Arrival

After 30 hours of travel, including about 22 hours on airplanes, Paul and I arrived in Melbourne. We were greeted by Greg and his 4-year old son Isaac. It was so nice to see a friendly face, and super-nice to have a ride from the airport.

Greg has been in Australia with his wife, Marya, and sons Isaac and Luke for the last year while he did a year of neonatology fellowship. The family is lovely, and the boys are a lot of fun...they provide a very early wake-up call at 6am, and I have no idea where they get all of their energy, but they are very cute. And smart! The current craze is dinosaurs, and Isaac knows the names and food preferences for all of them, it seems. Luke, who is only two, prefers the megalosaurus, and is very cute following his brother around in everything that they do.

The family has been renting a house in the Elsternwick suburb of Melbourne. The house is beautiful - deceptively small from the front, but huge, and airy inside. All of the houses here seem to be long and narrow. The floors are either white tile or pine wood, and the house is filled with color. The back room is a livingroom/diningroom/playroom and is constantly filled with dinosaurs these days. The entire back wall is 12-foot windows. This seems to be a bit of a theme here, with the many-windowed walls.

For our first day, we got settled, and then headed out to get a mobile phone and a bank account, both necessary to do just about anything here.

Over the next 3 days we pounded the pavement of Melbourne, trying to find an apartment. It was hot! Not that I'm complaining after the freezing cold in Ottawa. On our first day of hunting we mainly walked - and boy did we walk! About 12 km all around the city getting the lay of the neighborhoods, and a sense of where the hospital was in relation to everything else.

By day 3 in Melbourne we had specific apartment apointments and knew more of what we wanted in a place, so applied to two different apartments. Getting an apartment in Melbourne is completely different than in Canada. Firstly, furnished apartments (including a fridge) are very rare). Then, there are no business offices in the buildings. Real-estate agents are contracted to let out each apartment. They do this by going through all of the applications for the apartment, and recommending a few to the owners, who have the final say. There are often up to 60 applicants for a single apartment, particularly when it is close to the university. About 3 to 20 people may show up to the open houses that they have for apartments, but that doesn't guarantee you the place. So, we had no idea what our competition was. But, day four, we had success, and are feeling like we won the lottery.

We were only scheduled to see 3 apartments that day. We applied to the first two, and weren't impressed with the last one but asked the real-estate agent if she had any other places that were nice, non-student-like and maybe a bit different. She did, and was nice enough to show it to us that day. She even drove us to it and told us that it hadn't been advertised because she didn't want to sift through several hundred student applications. We loved the location - in between the Central Business District, Lygon Street (Little Italy) and Brunswick street (cafes and shops), and right across the street from the beautiful Exhibition Park.

The building looks like a Tuscan villa, complete with fountains and greenery, and there are benches and little walkways between the different sections. Here's a link to the google map at street level:

View Larger Map

We were charmed. The apartment itself is shaded, and not too big, but with a nice patio on which I think we will have many breakfasts and suppers. We applied then and there, and the next day the agent called to say that we had not only gotten the apartment, but the owner wanted to move a fridge and washer and dryer in for our use. Wow! So, we are going to feel more secure after we meet with the agent in 2 days to pay the bond and confirm, but we are pretty happy for now.

Getting an apartment had allowed us to spend a day relaxing, and then start getting stuff for an apartment. Today, we found a pillow, started to look for a bed and bedding, and found Paul some swimming trunks - tomorrow we go to Torquay Beach with Greg and Marya and the boys, where we are both going to take surfing lessons! I've never seen Paul swim, so this promises to be fun.