It's Paul's Birthday!!!
(I know it says the 13th on the date, but it's actually the 14th today, so ner ner!!)

I couldn't put the right number of candles on - OK! There's a risk of bush fire here you know!

Paul with his pressie - a painting of the kids I had commissioned for him.

Well my lovelies, thought I’d post a little update from down under. We’ve been busy setting up the business etc, but we don’t have a great deal to show for it at the moment…… it will come. Starting the business in the UK took nearly a year to get any money rolling in and I don’t expect it to be any different here for a minute!

We have, however both passed our Police Licences! I am now a Registered Security Agent and Consultant and Paul is a Security Consultant. This means we can hire security guards, carry out crowd control administration and I quite fancy signing up for the firearms course :-) don't mess with me, I have PMT AND a hand gun! Took hours of studying and tears, that did, but we passed eventually (OK, OK, I was the one who had to take the test twice!) and today we have been issued with our licence numbers. Woo Hoo! I wouldn't mind, but we passed on 28th February and only got the numbers today after we chased them for the third time!

The kids are still very happy at school – although completely knackered! We don’t have half term over here, so when they started school on Feb 1st (apart from Bank Holidays of which we have had two!), they don’t get a week off until Easter!! It’s a long slog – especially for the littlies. At least they are happy and have made lots of friends.

Mr Cheese is growing up by the day. His vocabulary is increasing rapidly. It’s astonishing how much like Sam he is – he is never to be seen without a train in his hand. His first word in the morning is train and he takes a few to bed with him.

Now we have been here for a few months, I have compiled a list of things I love and things that I don’t love as much about Oz. It’s strange the things you miss (apart from friends and family, of course!). I miss being able to walk into town and meet pals for a coffee and cake in John Lewis. Paul misses country lanes(?). I miss Tesco – I know, I know, I NEVER thought I’d miss Tesco! Paul misses a good curry with the curry club! Ooohh, actually, I'd love a rake around Primark for half an hour too.

I LOVE…….
The fact that you can hang your washing out and before it’s even on the line, it’s almost dry!

I DON’T LOVE AS MUCH……..
The fact that it’s so windy and the rotary clothes line whizzes round fast, so I can bend down to pick up the next shirt to be pegged to the line, and get smacked in the face with a wet pair of Sam’s pants…… yuech!!

I LOVE…….
The weather! And the fact that you know when the forecast says ‘sun’, it really will be!!

I DON’T LOVE AS MUCH……..
The weather! And the fact that it can be as hot as 31º at 8.45am and you can’t walk anywhere without dripping in perspiration and smelling like a damp dog!

I LOVE…….
Taking the boat out and watching dolphins at close range.

I DON’T LOVE AS MUCH……..
The supermarkets!! They are pants! I’ve worked it out that the aisles are too narrow and too tall. They do try and cheer them up be adding piped music, but even Samantha Fox singing ‘Touch me!’ doesn’t do enough to stop me wanting to slash my wrists by the time I get to the frozen peas! I honestly don’t know what record collection they dreg either to get the music for the shopping centres. I heard ‘You’re my favourite waste of time’ by that one-hit wonder Scottish bloke ‘Nothings gonna change my love for you’ by the Euro crooner who snogged someone on a beach in the video and ‘So macho’ by Sinitta in the space of a shoe shop and a butchers!

Do you know that over here you can buy coloured tampons (no, I don’t know why, either!), and KY jelly that heats automatically. They sell party pies, icy poles and paddle pops. Stubbies, eskies and ute’s. It’s all ‘good on yer’, ‘she’ll be right’ and ‘no worries’. This place certainly is different!

We went to the boat show in Hillary’s yesterday as a birthday treat for Paul. There were loads of VERY expensive boats there, but something for every budget too. We bumped into the salesman who we bought our boat from and he chuckled at some of our adventures. Wouldn’t want to run the one he was standing on onto a sandbank at $500,000 and 35 foot – Paul couldn’t just hop over the side and push that little beauty into deeper water! It was a nice day – there is a very nice coffee shop there and coffee and cake was very welcome. The kids had a play on the beach for an hour, then we headed off to Chutney Mary’s so Paul could ease his withdrawal symptoms and have a curry. You wouldn’t believe given the number of brits over here the lack of curry houses! It was very nice, but very different to the Bipash :-( Still, it was the spiciest thing that passed Paul’s lips in three months, so he was happy.

After that, we went to Perth Zoo to watch a Queen tribute act. They were very good and the lead singer REALLY sounded like Freddie Mercury. Sam got upset though when her went to the catering stand and wanted to buy Paul a beer for his birthday and they refused to serve him! Bless. He was so upset for ages about that.

Sunday we went to the Crab Fest in Mandurah, although I shall be writing to the council – three hours we were there and we didn’t see one sodding crab! Talk about Trades Descriptions! Although as everything is driven by the unions over here, perhaps one got mis-treated and it was a case of ‘one out – all out’. It was nice weather though and there were lots and lots of people there. They had power boat racing on the estuary (good job we didn’t take the boat out there today as we probably would have taken the wrong turn and found ourselves competing in a race!) and water skiing demonstrations.

Last week we went for a drive inland. It’s not until we came home and looked on Google Earth – we’d been driving for the best part of five hours and only went inland about half an inch on the map! It was typically Australian, some parts of the drive. There was no tarmac and if you looked behind the car, all you could see were clouds of red dust. If you looked to the front, only the yellow kangaroo warning signs and miles and miles of red road.

Typically Australian, isn't it? Not the place to run out of petrol!

We stumbled across the most amazing dam. It was 100 metres tall and the views were amazing. At the bottom there was a picnic area with crystal blue waters. You could see the Yabbies swimming (like little freshwater crayfish). It was lovely. Definitely somewhere we’d like to go back for a Barbie. We also visited a local miniature village based on Abingdon in Oxfordshire. It was beautiful – but it was one of the hottest days we’ve had since arriving, so we want to re-visit in the Spring when all the border plants should be in flower.

The kids at the miniature village.