Well, here we are again... I honestly wanted to do smaller, more frequent updates! But March was a very busy month, so I kept putting it off. And then I felt I couldn't write about April stuff without doing March first. And so on, and so forth, and then suddenly it's the end of October.
So - here is a brain dump of everything that's happened since the last update! You may want to settle in with a cup of tea..
March
This was the month where "real life" started for us. After weeks of hearing not very much at all, my job search suddenly seemed to kick into high gear and I was offered two jobs all at once!
The first was as a solution architect for a software development company that developed workflow automations for financial services institutions (think online sign ups for credit cards, etc). Fully remote work, with occasional trips to Sydney, Brisbane and client sites.
The second was also a solution architect, but for Virgin Australia (an airline). Their headquarters are in Brisbane, but they have a Sydney office and were heavily intimating in the interview that they were about to bring in a back to work policy.
Given the fact that commuting to Sydney from our house was a 3 hour trip (plus the fact that Virgin were offering $20k less than the other guys), I took the first option, with my first day on the 11th of March.
At the same time, enough of Claudia's paperwork had been completed that she was able to start working in March as well - just one day after me, on the 12th.
That also meant we were going to need another car - queue a frantic week of rushing around 2nd hand dealerships trying to find something that could work as a runaround, but still fit 3 car seats in an emergency. We ended up getting a Holden Trax, which... well, we'll get to that.
So there we were - kids signed up to daycare, both of us with full time jobs. Emigration complete!
...except not really.
While Claudia began settling into her job (and undertaking the mammoth undertaking of trying to understand the Australian medical system from the inside!), it became very quickly apparent to me that I had picked the wrong job.
The people were very nice, but there was an immediate sense that the company was stuck in startup mode, even though they had been around for 12 years or so. The tool was technically very impressive under the covers, but extremely hard to set up and use. It took me 2.5 days to get it up and running on my laptop, and that was with help! (Apparently, the usual time to install was a week, so people were very impressed). It also didn't help that I had been brought in to spin up a professional services team, and the very first thing I saw on my first day in the office was the client relationship manager shouting down the phone at a client, arguing about scope.
So, on the Friday of my last week, I put out a distress call to the hiring manager at VA, asking if the role was still available. Luckily, they were hiring multiple architects at the time, so there was still a spot open! But the architecture manager was going on leave, so I'd have to wait another 3 weeks before starting. Luckily, I had something to pass the time.
At the end of March, two of our very good friends got married in Kingscliff. This was a great excuse to get 2/3 of the old netball crew from London over for the wedding, plus to meet up with some old college friends as well. The wedding was close enough to Stanthorpe that my mum was able to come down and do some babysitting for us, so we both got to let our hair down a bit. Needless to say, it was a great weekend for us - it was a really fun wedding, we got to see a lot of old friends, and just generally relax a bit.
Then on the Sunday after the wedding, we headed just down the road to Murwillumbah, for the christening of my neice Clancy, where I was honoured to be asked to be her godfather. It was great to catch up with our extended family for a couple of hours, before heading off on the 8 hour drive home.
And then to cap it all off, Claudia's sister arrived in Australia at the end of the month!
April
For Claudia and Harriet, it was straight down to business - the business of catching up and having fun, that is. After day or two in Sydney to get over the jetlag and see the sights, she joined us up at Lake Macquarie. Apart from hanging out with the kids, Claudia had also arranged for a couple of fun things to do, such as a 'spooky' walking tour around Newcastle, and day trip up to the Hunter Valley.
Harriet arrived just in time to celebrate the twin's birthdays. Since it fell on a Thursday, we just went out for dinner at the local bowls club, right next to the lake. And then on Saturday, we had a birthday party for family (including my mum, who drove down for it). I partook of that famous Australian tradition of attempting to create a birthday cake from the Australian Women's Weekly Birthday Cake book, and only partially succeeding.
But all too soon, it was time for everyone to head back home. Mum went back home after the party, and Harriet flew out a few days later. I started work at Virgin Australia the following week, and we started to settle in to a more normal full-time work routine.
It was about this time we noticed that the 2nd car had started to leak oil on the garage floor. Luckily, it was still covered under a 3 month warranty from the garage where we bought it, but it would take nearly 2.5 months (and multiple trips to the garage) to get this finally fixed. It involved replacing gaskets and seals, as well as a couple of oil lines for good measure! But the garage honoured the warranty, and we didn't end up paying for any of the repair work, which was nice.
May
Another month, another birthday party, this time for Evie's 4th birthday! Given Evie had been at preschool for a couple of months, she had a good friend group established and so we did a big afternoon birthday party for her, completely with party games and a pinata! I also tried my hand at making another cake, with somewhat less impressive results this time.
Evie had an absolute blast, and has basically been planning her 5th birthday party ever since.
