Tag: Australia

It has been a long time since I did my last blog post, mostly because I haven’t been doing anything particularly interesting. Not that I haven’t been enjoying my time here, I have, but its not really anything worth writing home about. I have been living in a nice big tent in the backyard of one of the coolest places I have stayed. The constant stream of new people coming and going, from different places all around the world, give the house a great atmosphere. I really do count myself lucky to have found this place at the start of my time in Australia. But the weather has changed in Perth, we are now in the middle of the coldest time of year (which isn’t really all that cold), combined with the fact that I have spent 5 of my 12 months here in Perth, I feel that it is time to move.

I am still working for the Department of Water doing IT work for them and managing to save a reasonable amount of money each week, but this job is ending at the end of the month, so I will be looking for a cheap way to travel north along the west coast of Australia and up into the Northern Territory. I’m hoping to find a car of travellers who have a spare seat and we can just share the petrol costs.

Last week was the two year anniversary of the start of my trip, thank you to the people who sent me celebratory messages. I am still working on the site, writing the content, trying to catch up with myself, but I am looking forward to being able to add new pictures and videos as I move around Australia. Still a couple of weeks before that happens though.

It’s been a while since I last updated the blog, this is mostly because I haven’t been doing anything particularly interesting. I have been flying around Western Australia upgrading the computers in the Department of Water offices. It has been quite nice to see a few different towns, especially as it gives me a chance to take a look at places that I can visit when I start to travel north.

Last week I found out that the project I am contracted for will finish after another week. Which was good because I am starting to get a little fed up of not moving around, but also a bad thing, because I have been spending the money I have been making as soon as I get it. I worked out that if I stop buying things, then I should have around $3000 to travel north. So I wasn’t overly worried, but then on Wednesday things changed again. Although the project has finished they have asked if I will stay on to work on another project, I agreed because its a great chance to make more money, but I still want to get on the road again as soon as possible.

Flying up north for work has shown me how much nicer the weather is up there compared to Perth, it is getting colder and wetter here. So much so that today I have had to empty my tent to clean the carpet and bedding. My tent is water proof if I prepare it, but while I was away this week it rained a lot and part of my tent leaked. When I got back I noticed it smelled damp, but last night I noticed that although my bed feels dry, when you lay on it and it compresses, it is actually quite wet. Hopefully everything will dry before I have to sleep again tonight.

I will probably continue to hold off on my updates until I start to travel again, so that I can write about something more interesting than going to work {:0)

Time is passing so fast now that I am working, the last three weeks have been rather uneventful. Week 89 I was still working in the center of Perth, upgrading the computers in the main offices of the Department of Water. One of the evenings I was just coming back into the building after a lunch break when the lift broke down. It had only moved about a foot upwards from the ground floor, but it stopped and none of the buttons would work anymore. I pressed the emergency intercom and was told that an engineer would be sent out to me as soon as possible. After about 10 minutes I got bored of waiting in the lift and decided to force the doors open, the inner doors were easy enough, but the outer doors had a strange double latching system that took me a few minutes to work out. It was the first time I have been stuck in a lift and was the most exciting thing to happen at work that week.

For the last two weeks I have been working in ‘regional offices’, most of these offices are in small towns spread out across Western Australia, but we started with the ones close by. This week I will be travelling south to a town called Bunbury for a week or so, it will be nice to be able to see more of Western Australia while I’m doing this job, which I just found out has been extended an extra month, until the end of May. I’m still working two extra jobs in my spare time, writing articles for a travel website and building websites. The great thing about doing all this work is being able to buy things that I have been wanting for months. I finally bought my new laptop after around four months of waiting, over the next few weeks I’ll buy a new digital camera and a mobile phone, then all my wages will be saved for my time in Asia.

It seems that the place I am living is going through some changes, many of my housemates are leaving, some returning home at the end of their visa, some moving on to different parts of Australia or other countries. I was really lucky to find this place so early in my time in Australia, I’m sure I will stay in touch with them and hopefully meet them again at some point. I feel like there isn’t as much exciting stuff going on at the moment, but I know that I have to take some time to work occasionally during this journey, so that I can travel more in the future. It is really nice to spend some time in one place, going to work every day, coming home to the same group of friends, just having a normal routine (well almost normal). But I am looking forward to getting back on the road at the end of may for a while, on my way up to the Northern Territory.