Melbourne #1 (Christmas), Victoria, Australia

20th December – 30th December 2017

20^th December

We arrived at Christchurch airport, in plenty of time. We checked in and sent our bags off before wandering through the airport to our gate. We had loads of time to spare, so we sat at the gate for a while and waited for it to open.

Boarding started about half an hour before the flight. When we got on the plane, we weren’t sat near each other, and I was sat in the middle of two random people – I hate it when that happens! I spent most of the flight sorting things out on my laptop: it was a good chunk of time to organise myself. We landed in Melbourne at 10.50pm local time (which was 12.50 New Zealand time).

Once we were allowed off the plane, we met back up again and head for the security checks and baggage claim. After we had collected our bags, we had to go through the ‘things to declare’ area, as we had bought a wooden decoration in New Zealand and didn’t want to get in trouble. As they scanned our bags, they found two apples that we had completely forgotten about, in Joe’s bag. They pulled them out and told us we could have had a $420 fine, but they let us off this time. I think that they could tell it was a genuine mistake, and we were both tired – it’s something we won’t do again!

After making it through the airport, finally, we met up with Mo and John, who were collecting us. We walked back to the car and made our way home. On the way back, we got stuck in traffic, so it took us a while to get back, so by the time we got to Auntie Mo’s, it was around 1.30am.

When we arrived at the house, Mark came out to meet us. We went indoors and had a quick drink and catch up, before going up to bed.

 

21^st December

The next morning, we were woken up just before 9, as the plumber was coming around to fix the shower, and the water would be going off for a while. We got up and had some breakfast, and had a nice lazy start to the day.

After the plumber had left, we could get ourselves ready properly, ready for the rest of the day. Late morning, the four of us went for a drive into Williamstown. We drove along the front, looking at the huge houses, with their equally huge decorations.

Through the town centre, we stopped along the front and had a look out over the city, before getting back in the car and driving to the beach. At the beach, we parked on the side streets, before having a wander on the sand. After a short walk along the beach, we wandered back to the car, so that we could drive back and get some lunch.

Back at the house, we had tuna salad sandwiches for lunch and a TimTam or two for dessert. We chilled out for a while in the afternoon, which was nice, before me and Joe went for a walk into the centre of Yarraville to have a look around.

We wandered up, through the park, and down the streets, passed Coles (just so that I could remember where everything was), until we got into Yarraville.

In the centre, we walked up and down the streets and had a look in various shop windows along the way. We walked along one street to the little pop up garden and sat in there for a little bit, in the sunshine. As time was passing by quite quickly, we walked back through the centre of Yarraville, still looking in the shop windows (mostly for job adverts), back towards the house.

When we got back to the house, we had a little bit of time to relax and sort some things out, before the children started to arrive.

Danny was the first to come round, as he had walked up, straight from school. He was a little quiet at first, but it didn’t take him long to come round. Not long after, Rosie and Paddy arrived, and it was lovely to see them all. We had a chat and a catch up and waited for Michael, Michelle and Jeannie to arrive.

While we were waiting, we played some games to try and pass the time, as the children were hungry and ready to eat. We played I spy and a game that Danny suggested, where we created a story by all saying one word at a time and going round in a circle – I liked this game, it made me think of something I could use at school.

Not long after the games started, Michael, Michelle and Jeannie arrived, so after saying our hellos, we served up dinner, which was chicken soup. It was lovely to be able to sit around the table with everyone and have a good catch up while we ate, instead of sitting with a group of strangers.

After dinner, we moved into the garden and had some ice cream for dessert. As the weather was so gorgeous, it was nice to sit out and enjoy it, as the weather in Melbourne can change quickly at this time of year, apparently. We had some photos and sat for a while, before the visitors started to leave: Jeannie, Danny and Paddy were still in school the next day, so they didn’t want to be home too late.

Once everyone had left, we spent the rest of the evening relaxing and chilling out. I made myself a new CV so that I can start to find myself a job, while we watched some TV together downstairs.

As we had had such a late night, the night before, we didn’t stay up too late, as we were all so tired, so after not very long, we went up to bed.

 

22^nd December

The next morning, we woke up around 8.30. Mo and Mark had already gone out, so we got ourselves some breakfast and got ready, so that we could head out for the day, into the city. By the time we were ready, it was 9.30, which we thought would be a perfect time to leave, as we only wanted to do bits of Christmas shopping, so didn’t think we would be out for long.

After walking up into Yarraville, we got on the train just after 10, which took us straight into the city. We got off the train at Flinders Street and crossed the road into Federation Square.