As for the aforementioned established friend group, that all got blown up at the end of the month, when the daycare centre announced a mass resignation of 7 staff (including the centre manager and assistant manager), followed by another 4 staff members a few weeks later. Initially, other parents were saying they would stay at the current centre and ride it out, but one by one they slowly started peeling off as they found spaces available in other locations.
As for ourselves, we had never been super happy with the daycare centre, but finding a place with spaces for 3 children full time was a mission in itself. And so, although we also would have liked to move on, we were stuck while a lot of Evie and the twins' friends moved on.
Things did stabilise eventually, but the centre was running in a significantly reduced capacity, and it never really recovered. We kept an eye out for daycare centres with places for the twins, but figured that Evie only had a few months until she was starting school anyway, so the less disruption for her the better.
June
June was a pretty quiet month for us - it was mostly just work, punctuated with the occasional children's party, while we shivered our way through the winter. One thing that was really noticeable to us was the difference in construction quality between the UK and Australia. Granted, our house is a rental, but even so - it's all single glazed windows, with huge gaps for draughts to find ways into the house. And so even though we're used to cold weather, winter felt colder here than it did in the UK!
I also had a chance to see the Newcastle Knights play at their homeground with a couple of mates from college as well, just to stay in touch with the local culture ;-)
July
I should point out that although by this point our kids had been attending daycare / kindy for over 6 months, we still did not have access to any childcare subsidy, and so we were full fee paying, which was extremely painful! Our child care subsidy claim was submitted the week before they started back in January, but it took literal months for the claim to be processed, and even then it only got done because I spent a full 4 hours on the phone with someone from Centrelink while he processed the full set of paperwork while I waited. Another edge case where Services Australia's process didn't really cover Australian citizens accessing benefits for the first time when they weren't born in Australia (and hence didn't already have a Centrelink Reference Number).
And even once the claim was approved, our childcare provide managed to mangle our attendence records which required another full 3 weeks of phone tag with their accounting department to sort out. But finally, at the start of July we were fully up and running.
In mid-July, Claudia had the opportunity to take a work trip to Japan for a couple of days. Seeing as the drug companies were paying for it, it was a pretty sweet deal! The kids and I held the fort by ourselves for a couple of days, and just about managed to pull it off.
Just after Claudia got back from Japan, we had a big bit of luck around our childcare arrangements. While she was at the shops, she ran into a parent of one of the kids that went to the same daycare as ours (and whose husband works at the same hospital as Claudia). She mentioned that they were moving their child to a new daycare centre - so far, so familiar (see above). But then she explained that the new centre was brand new and opening in mid-August, that they still had lots of spaces available, and it was just around the corner from the shops where they were right now, and did she want to take a look? And so she did, and it looked great - and they had space for all 3 of our girls! So we signed them up, and started counting down the days until our notice period at the old daycare centre were done.
The added bonus to this was that 3 of the staff who had left the old daycare centre were now working at the new one! So they already knew our kids quite well, and even better our kids already knew and liked them, which made the transition much, much easier.
August
One of the benefits of working for an airline is discounted tickets... So when we received an invitation to a friend's 10th wedding anniversary party in Brisbane, we jumped at the chance! I've known this friend since we were roommates in college (over 20 years now!), and although I only met his wife the day before they got married, I was the MC at their wedding and we have been good friends ever since. They also have kids roughly the same age as ours, and are living the same "family split across multiple continents" life that we are, so we always have a lot to talk about whenever we do catch up.
We also used the opportunity to get my extended family together the following day for brunch, before flying back to Newcastle in the afternoon. It's crazy to think that we've moved from the UK back to Australia, and we are still far enough away from family that it's still a major logistical feat to actually all be in the same place at the same time, but that's just our lives these days.
In the middle of August, we had an orientation session at the local primary school which Evie will be attending for kindy / prep / reception next year. Again, we have been very lucky with how this worked out - the school is literally a 5 minute walk down the hill from our house, and is rated very highly in the local area. Needless to say, Evie is very, very excited about starting school next year - and after the orientation session, I think we were too.
And then, just to cap the month off, our amazing friends in Sydney basically organised a weekend away in the Hunter Valley for all of us to get away and catch up. After a busy couple of weeks, it was exactly what we needed - nice and relaxing, and with wineries that had entertainment for kids so that we didn't have to stress out about them for a while. We ate a lot of nice food, tried a lot of nice wine and bought quite a few bottles of very nice wine that we promised ourselves we would only open for special occasions.
(Narrator: They opened them within the first week of bringing them home)
September
Another relatively quiet month, for the most part. I was just getting myself used to the idea that my birthday was coming up, when my work threw us a bit of a curveball. Basically, they asked me to attend a 3 day on-site workshop. In Poland. Starting the day after my birthday.
And so that was how I found myself doing a long-haul trip from Newcastle to Melbourne to Doha to London to Krakow. And how I found myself celebrating my 41st birthday with a bunch of Polish engineers and sales people in a random bar somewhere in Krakow. And then 3 days later, how I found myself doing another long-haul trip from Krakow to Doha to Sydney, and then taking a 3 hour train ride back up to Newcastle just for good measure.
