one whinging pom

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2

Places to visit: A Town Called Eumundi
2007-12-09 01:00:00
First impressions of Eumundi, especially on a stinking hot day, are that it's maybe just another one horse town along the railway line, on the way to somewhere more interesting in Noosa. But STOP! Take a closer look. Or alternatively, take advantage of the air conditioning inside some of the shops and cafés. It's a little gem.We have recently moved to the outskirts of Eumundi and, by UK standards, it's more like a village. There's one main street where all the shops and cafés are and residential areas are mainly behind this street on either side. It is most famous for its markets which are held in the town centre every Wednesday and Saturday. You can buy all sorts from here, particularly clothes and jewellery and it's quite good for souvenirs to take back home to Blighty. These markets have enabled Eumundi to develop a bohemian, arty crafty image up and down the main street. You can choose from exclusively designed art from the glassware shops or gear from The Hemp Shop (man)! ...
More About: Places , Town , Visit

Flatulent Kangaroos Could Save Planet
2007-12-06 23:55:00
Click here for breaking news. Tee hee.http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,3 15586,00.htmlAustralia's answer to signing the Kyoto agreement.
More About: Planet , Save , Kang

Buying a used car: Part 1
2007-12-06 23:37:00
Well, without wanting to be disloyal to my little VW Lupo GTi in the UK (which I totally love and goes like stink) , I have had to buy a used car in oz. I've spent weeks on all the different websites trying to choose and it seems to me that there is a big price variation between the different states. On the whole I found the prices to be more than in the UK, esp when you compare them to the UK price guides, dollar for pound. Queensland (where I live ) prices seemed to be the most expensive but then, because the roads don't get salted, the cars don't really suffer from rust. I was looking to buy a Ford KA (which they stopped producing here in 2003..?) but prices for these were a bit inflated. So in the end I've bought this ten yr old VW Polo for $4000 from the Sydney area through ebay!!! It's about to be transported up to Brisbane this very moment. Is probably NOT a recommended way of buying a car, and I begrudge paying this amount for such an old vehicle, but believe me it was ...
More About: Buying , Part

God Awful Australian TV
2007-12-03 07:11:00
Look out! Mega whinge alert!Oh dear oh dear. It seems the aussies have accidentally decided to follow the American TV broadcasting model: Utter shite, interspersed with irritating advertising drivel every 5 minutes. In the UK we enjoy having a good old moan about the telly; how awful and dumbed down it is, particularly with the advent of 'reality' tv programmes that seem to be reproducing themselves interminably.Well. Not only have the aussies adapted some well known reality tv formats to make their own, eg. Big Brother, Australian Idol, etc, but they also broadcast the complete toss that is American reality tv in order to pad out the programming schedule. And, just to add insult to injury, Neighbours and Home and Away, which are currently tucked away at the 6pm and the god-only-knows-where time slots respectively on British tv, are featured as the cream of aussie creativity in prime time viewing slots of around 7pm. God! I can't understand it. Total tripe from the nation that br...
More About: Awful

Places to visit: Lady Elliot Island
2007-11-29 06:47:00
We have just come back from spending 3 nights on Lady Elliot Island at the southern most tip of the Great Barrier Reef. The photo I took from the plane says it all, mostly.We took a 30 min flight there from Hervey Bay which I understand can be extended to have a nosey at any passing whales during the right season. Flights also go from Brisbane, Maroochydore and Bundaberg. Unfortunately, when we went all the whales had finished their holidays and scooted off back down south until next year.Lady Elliot is a great place to go if you enjoy:(a) snorkelling or diving(b) bird watching(c) great food(d) excellent friendly service(e) getting away from it all.Do not go to Lady Elliot if you don't like:(a) Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds"(b) the smell of bird poo(c) being woken up by screeching birds(d) being crapped on from a great height(e) being cut off from the outside world until your flight rescues you from the bird colony you accidentally had a holiday on.Seriously though, I did enjoy my...
More About: Places , Visit

Shopping in Australia: Supermarkets
2007-11-23 09:46:00
It seems to me that about 50% of the ebayers I meet to collect things I have bought from them are poms like me. One lady I met who lived on the Gold Coast was selling everything from the house in order to go back to Blighty for family reasons. We asked each other what we missed about the Motherland and, as I was still in the heady stages of my emigration 'euphoria', I didn't say a lot, apart from missing friends and family obviously. She countered with a long list of things she was clearly looking forward to seeing/having again, one of which was Tesco! I too was a regular Tesco-ite (?), mainly because it was on the way home from work and cheaper than Sainsbury's. But it was Sainsbury's I always went to for posh food for occasions or nice treat food. In all honesty, I don't feel I've missed out by not being able to frequent either any more. The supermarkets here are just about as good and very similar and familiar to shop in.The choice of supermarkets in SE Queensland seems to...
More About: Shopping , Australia , Supermarkets

Garden creatures in Australia - don't panic!
2007-11-22 02:33:00
Well living in the Noosa 'hinterland', near Eumundi, for the last 2 weeks has been interesting. Being in such close proximity to snakes and lizards and stuff has had to make me adjust somewhat!Mini lizards are cute and interesting to watch until they suddenly disappear into the waiting mouth of a snake you didn't know was lying under the back step. Fortunately, it was 'only' a green tree snake and, although we eyeballed each other suspiciously, it wasn't very interested and slithered back under the step. And at this present moment I can see what I have convinced myself to be a carpet python right outside my window. I would like it to be a carpet python because they aren't dangerous and only bite people when they have been seriously pissed off. They also, apparently, eat the young of other, more poisonous snakes and ensure your mice and rat population are in the past tense. It has fastened itself to the chain which anchors our bird feeder and pointed itself at the bird seed tr...
More About: Garden , Australia , Creatures , Panic , Garde

