3-2-1-Clear! *BZZZZZT!*

Ouch. 7 months. That's a long time to fail to update your blog. Well, I'm resuscitating it now and hopefully it'll not get forgotten in future.

So much has happened since I last posted, it's just not funny, and I'm not going to cover it all in this post. I'll try to catch up on things over time.

Anyway, here I am, 6 months into my stay in Australia. "Whaddya think of it so far?" you say - well, I'm having a great time in general. The whole point of coming over here was to see what it was like to live in the country on a day-to-day basis, to understand the social and economic situation and to see if I could live here permanently. I need to give it the full year before I can answer that particular $64,000 question, but I'm very positive about it currently.

I'm being guarded in these comments, and for a good reason. I can see so many parallels with the UK that I'd hoped I wouldn't see, such as a problem with alcohol, a generation of young people that seem to be slightly detached from the reality of the world they're living in, and a new government that can't stop coming up with new initiatives and isn't seeming to deliver anything. There's a chronic shortage of affordable housing in the suburbs (Sydney more so, to the point that young families are sleeping in their cars) and public transport is shocking.

So pretty much the same old same old then? No. Where I'm staying, in Frankston, is about a 1 hour commute into Melbourne by either train or car. Yes, I can commute to work in the heart of the city by car. I've done it a number of times, and the longest it's taken me is 1h 20m, as opposed to 55 minutes on a Sunday afternoon. In fact, at some points in the morning (say, if I'm stumbling out the door at 8:00) it's quicker to drive, because of the way the trains work (or don't).

Public transport is so much cheaper than in the UK, for instance, a daily travel card equivalent from Frankston (end of the line) to the city covering buses and trams as well will set me back $10.10, which is as near to £5 as makes no difference. But, while it's good int he mornings, there's annoying gaps in the timetable at just the times I like to travel, and the trains are about as fast as an average Piccadilly line. So it's a bit like getting on at Heathrow and snoozing all the way to Finsbury Park. Oh well.

To be honest, while Australia's got things that are just as frustrating as back in the UK, it's got many good points, and at the end of the day the weather's just that much better ...