There were a couple of nice things about this trip, even though logistically it was completely insane. Firstly, the way VA handles corporate travel, you basically book economy but you can be upgraded to business if there is space left when you're boarding at the gate. For some reason, the aviation gods smiled on me and I managed upgrades on 3 out of the 4 long haul travel legs, and it was nice. Of course, this has now ruined any future long haul travel for me, but still...
Secondly, on the way over, the stopover in London was for 24 hours - which meant I had time to catch up with London peeps! And I even got to meet the new son of one of our really close netball friends, who was an absolute charmer.
It was strange being back in London - all nice and familiar. But I felt guilty most of the time because I was there by myself, and not with the person who most wanted to be back and visiting. So I couldn't really be objective as to whether I was missing it or not. There was also the fact that we hadn't lived in London for 3 years before we left, so London felt a bit less like home anyway. It might have been different if I'd headed out to Writtle, but since I was only in town for 24 hours, that was pretty low down on the priority list.
Was the trip worth it in the end? Probably not really - from a professional sense, it was probably good for the networking, but the content could have been done online. From a personal point of view, I probably would have preferred having my birthday at home with family, but being able to see our UK friends was a nice consolation.
October
Just to make that whole trip even more crazy, when I arrived back home at 10pm on a Friday evening, I had just over 24 hours to recover before our family holiday to Tasmania!
Amazingly, I wasn't actually jetlagged! Although, this was also the weekend that daylight savings started in NSW, so the early morning drive to Sydney airport was particularly brutal. But the kids were pretty good through the airport (mostly) and on the plane (mostly), and we made it to our Airbnb in Hobart without any major incidents.
(There was a minor incident involving some shoes that weren't packed, and turning around to get them, but no major dramas).
We had a house in Glebe with a great view over the city, which was also close to the Domain and some nice parks for the kids. It was much, much colder than we were expecting however - our jumpers definitely got a workout!
The first full day we spent in and around Hobart - in the morning, we went up Mt Wellington. We were nearly blown off the mountain, and there was far more snow than any of us were expecting. But when we got a break in the clouds, there were some amazing views (and even a few rainbows).
We spent the afternoon taking a look around MONA (the Museum of Old and New Art). We weren't really sure what to make of it, but it was a fun afternoon. The whole thing is built into a hillside, and so it has this weird bunker type vibe, with random rooms hiding at the end of corridors and around corners. I don't think any of us really knew what to make of the art, but we had a good time trying to figure it out. They also had a pretty cool kids playground at the end of it.
The next day, we took a trip out to Port Arthur. It rained pretty much the whole way there, and we thought it might end up being a bit of a miserable experience. But luckily, the weather lifted just as we arrived and held off the whole time we were there! We did a boat trip around the bay, and then a walk through the prison site itself. If it was just Claudia and I, we probably could have spent most of the day looking around, but our minature humans got a little bit bored of looking at the old buildings.
So for the afteroon, we visited something called an "unzoo", which I think basically means a zoo with lots of holes in the fence to let animals in and out, while keeping out some of the larger predators. We had a lot of fun here, getting to feed kangaroos and native birds. We also saw some Tasmanian Devils up close! It was very, very hard to drag the kids away from patting and feeding the kangaroos.
The next day was Claudia's birthday! And so, by request, we had a lazy morning in Hobart trying out a local cafe / breakfast spot, followed by a play in the park. We followed up by getting lunch from the runner up cafe. In the afternoon, we did a bit of bush walking in and around Mt Wellington - first to see something called the "octopus tree", and then a late afternoon hike up to find a waterfall! All in all, the kids probably did about 3km of bushwalking (with a bit of carrying from time to time). Needless to say, there were some sore legs (and parent's arms!) by the end of it.
In the evening, we had arranged for a babysitter to look after the kids, and so Claudia and I actually got to out by ourselves for dinner! It was probably the first time since January, and it was very, very needed. We both had a great time just being by ourselves for a bit, and it was a nice way to finish off our holiday.
The next day, it was back to the airport and on to Newcastle, where I was quite happy to not be in or near an aeroplane for the first time in about 2 weeks.
The rest of October was relatively quiet. Claudia was on call for one of the weekeds, and I took the opportunity to take the kids out to see Lake Macquarie's "Fast and Loud" festival, where they had powerboats and superboats racing on the lake. Or at least, they did the day before we went to see them. On the day we went, the winds were apparently just a little bit too strong, and so the whole thing was cancelled. Except they only announced it on Facebook, and forgot to tell any of the event staff at the actual event, which led to some very confusing scenes where I was telling them that their event was cancelled. But luckily, they still had face painting and a bouncy castle, so it wasn't a complete write off.
And believe it or not, I think that brings us nearly up to date! Phew...
Here's hoping it won't be another 8 months until the next update, but who knows.
Yours etc,
Patto