We stayed in until after noon as we were deciding what accommodation we should choose. We engineered our way to a decision by ordering data in a spreadsheet, measuring distances and clearing all facts.
When we had selected the accommodation, we called Mecca, the property manager and scheduled a meeting. At the meeting, we handed over our applications from which she would make the lease, and then we booked a meeting on Friday for the signing of the contract.
After the meeting, Grahame drove us up to Fort Scratchley, a former coastal defence installation built in fear of a Russian attack in 1882. The first time it had to fire to defend the coast was during World War II against Japanese submarines.
In the evening, we ate dinner with Jenny and Grahame. The dish was curry chicken with rice, much better than those served on the flight.
The dinner was followed by the AFL game between Sydney Swans and Hawthorn (Melbourne). AFL (Australian Football League) games are rugby games played according to the Australian rules. The game was different from the State of Origin and had a much fast pace. It was also more similar to football (soccer) than Rugby League. Hawthorns won.
Wednesday started with us joining Jenny for a walk along Lake Macquarie. The weather was nice although it was wild and woolly.
From Lake Macquarie, we were driven to Blackbutt Reserve, which is a wildlife reserve. At Blackbutt Reserve, we got to see all kinds of animals. We saw kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, emus, a wombat, peacocks, owls, and a lot of other animals.
We got to the reserve right before 2 pm, which was planned since the koalas are fed at 2 pm. We walked by and stopped at the kangaroo, emu, and wallaby enclosure. The kangaroos were quite active. The were jumping, eating, and shoving each other. We continued along the other enclosures stopping at each of them. We got to the koala enclosure just in time for their feeding time. The koalas were enjoying the eucalyptus leafs. Some of them were agile, jumping between branches and trees. At one point, a bird (a Little Pied Cormorant) also present in the enclosure swooped down and picked up a dead mouse, which it proceeded to eat and swallow whole.
While walking back to the car past the first enclosure we visited, a wallaby came to the fence so Jenny and Linnea could feed it and pet it a bit.
In the evening, we ate dinner with Grahame and Jenny, as well as Meredith and Bill. After dinner, Grahame, Bill, Linnea, and I went to a pub nearby and watched the State of Origin game (i.e. a rugby game). In the State of Origin series, New South Wales goes up against Queensland. This rugby game series is played according to the rules of Rugby League. During the night, Linnea and I became acquainted with the different kinds of rugby and the rules of Rugby League.
New South Wales ended up winning the game, although losing the series. Both Linnea and I found rugby league more interesting to watch than football, soccer that is, although it was rough and a bit brutal at times.
Tuesday started with Jenny and Grahame serving us breakfast. It consisted of yoghurt with muesli and toasties. Jenny prepared pieces of toasties with vegemite for us. If you don’t know what Vegemite is, then I can tell you it’s an Australian bread spread made from leftover brewer’s yeast extract. It tastes salty and a bit bitter. It’s not bad tasting, but you should only have a very thin layer of it.
After breakfast, we went to our second house inspection. This one was in Warabrook, which is located northeast of the Callaghan campus in Newcastle where we’ll be going to class. We met the owner at the house, but the room we were interested in had apparently been taken. So Linnea and I decided to walk to Uni instead to have a look.
Uni was almost completely abandoned apart from some personnel. Walking on the campus almost felt a bit like walking through a jungle with strange animal sounds everywhere.
After walking around the campus for a bit more than an hour, we took the bus into the city. At the city, we walked along the shops, and I bought an Australian SIM card for my phone.
For lunch, we found a restaurant called Three Bears close to the wharf. We had a toastie each and I ordered chips with mine. The restaurant looked like a remodelled rundown farmers shop, but the look had all been made for the restaurant.
After lunch, we went just across the street to the Queen’s Wharf and up the tower located there. It was really windy, or may be rather wild and woolly. We struggled climbing the stairs, but we arrived at the top only to be joined by a gang of punk kids riding their kick bikes and rocking the tower back and forth. We took a few pictures but decided to go back down again shortly after arriving at the top.
Walking along the wharf, we arrived at the Maritime Museum where we went in to look at the tourist information. We picked up a couple of maps and brochures, but we didn’t look at the exhibition at this time because of the entrance fee. Instead, we walked to the Newcastle Museum, which is free. We looked at their steel and coal exhibition, which focus on BHP and the industry in Newcastle over the years.
