Tag: Tony’s Travels

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.

Africa Blog Posts, Blog Posts

Week 83: Cape Town

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I spent this week in Cape Town, which is one of my favorite cities so far. I arrived on a local minibus taxi with a journey that should have taken 4 hours and actually took 10, luckily my CouchSurfing host didn’t mind too much that I arrived so late.

Cape Town is a beautiful city, you can see Table Mountain from almost anywhere in the city. As I walked around I was reminded of European cities that I have visited in the past. Although Cape Town is nothing at all like Africa, it is still a great place to be.

Finally I had arrived in a modern city so I decided to take my mobile phone and my camera into the shops to get them repaired. The phone was supposed to take 2 hours but they kept it for 4 days before I had to collect it in the same state it was in before. The camera was supposed to take 2 days but took 3 and again they hadn’t fixed it. I guess these things will have to wait until Australia.

On a more positive note, I bought myself a new GoPro 3 camera, I have been wanting one of these for some time now so that I can get some better video footage of the places I go. The only problem was that all the shops had sold out of the memory cards, so it took me another day or two of going to camera shops before I found the memory card to start using the camera.

I also met up with a friend, Camilla, I originally met her in Monkey Bay, Malawi about 9 months ago. We went out for some drinks and caught up before I went to the cinema, for the first time in over a year, to see The Hobbit. On the way back to town from the cinema I had an awesome view of the city, Table mountain towering behind the cityscape and ‘the cloth’ (the clouds blowing over the top of table mountain) constantly rolling off the top and disappearing as it fell.

I left my couch surfing hosts place after 3 nights and moved into a backpackers, luckily I had been contacted by a guy through CouchSurfing who wanted to meet up. He has been traveling for around 7 years and is a really fun guy to spend time with. He actually stayed in Australia at one point so has given me a few contacts there.

Now my time in Africa is over and I will start my 48 hour journey from Cape Town to Perth. I feel sad to be leaving Africa, I have so many great memories from this continent, so many people and places that I will miss so much that it is hard to leave. But still, I know that seeing new places means leaving behind others.

Africa Blog Posts, Blog Posts

Week 82: Port Elizabeth and the Garden Route

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This week I had to go into a town to get a chest X-ray examination, I was asked to get this done as part of my Australian visa application. During the application process they ask if you have spent more than 3 months in a country that isn’t your home country, within the last five years. There has only been one country that I spent more than 3 months in and that was Tanzania. It seems that the chest X-ray is to try to ensure that I don’t have TB.

I stayed in Port Elizabeth for a few days to make sure that I got the application sorted out as soon as possible. While I was sat waiting around I also did some work on the website. I have added a gallery section which displays all of my pictures, I also fixed all of the images on the Travel Stories pages. Now you can click the images and they will enlarge.

From Port Elizabeth I headed into the Garden Route and have been staying at a backpackers called Wild Spirit. It is a really amazing place, with forest walks and its own private waterfall plus great views across the forest to the mountains in the distance. I will be leaving this place tomorrow and heading to Cape Town, my visa confirmation has come through so I will be flying to Perth after spending some time exploring Cape Town. The only decision I have now is whether to get a direct flight or get a flight with two stops, the first in Jo’burg for an hour, then an 18 hour stop in Qatar. This doesn’t sound all that appealing but it will save me 100 pounds.