Federation Square was all decorated nicely for Christmas. There was a big tree and a snow globe and a giant bauble that you could walk through. We spent some time in the square, wandering around and taking photos, before we carried on through the city.

From Fed Square, we walked over the river on the bridge and then along the river in the Southbank area. We wandered up and down, looking at more decorations, but didn’t go in any shops.

After walking up and down Southbank, we walked back towards Fed Square, and head through, up towards Myer. At Myer, we first caught a sight of the famous Myer window; but as the queue to watch the story windows was huge, we decided to not queue and head inside instead.

Inside the shop, we found a meet-up spot, before splitting off to do some Christmas shopping. I started off by going for a hunt on the men’s floor, but there wasn’t anything that stood out to me, so I began to panic. Then I had a thought, that I didn’t have to stay in Myer while Joe was, so I went to the shops nearby and had a look around there. After a couple of successful purchases, I head back to the meeting spot to see how Joe had got on.

Although Joe hadn’t found anything, we felt like we had both seen enough of Myer, so we decided to leave there. We head down the street, towards the Vic Market – where we hoped to find some Christmas themed stalls. We stopped in a couple of shops along the way, but didn’t find anything, and when we got to the market, we needed some food before we could carry on.

In the Vic Market, we found the food area, where we sat and had a pie and chips, before we carried on with some shopping. After eating, we made our way over to the main part of the market, where we set another meeting point, before splitting up to try and do some more shopping. We expected it to be a lot more Christmassy before we got there but this wasn’t the case at all. When we both met back up we were both very surprised at how little Christmas stuff we saw, the market just seemed to be the same as it always is, so this was a bit of a surprise.

When we joined back up, neither of us had had any success in the markets and had decided that we had seen enough for the time being, as we needed some more Christmas pressies, so we moved on.

From the market, we head towards Spencer Street outlet to try to find more Christmas presents as we figured there would be more choice there with it being a shopping mall. Again, we picked a meeting place, split up and went our separate ways to do some shopping. I was much more successful here and managed to finish my shopping, whereas Joe only just began but I wasn’t bothered.

At Joe’s request, we went back to Myer as he wanted to go back and get something that he had seen earlier. I was sent off while he did some extra shopping, and I ended up on the Christmas floor – something I hadn’t seen earlier! I was in my element wandering around all of the decorations and gifts. I came across the story book which goes with the windows downstairs and as it was reduced to $5, the inner teacher in me, couldn’t resist it!

As I had bought the book, and met up with Joe again, I managed to persuade him to queue up with me, to watch the story in the window. The queue had gone down since the morning, but we still had about ten minutes to wait until we got to the front. The window was only part of the story so it didn’t take long to get through and I loved the Christmas effort!

Before we knew it, it was almost 5pm – we really didn’t expect to be out so long – so we started to make our way back to the train station. We couldn’t believe how much the time had disappeared over the day, but we were well and truly ready to go home for a rest!

After the short train ride, and the walk through Yarraville, we made it back to the house. For dinner, it was just the four of us, which was nice. We had salmon and chips and chilled out for a bit, eating biscuits and watching some TV.

Once dinner had settled, we had a few rounds of cards. I didn’t get off to the best of starts, but I eventually got into it and won a few rounds near the end.

At around 8.30, the film Love Actually was showing on the TV, so we abandoned the card games, and all moved back to the sofas. We chilled out, watching the film, but none of us managed to stay awake for the end.

 

23^rd December

As the next morning was Saturday, I woke up early to speak to grandma at home, on her weekly call to Auntie Mo’s. Once I was up, I got my breakfast, and got ready for the day.

The majority of the morning, of Christmas Eve Eve, was spent making some desserts for Christmas Day. Auntie Mo was making rum balls, as a Christmas extra, and I had said that I would help. We had to make two batches: an alcoholic and non-alcoholic version (for the children). We worked together, but I was in charge of the children’s ones, so just had to follow Mo’s lead and make sure no alcohol went in them.

After the rum balls were ready and in the fridge, we had time for a little chill out, before it was time for lunch. Lunch was a ham salad, with a biscuit or two afterwards (again).

Once lunch had settled, we went for a walk into Yarraville. Joe wanted to do some extra Christmas shopping, so he made me go off on my own, so I went on a mini job hunt. I walked up and down the streets, looking in shop windows for job adverts, but I couldn’t do much, as I hadn’t found anywhere to print my CV yet.