We walked back to the apartment and had dinner. After dinner, we went to the grocery store to buy more breakfast material, but we also bought Tim Tams. Delicious!
After breakfast, Sebastian followed us to the closest train station. Linnea and I went on the train to Sydney Central. During the ride, we got a short glimpse of the Sydney Opera House.
At Central, the Australians we met there were nice, one of them pointed out where the lift was without us even asking (guess our bags showed that we needed it). When we had found our train to Newcastle, we took a seat and relaxed, listening to music.
Meeting us in Newcastle were our hosts for the Airbnb place we had booked for the first week. To meet us at the station was really kind and exceeded our expectations, as it turned out that was only the beginning.
When we got to the Hamilton train stop in Newcastle, we were greeted by Jenny and Grahame, our Airbnb hosts. They were really kind, helping us with our bags, and drove us to their apartment, which is located in a remodelled building of a former wool brokery.
Within the first five minutes in the apartment, the fire alarm went off in the whole building. During this unplanned fire drill, Jenny told us she had prepared lunch.
After lunch, Grahame took us on sightseeing around Newcastle. During the tour, we stopped at Memorial Walk alongside the beach where we walked along a bit and spotted whales.
After the sightseeing, we were driven to our first of four house inspections, which we had booked in advance. It was a brick house with 16 rooms in Mayfield. This house later became our first-hand choice and will be the place where we live.
The property manager showing the house, Mecca, was nice. She was focused on our needs and seemed to be a good person to have in charge of your accommodation. After the inspection, she asked us if we wanted a lift back to the Airbnb-place, so she ended up driving us back to our temporary home.
In the evening, we ate dinner together with Jenny and Grahame. It was very nice!
As I have promised, here’s a summary of the trip to Australia and our first days here. This post covers the trip. The next post will cover the first days here.
Saturday, 9 July
As I have previously written, our first flight departed from Arlanda airport at 14:30 CEST. A semi-sick Gustav and a better off Linnea were seated in 37J and 37K on their way to Bangkok. The flight with Thai Airways departed on time and shortly after take-off the cabin crew started giving out snacks and drinks.
The snacks were some pretzels, and the drink of our choice was apple juice. Linnea’s first-hand choice was coffee, but apparently, Thai Airways only serve coffee with hot meals. I guess Thai Airways might not be familiar with Swedish coffee habits.
Linnea and I started watching a movie each in the in-flight entertainment system after we got the snacks. Linnea watched the new live action Djungle Book while I watch 10 Cloverfield Lane. I liked the movie. If you like mystery-thrillers watch it, but don’t look at trailers or reviews. It’s best watched without knowing too much about the story.
We got our hot meal during the movie. So after pausing the movie we ate the meal consisting of a Curry chicken with rice, salad, bread, camembert, saltines, a cheesecake for dessert, and last but not least coffee! Well, tea for me since I find it more soothing than coffee.
After the meal, we finished watching our movies after which we fell asleep – I wish! We laid under our blankets, with our neck pillows around our necks and with sleeping masks over our eyes – still, sleep was scarce. I managed to get a few hours in total, but it was hard as the three loudmouthed, whisky-chugging, Swedish men on the row in front of us stayed awake for quite some time. And at each bump and kick from the passenger in the seat beside me my focus on falling asleep was lost again for the moment. But I was lucky. Linnea gave up her attempt to fall asleep after a while and watched movies instead.
At one point during the “night”, Linnea woke me up, point out the small aeroplane window. We were somewhere close to India, and at the horizon, in a dark and ominous cloud, a thunderstorm. Linnea and I managed to catch a glimpse of the whole cloud lighting up as thunder rolled.
Sunday, 10 July
When “morning” came, i.e. when the cabin crew slowly turned the cabin light back up, breakfast was served. The Swedish breakfast brands greeted us as we were served orange juice, yoghurt, fruit salad, marmalade, croissant, scrambled eggs and sausage, and coffee or tea.
Shortly after we had finished our breakfast, we began our decent. Bangkok greeted us under a cover of smog, fog, or both.
