First 3 months - lots about schools and prices

[Thestains]

@FromDurbs Now I'm convinced that this could be the school for our son. I will send in an expression of interest for enrollment in the meantime. 

My next step now is to find a suitable Airbnb rental for approx 3 months. If there is anybody on the forum with suggestions on 2 bedroom furnished apartment rentals close to the city, please let me know.

i will definitely make contact with you after we arrive. I'm keen to hear what you've gleaned from your talk about ADHD meds. 

 

[Husky]

@Enigma Big yes to coffee, with the caveat that there is a follow up with wine 

When is your big move planned? Our d-day is 31 December 2017. 

Edited May 9, 2017 by Husky
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[Enigma]

On 2017/05/09 at 10:38 PM, Husky said:

@Enigma Big yes to coffee, with the caveat that there is a follow up with wine 

When is your big move planned? Our d-day is 31 December 2017. 

Would have to teach us the ways of wine-awesomeness.  We're landing 23 May.  10 days before local departure... woooohoooo!

[Enigma]

On 2017/05/09 at 4:53 PM, RYLC said:

There is no tipping here. In fact they would think you strange if you tried. Restaurants and cafes pay their staff a living wage.

Amazing!  Yeah I heard something about this when Aussie friends came to visit.  Thanks for confirming!

[SimpleSimon]

Even when we arrived 23 years ago, ordering coffee was a scary experience - 10 options given at speed in an Australian twang. I switched to ordering tea but that wasn't much better so I switched to hot chocolate.

 

coffee is a very big deal in both Melbourne and Sydney. I work at companies that spend $10,000 on a coffee machine which needs a plumber and electrician to install. They stand around discussing its merits while they make their coffee. 3 months later they all go down to their favourite local barista leaving me alone to make my hot chocolate.

[SimpleSimon]

We had a daughter and son at school (now both finished).

 

Daughter's mates had weird shapes, styles and hair colours. Belly rings, nose rings etc.

 

our son grew a full beard.

 

All acceptable but if the school uniform wasn't perfect, instant detention.

[FromDurbs]

And the girls here wear thick makeup to school.  Loose hair.  We are NOT in Kansas any more.  

[MrsMupersan]

If you just want 'regular' coffee, ask for the following:

Long black with cold milk on the side - this will give you a strong coffee (double shot) with the normal cold milk you're used to from SA. (I can't stand the taste, texture or smell of warm milk for some reason)

Or for less kick, ask for a single shot long black with cold milk on the side.  (For take away just ask for a shot of cold milk on top).

All the fancy coffees here in Aus are more milk than coffee which for me is just a no-no (and I suspect all that lactose contributes greatly to the prevalence of moobs here!); so I found the closest thing to 'normal' coffee I could pretty quickly.

 

[SimpleSimon]

Sounds like the start of a joke. 

"How can you tell the South African in Australia?"

"They order 'coffee'."

[Andriette1305]

I am finally making some time to read through some of the posts! Thanks for sharing! We are still unsure of schools, but would most probably be on the eastern side of the CBD.

Love the coffee (Cafe Latte  my favourite) in Melbourne and we will hopefully find some more good coffee places once we finally arrive.

Coming from Windhoek, we are luckily used to really high fruit and veg prices! Our challenge would be to find a place where we can get similarly good meat, biltong and droewors products in Melbourne!  

[FromDurbs]

Welcome here.  I lived in Windhoek until I was about 12 years old.  Before it was Namibia.  And I remember visiting years later and seeing the fruit prices.  Although I remember watermelons being plentiful when I was small.   Melbourne is NOT like Windhoek.  And good luck with the biltong and droewors.  

 

[FromDurbs]

Another very belated update.  About 18 months in

 

Let’s start with the holidaying.  We did go on holiday; in Australia.  We decided to go to Tasmania.  It was the closest exciting sounding place to us.  And it was great.  We went in January, summer school holidays.  A giant ferry departs for Tasmania from Melbourne twice a day.  You can either fly (about 1 hour) or take the boat (about 12 hours).  We chose the boat because that means we could take our own car with us.  So, we spent forever on a boat and then spent 2 weeks driving through Tasmania.  I like to think we did it all, but one more week might have been needed to do it all.  We basically drove in a circle around the island.  The east coast had mountains – which we hiked - and lovely old forests and the west has the most beautiful beaches.  The beaches were amazing, but the water was freezing.  Even in January.  It felt like it came straight from the South Pole (which it probably does0. We did many day hikes and hiked to many waterfalls.  Tasmania looks and feels so different from Melbourne.  I later found out it is the architecture.  Tasmania was founded/invaded before the mainland and the architecture is mostly Georgian, while in Melbourne the architecture is mostly Victorian.  I loved Hobart.  It is a cute, smallish capital city with so much to do. 

Tasmania is also much more wild and rural and in certain parts of the island you have absolutely no cellphone reception.  Tasmania is also the one place in Australia where you comfortably drive the very slow speed limit, because the roads are so narrow and windy.  It takes very long to drive even short distances.  We spent one night on an island off the island off the big island.  It was great, with so much wildlife coming out just before dark. 

We discovered that there are many many animals that look like kangaroos.  They are not all kangaroos.  To me the main difference seems to be the size.  In decreasing size:  Kangaroo, Wallaby, pademelon, betong, potoroos, quokka.  We got close to some wombats, really cute and saw a few echidnas waddle across the road.

I promised the boys a trip to the great barrier reef, but that is far away.  My big dream is to get in a car and drive north till we find the big red rock in the middle of the country.  My family’s enthusiasm for this plan is 0.  We also definitely need to go to a warmer place during the winter next year.

