• there are around 30 flowers on the Strelitzia
• The iris I planted a few months ago starts to flower
• Our euphorbia have grown at least 15 cm and are in flower
• The leucadendrum have doubled in size and are flowering
• The palm tree has some big yellow flowers
• We have several arums in the garden (some people consider them a pest, I pamper them because I was never successful in growing them in Belgium

We have all kind of flowers that I can’t name in the garden - most of them are probably weeds, but they are so pretty that we just keep them. When the white bells first came up we thought it was leek, and we even replanted them. (Daniel still refers to them as leek)

I took some pictures of the plants (and the weeds) in the garden. Most plants are only two months old.

The next few days will be spent ironing out the “quirks”…..

However, about 8 weeks ago, Daniel and I bought some plants during sale, followed the instructions of the staff in the nursery while planting, and now after 2 months everything seems to thrive.

Encouraged by the success of our first trial, I went back to the nursery this morning and bought some more plants. I dug up the plant beds in the back, threw out all the plants that were in there (mainly ferns that look very sad during summer because our courtyard is in full sun) and planted new stuff. The timing seems to be ideal: the weather is getting overcast and with a bit of luck we will have rain this afternoon. We are still under water restrictions, so I can’t water the plants.

Specially for my mother - these are the plants we bought:

8 weeks ago

• Leucadendron laureolum x salignum (Safari Sunset)
• Lavandula stoechas Avonview (French Lavender)

Today:

• Euphorbia Craigieburn
• Choisya ternata (Mexican Orange Blossom)
• Nandina domestica (Moon Bay)
• Plectranthus (Mona Lavender)
• Orthrosanthus multiflorus

I downloaded some pictures from websites to show what the plants look like - these are not pictures of our garden!

These are the misconceptions of Europe. We have a rose tree in our garden with hundreds of roses on it, The Strelizia is developing some flowers that will come out in the coming weeks, and we just planted lavender that immediately started to blossom.

Winter in Melbourne seems to be the most colourfull time of the year, and the plants recuperate from a long and dry summer.

Most days have bright days that seem a lot longer than the winter days in Europe; last week was the shortest day of the year, but we still had daylight from 7 am till after 5 pm.

And from now on the days are lengthening again!

Last week we went to see the local club, who play in the VFL (this is the state league, second only to the AFL: the national league). It was cold and wet, and Sandringham Zebras lost…

The first renovation is nearly complete. We replaced half the windows in the house with some windows that actually block main road noise and provide a modicum of insulation.

This took a long time as really windows are not that advanced in Australia compared to places with colder climates - wonder why? - plain sheet glass is the norm, so I had to research window specs, installation and performance. The result was worth it though, as winter is here and we regularly get temperatures below 10C. The next step is to complete the painting.

The next step is to work through winter to pay for it all.

We tried to restore some order and put as much as possible in place during the rest of the weekend, but there is still lots of work to do! It is now Monday evening - we both had to work today- and we have now a -more or less- ok bedroom, a brilliant dining room and a very empty family room. The other rooms resemble permanent storage facilities: boxes without an end…Pictures follow later.
Phone and television are working, the internet still needs to be connected.

I have to stop now, because I am falling asleep while typing this and I fear that I am boring everyone with my style of writing.

Anyway, lots of news about moving and stuff, but more on that later.

I walked to the pengiun colony in St Kilda this morning and all around you could see people enjoying the nice weather.

Steve Irwin is still very much in peoples mind, as proves the plane that writes in the air. (Crikey)

Some brave people were swimming in the sea, and lots of old tanned men in swimming trunks were hanging around on the beaches. I already noticed them  last year: the most  vigourous  sunbathers are men  aged over 70. They come out at the first sun and will spend all their time on the beach. By the end of the season they will have a dark brown-red tan; the kind of tan you can only achieve by sunbathing for years. They spend their time in little groups, turning around at regular intervals to get an even tan, and reading articles from the newspaper to each other.

I only saw two pengiuns, but apparently there are 800 pengiuns living on the St Kilda Pier. Their habitat is protected by a big fence.

By the time I came back it was lunchtime, and you could see all the offfice workers taking their lunch break with a take away meal on the benches near the sea. I walked in a t-shirt and burned my face and neckline again. Bonaire sun was nothing compared to the sun in Melbourne!

The suit fits perfect (there is a first for everything), and I am really looking forward to try it out!

