Tag: Perth

Australia Blog Posts, Blog Posts

Weeks 89, 90 & 91: Earning and Spending

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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.

Australia Blog Posts, Blog Posts

Weeks 86, 87 & 88: Parties and Starting Work

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It seems like such a long time ago now, but in week 86 I got a job offer, the job was to do sand-blasting and painting. When I actually arrived there I found out the wages weren’t very good, and when the manager left me alone with some of the other workers, they told me that it was a terrible place to work. So I made some excuses and left. The rest of that week I applied for other jobs online. But that weekend was the birthday celebration of one of my house mates, his name is Tom, he is English and together with a few other people we went to camp at the beach and drive through the sand dunes in 4x4s. One of those days, we were walking along the beach when I noticed a huge bundle of ropes at the edge of the water. After closer inspection I found it was a huge net, like a cargo net, so I rolled it up and brought it home.

I spent most of week 87 applying for more jobs, but luckily one of my other housemates, Simon from Germany, told me that a friend of his was looking for someone to help her clear out her garage. So me and another housemate, Philip who is also German, went to the house and started clearing stuff out for her. While we were there I mentioned that I do IT work, so she asked me to look at her computer and help her with her websites. So I managed to earn some cash, I am actually still working weekends with her at the moment. Towards the end of the week I decided to walk through the city with CVs and hand them out to as many places as I could. One of those places was an IT job agency, that night they emailed me to suggest some changes I should make to my CV, I made them and they got back to me on Saturday, asking me to come in on Monday to talk through the different jobs they had available.

Over the weekend we had a huge party at the house, our place is great for parties. We have 5 sofas out in the back yard with a tarp stretched out above them to keep the sun off, plus we now have the net, which I found on the beach, tied up between two trees like a huge hammock. We managed to fit nine people in the net at one point late on Saturday night… Then on Sunday I got stung in the eye by one of our bees. There is a punching bag hung in one of the trees, this had become home to a bee hive, most of the time this was just a nice thing to have in the garden, but recently they have been stinging people. The sting to my eye was the forth bee sting I had got in the last 2 weeks.

Now we get to this last week, it started out with my visit to the job agency. I spoke to them for around 15 minutes before they said that they were putting me forward for a government contract, upgrading all the Department of Water offices from Windows XP to Windows 7, for just over 17 pounds per hour. My interview was later that day and my eye was starting to swell, I wasn’t sure that the interview had gone all that well, I am a little out of practice, but I decided not to worry about it too much. The next day I woke up and my eye had swollen shut, this wasn’t a huge problem as I had nothing to do, but I decided to go into town and register with Medicare, the Australian health service, being from the UK I get 12 months free cover from Medicare. That same day I got a call to let me know that I had got the government job and they wanted me to start on Wednesday (the next day). The job is great and I am finally earning money, which means that over the next few weeks I will be able to get my camera fixed, buy a kindle, a new mobile phone and a Mac book Pro. At the moment the work is in Perth, but over the next few weeks I will be moving all around Western Australia to the other Department of Water offices, upgrading their computers too.

I also managed to get some work writing about some of my travel experiences, I submitted around a thousand words at the end of the week and they will pay me a hundred pounds for it. The have already asked me to write more for them, next time I will earn a hundred and fifty pounds. The money is nice, but I am looking at it more like a chance to develop my writing so that my books will be better, when I actually get around to working on them, hopefully I can do that once I get this new laptop.

Australia Blog Posts, Blog Posts

Week 85: Settling in

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I am really enjoying my time here in Perth, and this week had a great start. On Sunday evening we climbed onto the roof of the house to drink some beer and one of my housemates (Dave) jumped off of the roof onto a tarp that is hung over the sofas. We recorded it and made a video which I will share as soon as it is available online. On Monday morning I woke up and got a phone call from Dave, his friend was looking for someone to do some work. I said I was available and went off to help build a kitchen in a new restaurant. I was earning $30 an hour but there was only enough work for two days. Still very good though.

I spent the rest of the week trying to find more permanent work, but as yet I haven’t got anything confirmed. I have confirmed my place in the house though, I have now moved out of my hammock and into a tent in the back garden for $30 a week. This weekend I drove north with a few friends from the house, we went sand boarding, we tied a rope to the back of my friends 4×4 and to a body board then drove around in the sand dunes. Then we drove to the coast to camp by the beach, a really great weekend.

Africa Blog Posts, Australia Blog Posts, Blog Posts

Week 84: Arriving in Australia

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On Monday I met with my new friend Jedrek for a few hours before I had to head to the airport. Luckily I managed to share a taxi with some Japanese guys who were flying out of Cape Town too. In the end I decided to take the cheaper flight, rather than the direct one. The journey took 48 hours, from Cape Town to Perth, and cost just over 500 pounds. I had an eighteen hour stop over in Doha and was expecting to have to sit in the airport the whole time. Luckily the airline paid for my visa and a 4 star hotel in Doha, so I could rest and have a hot shower. I ended up having three breakfasts, a lunch and dinner, all for free. The first breakfast was on the plane, then I got another free breakfast in the airport restaurant by showing my boarding pass, then when I arrived at the hotel I was allowed a breakfast, lunch and dinner. The hotel food was amazing so I made sure I ate as much free food as possible.

The flight to Perth from Doha took around 10 hours, and left Doha at around 1 am. When I woke up on the plane it was 10 am, but then I changed my time to the new local Australian time and it was 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Not a great way to start my sleeping pattern. I headed into Perth from the airport using the free shuttle to the domestic airport and then local transport into town, this meant I paid 4 dollars instead of 33.

In Perth I headed to the bus station to make my way to my CouchSurfing hosts place in South Perth, at the bus stop I met two Argentinean guys who were actually heading to the same CouchSurfing place. The place is really awesome, there are 3 Australian guys living in the house with a French guy, but outside in the back garden are about 6 tents. There are maybe 14 people living here from all different places around the world, I really like it, there is such a great atmosphere. Hopefully I can stay here for the rest of my time in Perth.

On my second day I started my efforts to find work, mostly this was just preparation, I already have my working holiday visa, but you also need a local bank account and a Tax File Number. It took me a couple of days to sort these out but now I have started sending applications to quite a few jobs online. Yesterday another guy arrived at the house, he had lived here before but had just been on holiday, he told me about a job I really want to do, Jackarooing. He spent a few months living out in the bush herding cattle on a dirt bike.

After speaking with him I have changed my mind about the kind of work I want to do at the moment. I think instead of looking for IT help desk work it would be better to do some labouring work or get a job in a roadhouse. Labouring work pays well and is casual work, but if you work in a roadhouse you get accommodation and food, plus you are out of the city, so you wont spend the money you make. I have been told that roadhouse work is the best way to save money, so this is what I really want to do, unfortunately I haven’t seen many of these jobs advertised yet. Maybe I will do some labouring work in the meantime, I guess time will tell.