Selling your house (UK): a cautionary tale
2007-11-19 21:25:00
Selling a house in the UK is incredibly stressful where the odds are always stacked in the buyer's favour and people can mess you about for months. This has happened to me with two different house sales in the UK. In Queensland it's dead easy. You get tied into a contract within a week of making the offer, subject to satisfactory survey, and it is possible to have it all done and dusted with you safely in your new house within four weeks. Australia 1, UK 0.When immigration gives you the go ahead to drop everything and bugger off to the bottom of the world, DO NOT do what I did in selling a house!Having decided to leave in January so I could start the Australian academic year, I put my house on the market at the end of September and accepted an offer within a week. By the start of November everything was going well, the survey had been done and we were negotiating what I was going to leave behind. So I booked my flight. The sharp eyed savvy readers amongst you will have noticed a f...
More About: House , Selling , Tale

Setting up home: Ebay Australia!
2007-11-17 23:30:00
If you arrive in oz empty handed and homeless like me you'll want to set up home asap with minimum amount of expense, especially if you aren't sure whether or not you'll be staying. Enter ebay - ta da!I am a self confessed ebay addict. Like the UK one it's possible to find some really good deals on second hand and new stuff. Plus if you were a member in the UK you can transfer it and all your feedback over to oz, although you may still find that your 'my ebay' section still sends you messages from the UK site which can get confusing. Whilst you can still use your Paypal account anywhere in the world, it may be better to set up an Australia one linked to an Australian bank account so that you don't have to pay commission on the currency exchange. In this case Paypal advises that you shut down your original Paypal account before you open a new one.The good thing about ebay Australia is that you can get some billy bargains (especially if you use a bid robot to bid at the last mi...
More About: Home , Ebay

Banking in Australia
2007-11-16 03:16:00
Oh god, banking in Australia . Right, so in the UK we pretty much all have VISA debit thingies on our bank cards and when we go shopping these days all you do is give the card to the cashier and type in your PIN number, yes? Now, if you try to use your debit card in Australia you will have to treat it as a credit card and put your autograph on a slip of paper the old fashioned way. There is a sort of chip and pin style of system available in Australia known as EFTPOS which is common to all Australian bank cards. This is OK although it doesn't have your account number and sort code details on it for security reasons which means you will have to hunt around for it should the need arise. But the biggest drawback is if you are trying to buy something or guarantee a booking over the phone or internet, say for a hotel room, plane ticket or something you bought on Ebay!! In this case your EFTPOS is useless -a bit like those Electron things you used to get on Barclays Bank cards. So you nee...
More About: Banking

Driving in Australia
2007-11-15 11:56:00
Hang on to your eskies, it's going to get rocky... in yer Holden ute.In SE Queensland at least driving is generally less manic than in the UK but can be stressful for different reasons. You can use your UK licence for driving through Australia but if you settle here you will need to apply for the relevant state licence. Traffic on motorways is usually less congested -unless some plonker in a ute has caused a pile up - but inevitably there can be rush hour jams in the CBD like all cities. While British motorists can be at worst arrogant, vengeful (!) and aggressive, and at best polite, Queensland drivers seem to drive as though they have never encountered other drivers on the road before. Use of mirrors is limited, there is no real recognition of the needs of other road users and don't even get me started on roundabouts!!Beautiful Noosa appears to be the first region in oz to introduce the revolutionary (geddit?) concept of roundabouts. The only thing is, knowing how to use a round...
More About: Driving

To bring or not to bring: Washing Machines!
2007-11-15 05:50:00
Now, at the risk of conforming to stereotype and having a right old moan, appliances in Australia, compared to the UK, are either Not Good or criminally expensive. I?m not sure what the reason is for this but it took me by surprise when I was in the process of shacking up with Diver Dave. I bemoaned my fabulous no nonsense dyson that my Stepmum had volunteered to ?look after? and my beautiful sleek Hotpoint washer dryer with blue digital display-à-la-volkswagen-dash that I?d had to flog in a hurry on ebay for only £100 before I came away!! Yes - you read it right folks - unless your ebay user name is treadtrader you missed out on a billy bargain there. For the equivalent money on the Australian ebay I had to settle for a very inferior plain old washing machine with absolutely no digital display whatsoever and some of the little symbols rubbed off. Apparently we paid a premium for this unknown make because it?s a front loader.Front loaders are new in Australia and seem to be viewed w...
More About: Machines , Washing , Mach

Halloween in Australia
2007-11-11 06:07:00
I guess some things stay the same between different countries. The other week the doorbell of our first floor apartment rang and I looked down to find a motley assortment of trick-or-treaters, some of whom had actually bothered to dress up. I?d forgotten it was Halloween . Now that I?ve not been teaching for almost a year, I?m truly out of the loop when it comes to important calendar events, kiddie wink wise. I?m not sure I really approve of the whole going round to strangers? houses and begging for stuff idea (or am I just turning into my mother?), but if you can?t beat ?em, join ?em. However, I never give out money (in case they shout down the street to all the other mini scaries that number 10 is where the money?s at), and I never give out sweets (so that they shout down the street that it?s really not worth going to number 10, etc). The ghouls and goblins waited patiently while I scrabbled around the apartment frantically for something to give them, rather than risk losing our re...
More About: Australia , Allo