Welcome to Bowen!

We finally have a place to call home! After a week and a half too long in little Collinsville we have successfully secured ourselves a beach house in Bowen. That also means we finally have a return address, so the Thank You notes are on their way too.

We had a bit of a scare in our apartment hunt. There was only one furnished apartment and one beach front apartment available on the market. Those were our two requests. Doesn't seem like a tall-order for a town surrounded by 5 beaches. Yet, the day we dropped off our application for the furnished beach house, we also received the news that someone else put in an offer to PURCHASE! Yikes! After a gruesome weekend, we got the call that the sellers were not accepting the offer. Apparently they are asking high dollar - $800,000!

Unfortunately, we learned that just because you buy a furnished apartment doesn't mean you don't have to spend a lot of money setting it up. 5 trips to the grocery store now and we still don't have it all. Towel, linens, food, cleaning supplies. The list goes on and on.

Now we just need a boat.....

Reality Sets In

After 16 hours of driving, that's 1400 km or about 870 miles, we have finally made it to our new hometown.

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Matt's company set us up with some temporary housing until we find our own apartment. I'm currently sitting out on the front stoop eating Nutella and Arnott's Milk Coffee biscuits. You might be asking yourself "Why is she sitting on the front stoop?" I have to tell you, we knew the temp unit would be small, but I think we were in for a reality check.

The unit is half of a trailer. There's a full-size bed and a night stand. That's it for furniture! After we got over the initial shock - which was exponentially increased by the discovery of the 2" cockroach in the teakettle - we've realized this place is actually livable. There's a mini-fridge, a sink and an oven. Both pubs and the grocery store are in walking distance. We have our own bathroom which has hot water and was surprisingly immaculate. So what if the front stoop doubles as my office? So what if the TV doesn't work? So what if all of our luggage is still in the car? So what if Matt's too tall for the bed? At least there's a view of the lawn bowling club! It's a big deal on a Monday night, let me tell ya!

Here's a panoramic sweep of the place, the whole place:



I've done a bit of apartment hunting and we have hopefully found the one. I'm taking Matt to look at it on Saturday. Hope we have all the proper documents to get an application approved! This place is awesome! I don't want to spoil the surprise so no pics yet.



For those of you petrolheads - we got our Defender 90! It's a beaut! We got the last one in Queensland. It's a diesel bullet-proof tank and I can't park it but I sure get a lot looks driving through town. I'm feeling like a 15 1/2 year old driving a big truck for the first time. I only have a US license so I'm partially legal. I know what the road rules are, I think. I'm still getting used to the steering and the clutch is on the wrong side. But I sure am having a good time!

On the road again....

I know this may come as a surprise to many of you, but I am currently procrastinating.

We have been living in this hotel room for 3 weeks and its finally time to pack up and hit the road again.  Turns out Matt's mine site actually wants him to be on-site at some point.  And Monday isn't coming soon enough for them.

You can imagine after three weeks we've started to settle in just a bit.  Time to pack up our 9 suitcases again and take the 15 hour drive up North towards our new home.  That also reminds me - I wonder which bag the Garmin is in????

We've enjoyed our time here in Brisbane. It was a great place to start getting used to the lingo.  It's kind of like talking to Snoop Dog - everything has a nickname.
Breakfast = brekky
McDonalds = mackers
Woolworths = woolies
Aggressive = aggro

I just got a little surprise as I was typing this up to.  Just another reason why I have the best husband in the world.   He sent me flowers - and proceeds went to Breast Cancer Research.  What a guy!