to Australia was even bigger. Although nervous before we left, it became clear in the few weeks after our arrival that we had made a sensible decision, and I’m confident that our time here will be a fantastic experience, great for both our careers and us as individuals.

**

The trouble with writing a list like the above, is that there are so many things that you can’t include, and for me this list looks like the following for 2009 – Mum and Dad’s 30th wedding anniversary, Lynne & Mike’s wedding, several engagements (Telfy, Sarah, Tush, Wai) and pregnancy announcements (Ella & Andy, Rachel & David, Jac & Sam, Wendy & Sam), Legoland with the Woods, London with the Howletts, Bath with Carol and Martin, Easter in Norwich, May Bank holiday in Poole, Ella’s baby shower, two sets of karaoke with my fantastic colleagues, Christmas with the Listers etc etc!

New Year’s Eve in Melbourne was a total wash out. We stayed home and watched the lightening show from our window – who needs fireworks?! I hope you will all keep reading our blog and Tom and I wish everyone a happy, healthy and safe 2010!!