We also decided we did not like renting a house anymore and started looking at a house to buy.  House deposits here are 20% and houses are terribly expensive.  We would also like to live close to the city (CBD), which here means it is more expensive.  My son saw one house we could (almost) afford and called it a “step down”.  It truly will be.  On the bright side, interest rates on home loans are < 4%.  House hunting is a work in progress.

Work wise.  It is a bit complicated to explain, but in short.  I still work for the same organisation, but due to a new contract they got together with Melbourne University I am now a part time employee of 2 organisations.  In essence:  My responsibilities at work changed, I now work for a large cancer research group 2 days a week.  I now have two different jobs on paper, but I still report to the same boss as before.

I still like my job, still feel like I do not really understand all the structures and where what fits in with what, but enjoy what I do.  I work in enormous state of the art buildings.  The new job is at the edge of the CBD on the 13^th floor with giant windows looking out over the city.  You can even see mountains and the ocean far far away.

The kids are settled in great.  They have a busy social life.  We just had 2 week’s school holidays and they spent 3 or so nights on sleepovers and attended another 3 parties, went to a Harry Potter play with a group of friends.  They seem very happy here.

About being happy here.  Yes, we are.  Or ask us again in summer.  It is bloody cold.  I miss the Durban warmth.  At least here we have central heating, and when you have it running things are quite nice inside (until you remember that we now live in the country with the most expensive electricity in the world).  The minimum temperatures are around 5, so it is never absolutely freezing, but it is also seldom above 18 or so.  I function best between 25 and 30.  

The kids said they would not like to go back.  I am not sure how much it is just not wanting to loose the friends they have here now and not wanting to change again and how much it is that they like it more here.  School is very different – much more relaxed and collaborative and trying to bring the best out in the child.  I also think the kids like the freedom they have here.  They can take public transport wherever they need to go and if we cannot take them somewhere they can go on their own.  They can walk around in the city with their friends.  I think at this age those kind of things matter to them.  They also have exciting opportunities at school; like attending a science lab at the university, doing a mock united nations, going to a roller coaster to do a physics project, programming robots at school, etc. 

The adults also have a few friends.  We both like our colleagues.  We are part of a friendly warm church.  We are quite good friends with the pastor and his wife, who is about our age.  He just resigned from the church and moved to another church nearby.  Although we are sad not to see him Sundays, this might be a good thing.  Now he can focus more on being friends rather than having to have a more formal role as our pastor.   We get together from time to time with other South Africans, whom we really enjoy spending time with, but they all live so far away.   But we still miss our Durban friends desperately. 

What we hate:

We hate the stupid time difference.  People are never awake when you feel like chatting.  (And I have some work telecons with people in America and Europe.  Try scheduling that!)

The cold (but the weather is OK, it is just cold)

How expensive everything is.  And we still convert.  It is not our fault.  The exchange rate is 10 and multiplying things by 10 is easy.  I am sure if the exchange rate was 13.5 we would have stopped converting by now.

I miss the cheese samoosas they sell at the entrance to spar.  Or even just the smell of those cheese samoosas.

Not getting biltong

Missing our friends

Being so far away from the family

I miss the Durban beach and ocean and sea water you can actually get into

What we love:

Not worrying about your child or husband when they are running late

Not having to fetch kids from school (they cycle or take the tram home)

The diversity.  Only 30% of people here were born here.  And it shows.  You can get restaurants from basically every country in the world.  And some of the good food countries are heavily represented here like Greece and Italy.  I work with colleagues in our small department from every continent and Husband has Chili, New Zealand, Iran, Ireland, India, and a few more middle eastern countries I am forgetting now.

Going to the city (CBD).  It is just so much fun walking through downtown Melbourne with all the ethnic restaurants, art, laneways, graffiti (graffiti here is an artform), small shops and new things to discover around every corner.

I do find Melbourne very ugly – it is a flat grasslands kind of place; think Free State - and life here is definitely a bit more boring than in South Africa.  If you went to renew your license in South Africa you came back with a good story.  Here you just renew your license (and spend a bucket load of money to do so). 

Efficiency and things working.  (It is something you get used to surprisingly fast.)

I think I should stop here. 

[Duggen]

The South African shop in Caufield South makes pretty good biltong if you are missing it. 

[Eyebrow]

On 7/17/2018 at 4:38 PM, FromDurbs said:

How expensive everything is.  And we still convert.  It is not our fault.  The exchange rate is 10 and multiplying things by 10 is easy.  I am sure if the exchange rate was 13.5 we would have stopped converting by now.

 

Haha!

 

I have thought that very thought sooo many times! the 10x is just too easy.

 

My best biltong in Melbourne was:

https://www.proteafoods.com/

 

Their fresh biltong that the slice while you are there is great. unfortunately they wont mail that, so now we are stuck.

[RedPanda]

Thanks for the update, it made a really good read

[RedPanda]

Ps. You really need to go on holiday near Brisbane, close to the summer. You'll have all your swimming needs met, plus lovely humid warmth... (note the sarcasm on the 'lovely' warmth, this panda is not made for heat, but you're welcome to it)

[Eva]

Coffee guide...

 

[RedPanda]

Oi !
What about the Flat White??? It's my go-to coffee.

Edit- Hahahaha...ok, the Flat White is there... 

Edited August 20, 2018 by RedPanda

[FromDurbs]

We had some of my son's friends over this weekend (teenage boys at the age where you need to be super cool) and when we offered drinks they all wanted that nice tea we gave them last time.  Rooibos.  Converting the world one party at a time.