When Joe had finished his shopping, I bumped into him, coincidentally, and we started to make our way back home. By the time we got back, there wasn’t much time left, before we had to get ready to go and see the McGuinness side of the family.

Just before 4, we set off towards Frankston, which was about an hours drive away. We tried to follow the maps app on my phone, but at one point, it didn’t give the best instructions, so we ended up going a different way, along two different toll roads, which wasn’t ideal, as the toll roads are electronic over here, and we didn’t know what to do about it at the time.

We arrived at Cath and Les’ at about 5ish, and caught up with them and Margaret and Steve (who are over from England for a few weeks). We had a sit in the garden and a chat, while we waited for Deb and Sean to arrive too, for dinner.

For dinner, we had nibbles and cheese and crackers for starter, and then Les did a BBQ, and there were some salads to go with it. There was so much food to go round, and then there was fruit for dessert.

After dinner, we sat and chatted for a while, talking about our Christmas plans and catching up. It was nice to be able to sit in the garden and feel a comfortable temperature – although it was slightly weird as it was two days before Christmas.

Just before it went dark, we drove back to Yarraville. We didn’t want to drive when it was completely pitch black, but as the drive was an hour, it was dark when we arrived back.

When we got back, we chilled out for a bit and watched some TV, before going to bed.

 

24^th December

As we didn’t have any plans for Christmas Eve, we had a little lie in. As we got up, we had a phone call from Michael, asking us if we wanted to go out with him and Jeannie to the cinema at lunchtime. We had a chilled morning: we got up and had breakfast and got ready, before leaving the house at around 11 to meet Mick and Jeannie in Yarraville.

On the way into Yarraville, we stopped off at the supermarket to get some treats for during the film. We arrived in the centre at about 11.45, just in time to meet outside the theatre before the film started at 12.

The theatre was a cute, little, old fashioned cinema, with only a few screens. In the screen that we went into, there were sofas and comfy chairs to sit on. We were on the back row, and had two, two-seater sofas – it was so comfy and nothing like the cinemas in England.

We watched Paddington 2, which was a good film, although slightly emotional for the two men. It was nice to watch it with Jeannie, as we watched the first one together, in the cinema, when they were over in England a few years ago.

Once the film had finished, we popped across the square to a café (The Corner Shop), for some lunch. We didn’t eat too much, as it was already mid-afternoon, but the food was nice.

After lunch, we walked back home, through the park. When we got back, we chilled out for a little bit and did some present wrapping, before tea was ready.

The night after we arrived in Melbourne, we realised that we had we had lost our Christmas kiwi somewhere on our journey between Christchurch and Melbourne, and after a phone call, found out that it was in Melbourne airport. So, after we had eaten tea, we went for a trip to the airport to rescue it.

After we were back from the airport, we chilled out for the rest of the night. We watched ‘Carols by Candlelight’ on TV, which is on in Melbourne every Christmas Eve, before we went to bed, ready for the big day!

 

25^th December

On Christmas morning, I was awake nice and early, as I am every Christmas morning. Joe wasn’t quite up for the early start, despite my excitement, so I had to wait until he was ready to get up.

At 8am, he finally woke up, and we got ourselves ready and head out to the beach. We went to Williamstown beach, which is the closest beach and when we got there, we were surprised by the amount of people in the sea.

We parked up and wandered onto the beach ourselves. When we got to the water, we were then surprised how warm the water was! I wished that I had brought a towel with us, and then I could have gone in for a swim myself. We paddled our feet in the water and enjoyed the beach on Christmas Day, before we drove back.

At home, we had a shower and got ready for the day, before helping to prep for Christmas dinner.

Once dinner was prepared and we were all ready for the rest of the family to arrive, we did our present swap, before they all arrived. To say we were so far away from home for Christmas, we got lots of lovely presents – we were very lucky.

 

 

Not long after we had unwrapped and tidied up, Mick, Shelly and Jeannie arrived with their meat for Christmas dinner, and lots of already received Christmas presents for Jeannie. We had a look at her presents and played with some of them, making clay charms with her new kit.

After playing with Jeannie’s toys for a little while, John, Cait and the rest of the children arrived. We said our hellos, and everyone settled down, before the children had their presents. We all sat around while they opened their gifts from under the tree, before the first part of dinner was ready.

For starter, we had a traditional Christmas dish in Australia: prawn cocktail. I had never really tried prawns before, so I tried them and ate them all, but I’m not sure I would choose them again, if I had a choice.

We ate our Christmas dinner in stages, to help us to ease our way through the piles of food we had. In between courses we chatted and relaxed and had a really nice afternoon. For dinner, we had the traditional English Christmas dinner with turkey, ham, pork and lots and lots of veggies – it was delicious.

