A diamond in the rough...

We are settling currently in Emerald, QLD. Its about the size of Hawera, with the service industry of New Plymouth. There is alot of money to be made here, we are just struggling to find it!

Richard's and Scuba's humble abode in which we are currently residing (and Hugo) not to mention Richards' sweet ride the Holden Ute.

(16/03/12) After we had the "check engine" light come up on the car, we booked it in to Central Highlands Toyota for a diagnostics check (*cough* $130 later..!) and it came back that the oxygen sensor was buggered and needed replacing.  So we ordered the part (*bigger cough* $311).

We forgot to add this picture on the last post. This is Hugo's interior, pretty spacey huh?! Eak speeding and taking pictures while he is driving... and our cute sat-nav!

Later that day we went to the library and printed out some CVs to drop into businesses.  The first place Shahn dropped hers into, the lady hired her on the spot! Started Monday 19/03/12, Day one dropped an entire large cappuccino down her front - shirt, pants and undies were wet through. Awesome! Has been okay since then :)
Zoe and Jade, I understand why you enjoy working in cafes! They are fun, have as much coffee as you can handle and they give you lunch! Woo! They are also going to teach me to do coffees if I hang around! I know Zoe, I know!

It annoys me that its in text language, was it really that hard to call it "Love a Coffee"? I am sure that all the grammatically anal friends we have, will also find this amusing!

Eak still actively looking for work, I think he enjoys being a kept man (hahahahaha) but really he is hating it. He has massive cabin fever. hope that something comes soon! He has had a few meetings, but still nothing. So for now the stop gap work is an interesting stop gap!

WHY DOES AUSTRALIA HAVE SUCH HUGE SPIDERS... WHY??

This bad-lady spider is precariously positioned between the two trees where Hugo is parked (see photo one in this post) the web is THAT huuuge!

There was a Caine Toad on the porch when it was raining heavily the other night but I missed it with the camera. Other than checking the grass for naughty snakes that might be wanting to get me while hanging the washing or whatever, have not seen anything exciting!

Emerald seems prone to flooding even when there doesn't seem to rain for THAT long... It must rain alot heavier and for longer durations in Taranaki than here but Thursday (22/03/12) while driving to a job interview for Eak, we saw some road closure signs and being the naturally curious people we are, had a little look-see. The John Gay Bridge (awesome name, I know!) was closed as!

Thankfully, we don't live near this river... this is on the other side of the railway lines so we are safe!

Maybe Shahn can get a Radiography job as this cafe work is pretty hard work when your the floor & kitchen bitch, is $19.75/hr worth the pain and effort?! Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Until next time...

xxx Shahn & Eak

The looooong drive North

We had to get Hugo kitted out with spotlights in preparation for our journey north since everyone scared the shit out of us about hitting Roos (please see previous post for pictures of Hugo's new lights!) We managed to get a sweet as deal from Albion Repco, the dudes gave us a massive discount on a new Navig8r Sat-Nav and the spotlights etc (we saved $108.10 from retail price - Ah thank you Mr Eak for pleading poverty).

We took a quick trip to Kmart to get a 10L water canister and 20L fuel can as we were not sure how well Hugo would handle the jandal, and given our previous issues with cars we were not prepared to be stuck in the middle of Central QLD up a creek with no F'ing paddle!

We also had to buy Eak some more shorts and T-shirts, seems he packed his bag full of Thermals and long pants [a small oversight on my behalf] (after leaving Riverton in 10 degrees weather and arriving at Brisbane in 30 degree heat it seemed a bit of a necessity!) he obviously forgot that heading to Australia = constantly sweating!

We left the kind hospitality of Buxton Street - Thank you Craig for letting us stay! Hugo was all packed and ready to go!

So off we trotted from Brisbane to Emerald. Google Maps says 10hrs 29mins and 897kms! Uhhhh not really looking forward to this...... We left Ascot at 6am all ready to rock and roll!

Stopping for a stretch and a much needed toilet break. Shahn in the car, pretty excited!

In typical Shahn & Michael fashion, we had some minor car issues. We were about 4hours into the trip and the "check engine" light came on. So we stopped and had a look see, nothing out of the ordinany visually, so Eak reset the car's computer and we carried on our merry way. Our logic was, if its something major then the light will come back on. It did,  BUT only when we were parking the car nine hours later at Richard's, our destination... Phew! worry about it in the morning!