We landed at about 6 am local time (ICT). Stepping out of the plane, meeting signs with strange writings and stepping onto the walkways. After finding a sign with departures and finding the gate of our second flight, we found the escalator for that section of the airport. But in front of the escalator, blocking the way an airport employee stood checking each and everyone’s boarding card and said whether or not they were supposed to go up the escalator. As you might imagine the line for the escalator was very long, and at the end when I showed my boarding I simply got the response: “Sydney, yes” and a pointing gesture up the escalator.
When we got up the escalator, we found ourselves in the line of a security control and panically drank up the water in our water bottle, which we had just refilled on the plane. After the security control, we strolled through the duty-free shops and went to our gate.
When we finally were allowed to enter the boarding area of the gate, the area was filled fast. This was due to the fact that boarding didn’t start until 20 minutes after the scheduled time of take-off.
On the flight, we were served breakfast again, pretty much the same things as last flight only in a more Thai way. After breakfast, they turned down the lights again and “night” began. This annoyed me a bit as my intention was to stay awake during this flight in order to better adjust to the Australian time. My attempt to stay awake failed. While listening to podcasts and news, I soon dozed off and so did Linnea as well.
We slept for most of the second flight and woke up just before the hot meal was going to be served. The second flight they server – surprise – Curry chicken(!), only this time in a more Thai way. What Thai way means when it comes to Curry chicken is more spices. I toke one bite, and that was enough for me. I ate the salad and bread instead.
The arrival to Sydney was only a couple of minutes behind schedule. When we walked off the plane, we arrived at immigrations and customs. Everything there was quite easy. Scan your passport, get a ticket, go to line, put ticket into a machine, look into the camera, walk through, fetch bag, go to customs, hand over paper slip, “weapons or medicines?”, “medicins”, “did you bring any food from the plane?”, “no”, “can I check your backpack?”, “sure”, “you can go”, “thanks”, and that was pretty much it. We had to wait a short while for our luggage, but not very long.
When we came out to the arrival area, we were greeted by my friend and former colleague Sebastian and his girlfriend Hermione. They drove us to their (and their roomate’s) appartment where we slept horizontally for the first time in a long, long time, or that’s how it felt. Before we went to bed we tried four kinds of Tim Tams, which is an Australian biscuit that Sebastian had bought for us. But in the end it felt really nice to sleep!
Monday, 11 July
Linnea and I woke up and took a well-needed shower. Getting out of the shower, the not-so-warm air of New South Wales hit me, but it’ll get warmer soon (hopefully). When we were dried up, Sebastian had prepared breakfast for us. He had also been out and got us Opal cards to use when travelling in NSW. Thanks, Sebastian and Hermione for meeting, driving, having and helping us! Also thanks to Matt and Angelica for letting us sleep in your living room!
The last couple of days we’ve been looking at houses in Newcastle. We booked three showings in advance before we left Sweden. One each on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so today it’s Thursday and the first day we haven’t been occupied looking at houses. But we decided today that we’re going for the first house that we saw on Monday.
As you can see in the pictures above it’s quite recently renovated, and we’ll have our own bathroom and AC. We’re going to be in a house with 15 other rooms like ours, hopefully we’re going to like it there!
We filled in all the paperwork this afternoon (as shown below) and brought it to the agency’s office in town, our excellent Airbnb host drove us there to hand in the papers. Our application got approved the same afternoon and we’re meeting the real estate agent tomorrow at 10 am to sign the lease. The plan is that we move our stuff there on Sunday, cause on Monday orientation week starts at the University of Newcastle and we’re going on a trip to Port Stephens the entire first day 🙂
Anyway, a lot going on at the moment. We’re really enjoying our first days in Australia. We’ve already tried several typical Australian things that have been on our bucket list. Among others we’ve eaten Vegemite, visited some kangaroos, wombats and koalas and watched a genuine rugby game where New South Wales won! Going to post some pictures of that as well 😉
Feels really good to have the living arrangements almost settled! That was our main focus going into this week. But we’ve gotten so much more out of our first week already. And the weekend isn’t even here yet.
A collage of the airplane food going from Stockholm to Sydney. We got so much food! I’m happy we’ve already booked the ticket back in December again with Thai Airways 🙂
#yummy #thaiairways #linneaandgustav (http://ift.tt/29Plmvl)