Before dessert, we needed a break, so the games came out and we played for a while. We had a few games of Family Feud (which is the same as Family Fortunes), and in true Christmas, family spirit, there was lots of cheating, but it was all good fun.

Dessert was homemade pavlova, made by Rosie and it was very tasty. We stayed around the table for a while and enjoyed dessert, playing some more games, before Jeannie spotted the snow that we had been sent from home. With permission from Mo, we let her open it and we played with it in the garden. There was so much snow everywhere, it was lots of fun and Jeannie certainly enjoyed herself!

As we had eaten so much, some of us decided to go for a Christmas walk to the park up the road. We wandered up with Joe’s new toys: a frisbee and an Aussie footy. We had a kick about and a throw of the frisbee, which was a good way to burn off a tiny fraction of our dinner.

After about half an hour of playing, we started to make our way back to the house. Not long after we got back, John and co left as they were full and tired. The rest of us chilled out and played with Jeannie’s new toys for a while. Before Mick, Shelly and Jeannie left, we woke mum up with a facetime to say Merry Christmas – she wasn’t best pleased, but the others were happy to see her.

After everyone had gone home, me, Joe, Mo and Mark chilled out for the rest of the evening, getting some well needed rest after all of the food. We got quite an early night, where we facetimed home again, before getting some sleep.

 

26^th December

On Boxing Day, we had a nice chilled morning. We got up after a little lie in, and got ourselves some breakfast. At around 11am, we set off towards Cath and Les’, as we were spending Boxing Day with the McGuinness side of the family.

After driving for almost two hours, we made it to Cath’s. We didn’t really get stuck in traffic, but everything was moving a lot slower, probably because it was Boxing Day and lots of people were off on holiday or off to see relatives. When we arrived, Anne and Mary were already there (as they had stayed over on Christmas Day), as well as Cath, Les, Margaret and Steve.

Once we had said our hellos, we sat in the garden, which was nice as it was a gorgeous day. We had our lunch, which was leftovers from Christmas Day (of course), and we all just sat and relaxed and had a chat and a catch up.

After we had eaten lunch, dessert was brought out, so we nibbled on that for a bit while we carried on relaxing. As the afternoon went on, cousins arrived, which was nice, as I hadn’t had chance to catch up with them for a while.

The afternoon passed by and we just carried on eating more and more and talking, as you do at Christmas time.

Just after 7pm, we started to make our way back towards Yarraville. We stopped off at Mordialloc beach on the way, and got some ice cream, but we weren’t very impressed with it, it didn’t taste great. We sat on the beach for a little while, before carrying on, back home.

When we got home, we chilled out for the rest of the night. Mo and Mark were already part way through a film, so we sat and watched the rest of that with them, before going up to bed, as we had an earlyish start the next day.

 

27^th December

The next morning, we were up around 7.30, as we had to take the car in for its service. It wasn’t far to go but it was just off the main road, so the traffic wasn’t great. We got to the garage around 8ish, and as soon as the car was checked in, we went back to the house – luckily, we didn’t have to walk because Mo and Mark came with us in their car.

When we got back home, we had a chill out. As we were sat, trying to keep ourselves awake, I got a FaceTime call from home, where the family were all together for Boxing Day.

After the chat with home, we decided to get some breakfast and we spent the rest of the morning chilling out. The temperature outside was over 35 degrees, so we weren’t too keen on going outside, as it was bad enough inside, until we put the air con on.

After we had eaten some lunch, we started to sort things out in relation to finding a job. We spent some time updating our CVs and applying for jobs online. Not long after lunch, the car was ready to be collected, so Mo drove us round to pick it up.

Although we were staying away from the heat, later on in the afternoon, we decided to head out and try handing out our CV. We stopped in at Michael’s as he had offered to print our CVs out for us, and then we drove around Seddon and into Yarraville.

As it was still Christmas time, a lot of the cafes and shops were still shut, as they are family run businesses and had gone on holiday. We handed out our CVs where we could, but from there, it seemed like a waiting game. When we had handed out where we could, we drove back home, but noticed that the car wasn’t sounding right, and we had only just collected it from an expensive service, so weren’t happy about letting it drop.

When we got back home, we had dinner and had another chilled night, watching TV, before going up to bed.

 

28^th December

As the car was playing up after its service, there was another early start to take it back to see what the problem was. While I was too tired to get up and go to sort the car (and I wasn’t really needed), I had a little extra in bed, but was up before Joe got back with the car.

