Kerry's "Letter from Australia" - November 2006 Well folks for those of you who haven't heard already, we are out of the caravan. We have found a house to buy, it is next door to Kevin's friend Rob. I say next door but you can't see his house from ours as he has 44 acres and we have 45. The bonus is that this house comes with a self contained Bed and Breakfast unit attached which the owner says we can live in rent free until the sale goes through. No, we haven't won the lottery! Houses out here are so much cheaper. It needs a lot doing to it as the owner has been ill for sometime and had a major op this year and has neglected the garden and the house is very dated. Set in a seventies time warp with face brickwork and pine panelled walls. Still, Kevin is very handy and will whip it into shape within a year or so. We picked it because the views are stunning. Things move fast out here and the paperwork will be completed in 30 days and then we move in! Kevin has been dragging Holly and I around with him looking for a car. We have been from garage to garage and frankly I would have bought a Sinclair C5 if it meant we could stop. I was just losing the will to live, having had my fill of fuel consumption, torque and various other mechanical terms which are of no interest to me, (It's a car! As long as it goes from A - B and doesn't break down, I'm happy) when I spotted a logo on the opposite side of the street - Picture to Page - suddenly wide awake and alert, I realised it was a scrapbooking shop. I made a quick getaway and sprinted over the road. It was only small but full of great goodies, fab papers, Gin-X small to very large wooden letters (8"), Sizzix, punches etc. The samples on the wall were stunning. I immediately checked their lesson list and will definitely be calling again. Poor old Holly (10) has been so good; she has had to follow us around looking for, phones, cars, furniture and the like and has only moaned intermittently. She is bored stiff and wants to be in school - a first for Holly - we didn't want to enrol her anywhere until we were sure where we were going to settle, better that than let her start somewhere and then move her a few weeks later. Now we have decided on this house, it was the start of the tour around the local schools, they all seemed good but we have settled for one right at the bottom of our road called Chum Creek. It only has 51 pupils in all and only 15 including Holly in her class. They don't have to wear uniform (Nikki would be pleased) other than a hat in terms 1 and 4 which is their late spring to early autumn to protect them from the sun. She has made plenty of new friends and loves all the animals the school has, they keep chickens (chooks) in the playground which the children feed every lunch time as well as frogs, snakes, stick insects and a turtle. They have a more varied curriculum than in England and Holly is learning Japanese and this term they are having a visiting Martial arts teacher in every week. The emphasis seems to be more on learning through experience, so they are always of out on trips to places of interest. Holly has been orienteering, to an art exhibition and there are trip coming up to Werribee Zoo to study the endangered frogs and Healesville Animal Sanctuary to study endangered birds. As you might have guessed the topic for this term is endangered species. They are also doing maths the way Kevin and I were taught at school, if any of you have children in junior school at the moment you will probably have heard of the new method of dividing and multiplying called chunking - what a load of rubbish! Thankfully they don't do that here. Older daughter Lauren (18) stayed behind in England when we left as she was off to South Africa for a month for work experience on a game reserve. Her aim is to become a vet working with big animals. She is now out there and the only contact we have with her is email and the odd phone call (prearranged because of the time difference). She is having a fantastic time and the first weekend she was there went on a tandem skydive - needless to say she didn't tell us first, knowing what a worrywart I am, that I would have tried to talk her out of it - and the next day she went on an elephant back safari. They have some wonderful shops out here, some so specialist you wonder how they survive. For instance there is a bear shop where you take lessons in making your own bear and they sell patterns and fur fabric. Another one sells just rubber matting and foam, very useful when you need to get some but how often is that? The electrical equipment stores are huge with so much choice except when it comes to vacuum cleaners and they have about twenty cylinder ones and only two uprights. They are just starting to get front loading washing machines most of them are top loaders. There is a push for people to convert to the front loaders as they are some much more water efficient. We are in the grips of a decade long drought out here and are on water restrictions. They call it a green drought because they get just enough water to keep the grass green but dig down a few millimetres and the earth is bone dry. They also have bush fires in our area as it is full of trees: mostly gum trees that go up in a blaze of glory. So there are restrictions on what and when you can burn any garden rubbish. There is now a complete ban on any fires with effect from beginning of November because they are expecting a really hot and dry summer. We have a large cleared area (only a few ornamental trees and bushes) surrounding our house and it is made completely of brick so shouldn't be in too much danger if one does sweep through, although we have been told that it is the travelling embers that do most of the damage so you have to keep checking your roof to make sure nothing gets under the tiles. However the people who built this house have planned for everything and have a very elaborate watering system completely surrounding the property so hopefully if the worst does happen we should be okay. A lot of people live in wooden houses right in the middle of the trees and it doesn't seem to concern them too much, they haven't had any major fires here in Healesville for the last twenty years that Jan and Rob have been living here but it is best to be prepared. We have some lovely wildlife nearby, sometimes we come home at dusk and there are kangaroos on our driveway, but mostly they stay outside on a large expanse of land at the bottom of our property, we get fantastic birds, one called a blue wren with a stunning almost electric blue colour on it's head and body, parrots, rainbow lorikeets coloured as the name suggests, blue tongue lizards about 12 - 18" long - completely harmless and they say if you have blue tongues in the garden you won't have snakes, so they're welcome to stay and these really cute echidnas (pronounced e-kid-ners) that are like very large hedgehogs. We are plagued with ducks at the moment we counted 19 the other day wandering about in the garden. The trouble is they like swimming in our pool but unfortunately leave lots of calling cards in their wake. I went to the Melbourne Paperific Expo, it was nowhere near as big as Ally Pally but still worth the trip. There were shops from all over Victoria displaying their wares, they had all the new Sizzix designs including one Jackie could only get via the internet from America, the Cricut was being demonstrated along with the Xyron machine and Craft Robo. There weren't many stamp stalls but having said that a lot of the scrapbooking companies seem to be bringing out stamps themselves that match the papers. There were some fantastic examples up in the booths, look out for Delish Designs which do scrapbook/cardmaking papers combined. Their Christmas collection was very elegant and stylish. More words for you: Sweets - lollies Lollies - Icy poles Ponds - dams Pylons - power poles Dustbin men - the garbo's Car registration - rego - even on government forms sarvo - afternoon They love their "O"s!! That's it for this month - next instalment will be during December, so check back later!