Here to stay!

After five weeks of intensive job searching, enduring interviews and working a few 'in-between' jobs, we have both found proper employment, which means we are going to stay in Perth for at least the next year or so!

David got his first job after three weeks of searching and was casually employed at a factory, mainly working with generators. He gladly left that job a week later when he was offered a full-time role at a very organised and professional electrical company and he is now in his third week.

Jenny got her first job after two weeks of searching. It was a part-time role at a car rental company, which she couldn't stand! At least she got to drive new vehicles around Perth all the time and that way got to know Perth's surrounding suburbs quite well. She left this job two weeks later for a phone-based customer service role at a bank. While this wasn't something she really wanted to do, it did seem to be a great way of getting your foot in the door with such a big organisation. When she almost gave up on finding a marketing position, she got offered a job as a marketing manager at an IT company! So she left the bank and joined the IT company this week.

To celebrate the fact that we don't have to go through anymore interviews, we went to Margaret River last weekend! It's about 300 km south of Perth and a major centre for wineries. Of the 84 wineries in the region, we only managed to visit about six, which was probably more than enough! We tasted and tasted and nibbled and ate - it was such a relaxing weekend! The area is lovely and green and hilly and very close to the ocean where we saw lots of dolphins swimming in the water. We also had a chance to feed the pelicans with fish heads and fish guts, that was a lot of fun!

So our 'around Australia' trip has come to an end. We've absolutely LOVED traveling - we had the time of our lives! Australia is so beautiful and we had such a good time in Darwin thanks to our housemates and it was great being able to travel so carefree through southeast Asia. We've got so many photos and memories and met so many amazing/strange/beautiful/funny/cool people! We still intend to see heaps of this part of Australia, which is also very unique. Being full-time employed doesn't help but we intend to plan lots of weekend trips to all the great places around the south west coast. Plus we still need to get to the Kimberley region in the Dry.

We are planning to come to Melbourne for about a week by the end of May or the start of June - depending on when our tenants move out. We'll post it here, so keep an eye out, because we're planning to have a 'welcome home/goodbye' party and we'd like to invite everyone that has been following our blog to come around.

Thanks to everyone who's had an interest in our travels. It was very nice to read all the comments that were posted! Thanks very much and keep in touch!