Bills, Thrills and Bellyache

Catching up on previous post, as was somewhat tired when wrote it.

Eloise threw up constantly the other day whenever anything hit her guts, and to be honest we had been feeling a little delicate also. We are putting it down to fatigue and jet lag. All better now and any illness over and done with.

Over the last few days we have been getting our bearings, and getting ourselves properly landed. The Australians are very big on ID and in order to secure any sort of services you have to build up points of ID. You generally seem to need 100 points to satisfy acceptance criteria, and different documents count for different number of points with different organisations. So we were able to get bank accounts with passports and an energex bill at one bank, but another required extra ID. It's all a bit confusing. However we now have bank accounts, electricity, phone, broadband, and mobiles. We ended up getting the phones from Telstra - Optus wouldn't give us service on a $19-a-month contract even though we demonstrated bank balances in excess of $7k. Bizarre - and annoying, as it took 4 visits to get to that stage. Grrr.

We also haven't got QLD drivers licenses as there was an unexpected written test to complete at which Nicole scored a "deferred success" as she understandably didn't know how close to a bus stop you are permitted to park. Oh well.

I have been doing most of the driving thus far as Nicole, for unknown reasons, is unable to get the car to engage its engine. The immobiliser seems to have keyed itself to my DNA in some strange way; I don't perform any out-of-the-ordinary actions, but the car starts for me but not for Nicole. So I have been driving and she has had her nose buried in a map as we have scooted around into Brisbane CBD (Central Business District) where all the hi-rises are to go and see DIMIA and get our visas endorsed onto our passports, Telstra to get our telecoms together, and surf the foodcourts and coffee shops. Nicole has dropped in on the hospital and visited the ward she will be working on. Things look good.

Also as we have been waking up very early in the morning we took the car out to Mount Coutha and looked out over the city to Moreton Bay on the Coral Sea: here is Eloise casting her eye over the meandering Brisbane River.

This spot is only to 20 minute drive from the house, and there are many likely looking dog walking spots dotted around in the neighbourhood of this rather nice location which is in an area of National Park. After having a coffee and enjoying the view, Eloise made friends with a local dog and then we went and walked up to Slaughter Falls, which James and Jane will be delighed to learn was, in view of the current level 4 (?) drought more like the Slaughter Trickle; in Nicole's words "I've seen more impressive bathroom taps." Oh well.

As you can see from this photo the weather has improved somewhat and we actually got down to T-shirts again. What's quite strange is that you're walking around in this forest which doesn't to be honest look all the exotic, then from above echoes out the cry of what sounds like a pterodactyl and overhead flies some sor of parrot-like thing then from out of the undergrowth wanders an obviously tame bush turkey and you think "well the dogs are going to love this!" - in the worst possible way. Then the bush turkeys start fighting, you learn they aren't flightless after all, and things don't seem quite so bad.

We have had visits from Cate's Mum and from her sister and children. They all seem very nice. It's good to know that there's support there if we really need it - not that we will.

I'm going to stop now, the keyboard on this computer is doing my head in. When the new broadband gets connected, will be able to hook up the laptop then it will be Skype-tastic. Hurrah.