3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th 7th
The next few days were spent getting to know the house, family and surroundings. We're in a place called upwey which is in the dandenong hills. It's been pretty hot, some days reaching 40 degrees so there's a constant fire warning out and news of bush fires. The family we're staying with are great and have really made us feel at home. Weve spent time with them, and gone shopping for things to help get us more settled. We just hope to find work soon so we can start helping out more.
After a few days of settling in we decided to do a bit of sight seeing of the general area. We did the 20 minute walk to the station, caught the train, then caught a bus to where we needed to go. We went to somewhere called sky high which is a look out point looking out over the area. You can even see the city in the distance. It was a nice place, it was also very sunny so we could walk around the gardens in comfort. We then went down to a little town called olinda which is quite a touristy place with lots of boutique shops and places to eat and drink. All way too expensive for us but enjoyable to look around before finding somewhere for a cup of tea before catching a bus to William ricketts sanctuary. He was a man born in Australia who spent some time living with aboriginal people before settling down in this area. He spent the rest of his life making pottery sculptures in the fern forests depicting the spirituality of the aborigines and the pain the white men caused when they started taking land and using it all up. It's all very lovely and peaceful up there, his work is by no means perfect because a lot of the stuff is starting to crack already, but the symbolism and meaning behind the art is great. It all fits in really well with the forest. William lived there for the rest of his life and died there.
We made our way back to the house after that and got back around 6 or 7, in time for a play with the kids before their bed time and then settled down to watch tv and chat with Paula and Richard for the evening.
We went into the city today to meet Liam's friend from the America road trip he did earlier last year. It was an hour in on the train and once there we were stood waiting for ages for Jon and his girlfriend Emily. Turned out they had gone to meet us in a different part but we found each other in the end. They took us to a roof top bar, the aim was to have a drink and food but it was packed. It must have been getting to 8pm by the time we got there and it was still light and hot and lots of people were taking advantage of the holidays. We found some mismatched stools and sat for a while with a cider catching up and getting to know each other. After that we went to a thai restaurant, again raised up so you could watch out over the streets. The food was amazing, 3 months in Asia and rice still tastes good! To me anyway, I'm not so sure about Liam I think he's over Asian food for a while. We sat and chatted for a while before heading back to the train station as Emily had work the next day and it was already past 10pm with an hour or so journey back for all of us.
The city looked great, there was all sorts of stuff going on and it was a great mix of high rise buildings, older looking ones and all of that in amongst trees and natural looking areas. It was different to any city we've been to really, I guess it's fairly new in relation to some cities and its always had varying cultures in it from the start. The train journey was a long one then we had the walk back to the house as well but we were glad to have met up with Liam's friends and had got a taste of the city.
