First week down....!

One week today, seems a lot longer but that’s how long we have been in Aus. Don’t know if NZ was trying to hang on to us but they keep us in for another two hours due to someone breaking the plane. Our arrival in Brisbane was greeted by a fantastic lightning storm, another omen perhaps…..no just a regular occurrence over here apparently. Mighty impressive though with big grey rolling clouds being back lit and forks of lightning streaking through the sky and into the land. Fantastic.

So far we have seen about 15 boats around the Brisbane area and over 35 in total including NZ. What we have is probably four distinct possibilities, two of which are somewhat more than we where intending to spend but are really nice and something we would be happy to live on. Many were not, a lot of home built and fitted out boats, and they looked like it, some were single men’s homes, and looked like it, and some had more precious items stored on board than we had tucked away in two homes! This weekend it’s about deciding which lucky punter is going to receive our incredibly pathetic offer. It appears the standard is to offer about 20% less than asking and not to move much on that.

The weather has been great if not a tad hot but often with a nice cooling breeze, especially in the afternoon. We were shocked last night that it was actually cold. We had gone away for a couple of days with a rental car and were definitely in need of a jacket, left packed at the motel. People have been all really accommodating and helpful, from bus drivers to brokers. People do seem more chilled out than in NZ, maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s the news? Have noticed that the news is generally more positive, like it’s very hard to hear what the dollar is doing, as in going down. They would rather talk about the footy, now that’s serious and worth talking about!
Also noticed a distinct lack of personalised number plates, or boy racers, and that’s got to be a good thing!

The intrepid travellers ....