We had quite a slow morning after the car was back (and fixed, luckily). Jeannie was round for the day, so we played some games with her for a little bit, before they went out for a bit.

At around 11am, we were ready to head out for our day with the McGuinness’ at the park. On the 28^th December, the McGuinness’ try to get together every year and go to the park, so it was nice to be part of it this year. As the traffic wasn’t great again, it took us a while to get there, but we made it eventually and luckily, they had set up the picnic right near to the car park, so we found them easily.

The afternoon was spent eating picnic food and playing games together, which was lovely with the children. We played frisbee, in pairs, where we had cans that we needed to either hit, or get the frisbee in to earn points. Me and Joe weren’t too successful at first, as Deb and Sean were on a winning streak, but as soon as they had beaten everyone, and the cans were moved further apart, we were able to beat them!

After frisbee, I played a bit of football (soccer) with Joe and Abby, but they were too good for me, so I left them to it. We also played a game called finska, which was a game Deb and Sean had brought. There were twelve wooden blocks which were all placed together on the grass. We had to take it in turns to throw a different wooden block at them and earned points depending on what we hit: if we just knocked one block over, then we got the number of points, based on the number on top of the block and if we knocked over more than one, we got the number of points, based on how many blocks fell (so if we knocked two blocks over, we got two points, the numbers on top didn’t play a part). When the blocks were knocked over, they had to be put back up where they landed. The winner was either the last one standing (as you were knocked out if you missed all of the blocks three tries in a row), or the first person to get exactly 50 points. It was a close call and there were only three left at the end, but I was the winner!

At around 4.15, after we had tidied up and loaded the cars, we made our way back home. It didn’t take us as long to get home, so that was good.

When we got back, we had a quiet evening. Jeannie was still round, but she was finishing her tea, and then she left. We only needed a sandwich for tea, as we weren’t very hungry.

After Jeannie had gone home, and we had eaten our tea, we played some cards, before settling down to watch TV and going to bed.

 

29^th December

We had a lazy morning, the next morning. It was one of our first days in Australia where we didn’t have anything planned. As we had handed out CVs in the cafés and restaurants that we could, I thought I would look into doing some teaching over here, when the schools reopen after their holidays. I updated my teaching CV and sent it off to teaching agencies, but had to wait to see what would come of that as there are so many rules around teaching in Australia.

We decided not to waste our day, so as the weather was a perfect temperature, we decided to go into the city and treat ourselves to lunch with some of our Christmas money. We left at around 11.30, and when we got into the centre, we had a few things to sort out, before we went for lunch.

We nipped into Myer and then had to go to the phone shop to query my number, as I had put an Australian SIM in my phone to ease things while we are over here, but I was getting two different numbers and it was very confusing. None of the staff seemed to understand my problem, and some of them didn’t believe me, but it was happening, and they didn’t know how to fix it. I later figured it out myself and had to change my WhatsApp number from my English number onto my new Australian one, to fix things.

On our way to Southbank for lunch, we stopped in some shops to look for clothes that we could go to an interview in – we were trying to be optimistic but not jinx it.

As we were walking to lunch, the weather took a turn for the worst and it started to rain. We seemed to time it quite well, so that we didn’t get too wet, before we sat down in a restaurant along the top row of Southbank. As it was already a lot later than planned, we only had a small lunch, as we didn’t want to spoil dinner. While we were eating lunch, the rain started to come down a lot heavier, so we weren’t so lucky avoiding it walking back to the train station, but we didn’t mind too much, as we were heading home anyway.

When we got off the train in Yarraville, the rain had almost stopped, so we didn’t get too wet on our walk back.

When we got back, dinner was almost ready. We had homemade burgers and veggies, which were all very tasty. We had another chilled evening, with cards and TV, before getting an early night, ready for our mini trip to Sydney.

 

30^th December

We had a 3.15am start, ready to leave for Sydney. Neither of us really wanted to get up as it was so early, but obviously we wanted to go to Sydney, so we managed to drag ourselves up. We got dressed and finished packing our mini bags (we were only taking hand luggage), before getting in the car and setting off at 4, for the airport.

Our Melbourne Christmas was definitely a different experience. We had a great time and loved spending so much time with the family, but I don’t think either of us would like to make it a regular thing. It’s been nice to catch up with family over the Christmas period and we’re looking forward to spending more time with them over the next few months, but before that, we have a few days in Sydney to say bye to 2017 and hello to 2018.

To travel is to live, Katie x