Start in a new home, Anita started working and a new car.
On the 4th of April we moved to our new home. Since then we are enjoying the peaceful natural environment. The house is not very big, but enough. It has a moderate living room with kitchen, 4 sleeping rooms, a media room/rumpus, a study room/formal living room, two bath rooms, two toilets, a laundry an inbuilt garage and a separate shed with a primitive build in bathroom. In Australia this is a very standard way of house design, with more rooms than we are used to in NL.
The house is not connected to town water,has no sewer connection, has no cable connection and is not connected to gas supply. The water supply is organized by catching rain water from the roof, store it in tanks and pumping it through filters to the house. We have a sophisticated sewer recycling tank producing “grey water” for the garden, have DVB-T (HDTV) and a solar hot water system on the roof. It’s all part of a new experience.
A phone line with ADSL is up and running now. Until recently internet was provided by satellite using a satellite dish.
Although we are still camping in our house(our container hasn’t arrived yet), we really enjoy it after the 5 weeks in a small cabin. Last week we’ve received the message that our container has a delay of two weeks and still was in Singapore instead of Brisbane. Hopefully we can unpack our stuff somewhere in May.
In the bush-garden we made already several “discovery trips”. Already Koalas, Possums and many tropical birds showed up. There are also some frog ponds with many different species of frogs all making different noises. Especially the small ones are fascinating (see photo).
Nicole has her 2nd week of vacation care (school has two weeks holiday) and loves it. The main reason for putting her in vacation care is that it helps her to learn better English and she really likes it. She also has 3 hours a week private lessons in English from a Dutch speaking teacher and she is learning very fast . We are very happy and proud that she is adapting so good and quickly. Next week Nicole will start with 2 days a week with after school care and she is looking forward to it.
Initially Jorick started happy and greedy at pre-school. However last two weeks were hard. He didn’t want to go to school and was crying when Jan left him there. When Jan went picking him up he was happy and certainly enjoyed school very much. Although we see improvement, we expect that it will still take some time before he is fully adapted. Friday next week (25 April) Jorick will become 4 years old and will have his first ” birthday party” in Australia. He already dreams about it
Anita has started working at The Prince Charles Hospital at the Geriatric ward. The first experiences are positive. Nice colleagues and Geriatrics is very much the same as in NL, so that makes the start easier. The hardest thing to learn is the Australian way of saying the things. The road from home to work is nice and not to busy. In NL she worked 3 days a week, so 5 days a week is a little bit heavy.
Jan is still busy to arrange many things around settlement. Many formalities have to be arranged with regard to the house, the shipping of our goods, the schools, formalities around migration, etc. A rental car is expensive so last week Jan has bought a car (Pajero 4wd) at an auction house.This is our first car and will make it possible to travel inland. Since Jan is now very busy as a taxi driver we will now start looking for a 2nd car as well.
Overall things are getting into place. The climate is adorable and the space and nature are impressive. We also have met many nice people here and have already had many invitations with BBQ’s which is a national habit here.
When we hear about the cold weather in NL we hope that it it soon will become better there as well. Spring is normally a very attractive season.
Sometimes we are missing friends and family and would like to pop by. Unfortunately this is not so easy with regard to the distance. Anyway, we are happy that we can stay in touch through internet, phone and mail.
Wish you all the best.
Kind regards,
Jan, Anita, Nicole and Jorick