The massive problem was the road works. We stopped about 25 times! Crazy, so slow and it took ages with at least 100km of stop go lights.

We stopped at Childers, at the famous Peanut Van. Yum as peanuts too! Talked to them for like 30mins then carried on again! Definately stop at one of them if your driving the coast road... YUM! That's Eak below having a few tasters and yarning!

Then onwards and upwards to Rockhampton (we didn't actually have to go to Rocky but we were on the way there so thought, "Bugger it! Lets have a gander". Rockhampton was a bit tired but not bad, so we headed to the Marina to see the river. But I'm keen to come back and check out the beaches and all that  The signs there were AWESOME! There are a few (sorry!) but very worth it!

 Hahahahaha! "Warning! Crocodiles inhabit this area - attacks may cause injury or death! Excellent just what I always wanted... wait until you see the water - I wouldn't swim in that anyway!

 The beautiful Rockhampton Marina, complete with dirty as water full of crocs... awesome! There were loads of yachts in the river too

Eak having a gander at the water...

Then we meandered onward to Emerald, another 3hours from Rocky, to Richards place. It was a great relief to hang our heads and luckily Richard had dinner made for us. An excellent end to a friggen long day! It took us over 12hours to get to Emerald BUT we did stop alot!

So we travelled 900km on $62.00! Man, the Echo is economical! We also saw not a single live  kangaroo although a few squashed juviniles and a massive pig. We are yet to see any snakes or crocs. Although, a few massive spiders and geckos but a few nights are to be planned to go out hunting for them hopefully....

Sorry this is a long post! Until next time...

xxxx Love Shahn & Eak

One small step...

We flew out of Invercargill on the 2nd of March, with all our crap! (Note to self, pack lighter when going further abroad than Aussie!) Flew from Invercargill to Christchurch, ChCh to Auckland, Aucks to Brisbane.

Arriving in Brisbane in a state of sweat, humanly unatural. A huge stroke of luck on our part meant that we could stay at a Craig’s place while he was at work, an awesome apartment in Ascot with his flatmate, Luca (no doubt he was judging us as we arrived with no job prospects, no car, no idea!)

Another lucky thing was that Dicko and Julie live right next door to Craig in the same apartment unit. We had many nights of drinking beer & wine, while the lovely Julie cooked awesome meals and Dicko was producing gourmet BBQs.

Luca made us dinner one night, a delish Italian pasta dish - taught us a thing or two about Italian cooking, Mr Eak has been putting these new skills to great use!

After many many days wandering the streets, trawling the internet and many trips on public transport. We decided to hire a car for 2 days to be able to see some cars that were in the Gold Coast and a bit further afield which saved a million different buses and trains. We saw heaps of cars and their owners were a bit different, Eak was being paranoid after our previous Corolla excursion which was too expensive (everyone knows the story!). All the cars we saw were crap, no they were shit! And some of the owners were playing Chinese mind games with us (I wasn't into it, they were liars too and that turned me right off!

Our Echo Baby with freshly wired spotlights to spot Kangaroos! 100W lights each

 

So we saw the Echo on Wednesday after a last minute decision to go see it and then bought it on Friday (09/03/12) it’s a 1999 Toyota Echo, paid $4600 (way too much but the car is really nice) for it and 175,000kms. One careful lady owner, her name was Roslyn, she was such a sweetheart lady, so good to us, the car was clean, well serviced and what we were after without the Chinese mind games - 3 signs that all was good in our world!

Roslyn also gave us some "Roo Zappers" - She bought them for her son but felt it imperative that as we were driving to Roo infested territory then we really needed to fit them! Eak did and on the drive up to Emerald we didn't hit one animal = good luck OR the "Sonic Animal Guards"?

Buying a car in Australia suuuuuuucks, you have to look at cars online, then contact the owners, then organise a time to meet them, then listen to their bullshit spiel about how awesome their car is (when in most cases it wouldn't pass a WOF in NZ! They have this "road safety certificate", I learnt about this when dear Jade was leaving Melbs and had some tool fail her car. All they check are tyres, lights, suspension, the windows, blah blah blah.

AND THEN, we spent two hours in Burleigh QLD Transport trying to change the car registration into our name. Eak didn’t have enough points of ID for this silly lady and we could not prove that we lived anywhere. Thank god for Richard! He saved our bacon, we found out later by the Emerald QLD Transport ladies that it was just unlucky and we had a particularly anal lady. Typical!

xxxx Love Shahn & Eak