Just a brief history. I lived my first 20 odd years in Cromford and have now spent about the same length of time in Australia.

Is Australia like England only with sun?
Not really. There are a few similarities. In Australia we drive on the same side of the road and English is the first language.

A few other 'true myths' are:
We can drive down the road and see wild kangaroos
Quite a few people have swimming pools, but they are not only for the wealthy
The sun shines. Alot
We can swim in the sea and it is clean and lovely
Overall, people are friendly

One that I would have added here a few years ago would be... it is easy to maintain a good standard of living without having to work your backside off. Unfortunately, over the past seven or eight years houses have doubled/tripled in price. You used to be able to buy and sell houses like sweets. But not any more. Also, Stamp Duty (You have to pay this pro rata amount depending on how much you buy your house for). It used to be very little, not it's approx $20,000 entry level. What a sham!

I'll keep adding as they come up. If you have a question - scarboroughwa@hotmail.com

Don't want to go on about the weather but it's pretty hot. 36 and 37 coming up on Saturday and Sunday I think.

Just a bit of popular culture and I don't know if it's in the UK but this is big at the moment

Beached as

It's got a full on Kiwi (New Zealand) accent and it's only 1 min 40 long. Don't know why it's taken off, but it has!

Anyway, gotta go, air con is blasting and it's on timer until 1.30 in the morning 'cos it can be a bit hard to get to sleep.

Work tomorrow.

Spent the morning, well until about 2.00pm, at the beach. I think it got to 35 or 36 degrees.

A few days ago a man got taken by a five metre shark at a suburban beach a few kilometeres down South. People freak out a bit but what do you expect if you go out into their domain? I say this though knowing the likelihood of being killed by a shark is about as likely as being left with a funny face if the wind blows while you are pulling it. 

I'm back to work tomorrow, just for the one day before the weekend, and I usually catch the train, two actually, and they are usually packed, but not so much at the moment as most people have the whole of Christmas and New Year off. The train line runs down the middle of the freeway in Perth which is a bit bizarre.

Petrol was $1.50 a litre but it's gone down to $1.00 now so that helps a bit. Most people seem to have a 4wd so they must have been feeling the rise in cost.

 

The average house price is about $500,000 which is about 230,000 pounds I guess. It depends on the dollar, it's not good at the moment. They were about $200,000 a few years ago which would have been about 85, 000 pounds but those days are gone. Also we have been getting about 54, 000 people migrating a year for the past few years to Western Australia, hence part of the reason for rising costs, so there is nothing to buy, nothing to rent, and nowhere to park in the shopping centres as very little has been done with the rise of population in mind. I thing there are about 1.5 million people in WA.

Anyway, Happy New Year, I'm off to bed. It's gone 10.00pm and the air conditioning is still blasting 'cos I thik it's still about 27 degrees outside.