Continental Drift

Our new adventure has started! And it’s taking place Down Under in Perth, Australia.

Our previous post announced our imminent departure from Brazil but at that time it was still uncertain where we would go next. In true engineering lastminute.com style, it was only finalised in the last few days before we flew out of Vitoria.

We were interested to go East this time and were initially investigating the Singapore and Vietnam, however, it was not possible for us to join those offices at this time. Justin’s company then offered him a position in Perth, Western Australia which we accepted after a few Skype interviews. It would appear as though we only do continental relocations and are trying to live on every continent! The current familial joke is that our next destination will be one of the poles.

View of Perth CBD and East Perth from a park next to the Swan River at sunset

Sunset view of St George's Terrace in the city after a rainy afternoon

And then it was time to apply for a work visa. Our favourite part of moving to a new country. Said no one ever.

We were apprehensive about all the paperwork and the visa process in general since Australia has strict regulations and entry requirements. But we had a real visa agency helping us this time which was a nice change and made a huge difference to our visa application experience. They handled the entire process for us and were very helpful and efficient. We were expecting the application process to take 4-6 weeks but it only took 2 weeks from when the application was filed to get a decision. We were seriously surprised and impressed. We now have a four year temporary residence work visa for Australia! We were quite amazed that it took a whole year to get a one year Brazilian work visa but only 2 weeks to get a four year Australian work visa. That’s how it’s done Brazil. Just saying.

The visas were approved while we were still on holiday in South Africa. Fortunately we didn’t have to do too much visa admin on holiday, only have chest x-rays taken which we squeezed in in Durban. Due to the timing of the approval we tagged on a sneaky extra week of holiday and flew out on the second weekend of August.

After hearing many horror stories of Australian Customs and Border Protection we didn’t quite know what to expect once we landed in Perth. Overall, all the airport processes were as OTT as we expected but at the same time smooth and efficient; it only took 45-60 min from disembarking the plane to exiting the airport. The passport officer was quite nar (a great not-quite-translatable South African word describing a very unpleasant person), but everyone else was very friendly and polite. The Border Protection guy only wanted to inspect our wooden hippo (which passed) and check our shoes for soil contamination (good thing I washed the soles before we left!) and we were on our way. Hopefully it will be the same when our container of household goods arrives at customs.

The fire station in town

Justin's building on St George's Terrace

Statues of working men through the ages in front of the Amcom building 

(the one Justin works in)

One of a cool series of kangaroo statues just down from the Amcom building on St George's Terrace

We thought this Migrants Memorial was a fitting pic for the blog!

We have been in Perth for almost two weeks and are enjoying our new city so far. This is our third continental move in four and a half years so we know the new person drill pretty well by now. We are surprised however that we don’t have to register anywhere or obtain a residence permit card, our electronic visa is sufficient for the duration our 4 year stay. Although we still have a lot of things to work out and arrange, I feel much more oriented and comfortable in the city than after the same amount of time in any of the other cities we have lived in (especially Rotterdam, that place is a maze! I still get lost there).

We arrived on a Sunday and Justin started work at his new office the next day while Bron started tackling the list of admin, much aided by everything being in English! The jet lag this time didn’t feel as bad as on previous occasions, maybe our bodies are getting used to travelling and time zone crossings. It’s the end of winter here but the weather is milder than we expected. The past weekend was gloriously warm and sunny inbetween some rainy days so we took advantage for exploring our new surroundings.

Exploring started at King’s Park, one of the world’s largest inner city parks. At four square kilometres, King’s Park is bigger than Central Park in New York (3.4 km²). Located on the western edge of Perth CBD, the park has beautiful views of the Swan River and the city. The park is mixture of grassed parkland, a botanical garden and natural bushland, and entry is free. The park has numerous memorials, including a memorial to WWI and WWII, and Honour Avenues, where the streets have been lined with eucalyptus trees and each tree has a plaque honouring a fallen serviceman. We will definitely be back to King’s Park for more outside time and hopefully many picnics but we suspect that Kirstenbosch will remain our favourite botanical garden.

View of Perth CBD from King's Park

WWI Memorial in King's Park

(the WWI Memorial is on the other end of the paved path)

Pioneer Women's Memorial Fountain in King's Park

A patch of cosmos-like flowers in bloom

Bron nearly wet her pants when she almost stood on this guy!

He was so confident, he didn't run off when we approached and was happy to pose for pictures

From King’s Park we made our way to Fremantle by train. Fremantle was the first area of Perth settled in 1829 and is situated at the mouth of the Swan River and home to Western Australia’s largest and busiest cargo port. Referred to as Freo by the locals, Fremantle has many attractions including the harbour, markets, craft breweries, cruises of Swan River, ferries to Rottnest Island, eating al fresco on the Cappuccino Strip, and much more.

From Fremantle train station we wandered down to the water’s edge via the Cappuccino Strip and the popular markets. By this time we were starving and decided we couldn’t go wrong with fish and chips at the harbour. Perth is known as an expensive city and we are trying to get used to it and not convert currencies too much but it’s hard when our one shared fish and chips costs the same as four generous portions we recently had in SA! After our late lunch we popped into one of the craft breweries to sample the local offerings while enjoying the last rays of the day. Our way back to the station was via a street lined with well-preserved convict-built colonial-era buildings, really beautiful! One afternoon was clearly not enough time to enjoy everything on offer but it was a good starter and we will definitely be back for more of Freo!

Our weekend of exploring also included a visit to the Perth Mint. The Mint was established as part of Britain’s royal Mint in 1899 and was intended to refine gold from the gold rushes and eastern gold mines which it still does today. The main operations of the Mint have moved to near the airport but the original building in the city still stands and has a gold exhibition and shop. The centrepiece of the exhibition is a Guinness World Record one tonne gold coin. At 80 cm wide and 12 cm deep with a value of $50 million, it is the largest and most valuable coin in the world. We enjoyed our visit to the Mint and especially the gold pouring demonstration; they turn the lights off so you can see the liquid gold glowing, it’s really cool! We didn’t realise before that Australia was such a gold producing country so it was an interesting visit.

Colonial era buildings in Fremantle

Cool street ending at the harbour in Fremantle

Statue outside the Perth Mint

For security reasons, no photos may be taken inside the Mint

During the week Justin had to go up the coast to Guilderton for a meeting so Bron decided to join him. This was our first experience of driving (a rental car) in Australia and of anything outside of Perth. Guilderton is a small town a bit more than an hour North of Perth at the mouth of the Moore River. The estuary and surrounding beaches is really beautiful; to give you an idea, the town won a national award recently for its pristine beaches. We had the town and beach to ourselves that day but I imagine it gets crazy busy during the summer. We can report that the roads here are in good condition and people obey the rules of the road. We didn’t see that much of the area from the highway though, only lots of trees which was nice but we couldn’t get an idea of the surrounding areas from that. We also saw our first Aussie sheep and cows and kangaroo sign!

Boibs at Guilderton

The Moore River Estuary

Our first kangaroo road sign! 

So far we are enjoying our new city and are looking forward to exploring more of it and Western Australia. Even though Perth is the most isolated city in the world, we think it will be a good base for us to travel from since it is in the middle of Australia, New Zealand, and many interesting places in Southeast Asia.

General first impressions: the people are friendly, even the cashier at the supermarket asks how your day is going; the city is clean; public transport is good and free in the inner city; you can buy rooibos tea and milo in the supermarket (insert happiness here); the city feels modern, there is a lot of art/statues around the city; we feel safe; lamb is cheaper than chicken and you can buy kangaroo meat in the supermarket. More to follow soon!

South African holiday blog posts coming soon!!