We had a few days with lots of showers (good for the farmers !), but this morning the sun was shining again so we decided to walk around in Williamstown. Williamstown is at the other side of Port Phillip bay, just opposite Port Melbourne. From the beach you can see the Spirit of Tasmania and you have a great view on the skyline of Melbourne.

We had Fish and Chips and took a picture of the fish and chips shop for those people who do not believe you can get Fish and Chips in Australia

If you want to read about this, go to

• http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/steve-irwin-killed-by-stingray/2006/09/04/1157222051512.html 

• http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/shock-at-crocodile-hunters-death/2006/09/04/1157222057526.html
  

Even John Howard (our prime minister)declared on the television how shocked the nation was by the death of the Australain crocodile hunter.

The past winter was extremely dry, and on the news they are declaring that this was the dryest winter in 114 years. I think that we only had around 10 days of real rain (meaning at least a few hours of rain in a row) since we moved over from Europe.

Daniel and I yesterday even went for a game of golf (9 holes - more than enough for me), and we played in t-shirts. My face was very red of the sun afterwards.

This morning it was raining, so we couldn’t do the sport activities we planned and we went instead to the South Melbourne market. We bought 14 punnets of strawberries from Queensland (a dollar a punnet), and I have been making loads of jam this evening.

We went out for a lunch with friends to a Croatian restaurant today, and because it was fathersday in Australia , it was busy everywhere. We only came out of the restaurant after 4 pm.

It is evening now, and we are getting ready for next week. I’ll work one more week and then I will take off two weeks because there is a two week stop in my project. Daniel will take time off the second week of my holidays so that we can do something together. For the first week of my holidays I planned so much that one week will never be enough…

For the Belgians: an Australian football game is played in four quarters of each 20 minutes. The pitch is an oval, and a lot bigger than a traditional football field. At the two ends of the field, you have 4 high poles sticking in the ground: they create the goal area and the behind areas.

The players are allowed to kick the ball or punch the ball with their hands. If they kick the ball in between the two middle poles, they score a goal (6 points), If they kick it into the two side areas, it is called a behind and they earn 1 point. the footballers kit consist of a tight pair of shorts and a sleeveless vest. When we just came over, I thought  that they were playing in their underwear..

The game is incredibly fast, and it often ends with high scores. The two teams we saw are in the top half of the table, and they played very well. The final score was 105 - 98 for the Western Bulldogs. The game was in the MCG , and there was a crowd of 30,000 to see the game. That is not a lot; if the local popular teams play, there are up to 80,000 spectators. The Australians are passionate about their Australian football: Friday afternoon everybody at work is talking about the game they will see on the weekend and predicting what will happen. On Monday morning there are the reviews and discussions about where teams are in the table and if they make a chance to end up in the final.

After the game we bumped into Jenny and walked with her to Birches appartments.

This morning I made my walk to St Kilda; The temperature was up to 19 degrees, it was sunny and… I burned my face. It seems to be time to slap up the suncream again when we go out during the day. I can’t wait till it is summer again!

We also went to the French meetup group on Tuesday; we subscribed to a group of people who meat once a month over a meal just to practise their french language. There are some native French speaking people, but also quite some students who are just looking for an opportunity to practice the language.

It is now Sunday night: almost time to close down the pc and to go to sleep I feel very sleepy with my burned face.

Unfortunately there are some wind warnings and the forecast for the coming days is less good…

I was really paranoid about it, but we passed the test and found a note saying that the house was in excellent condition.

Now that the house is squeeky clean; it is the right time to find a cleaning lady;-)

We went out with some friends in Elwood on Friday evening and had a lazy weekend. Tonight we went out to the movies and now we are ready for another Monday.

Every morning I have my little ’sea walk’ to the tram stop. The cockatoos and parrots are very active around that time: most of the time they all hide in one or two trees, and they make a deafening sound!

Door to door , my trip to work takes about 35 minutes, which is very acceptable.

Last week, we had a team building event: we went for a game of golf in Sanctuary lakes resort. It was the first time that I played on a full 18 holes course. We had a buggy per two to drive around and a full set of clubs (totally waisted on me - I use the 5 iron an the putter) My whole body was hurting afterwards: there is definitively room for improvement when it comes to my swing

At this moment the stock take sales are on in Melbourne, so I went into the CBD on Friday to buy some suits. Professional dress code here is a lot like in London: as long as it is black and it is a suit it is ok. One side of my wardrobe now looks very black

I’ve been asked to be discreet about the job in itself, so I can not publish a lot about it at the moment, but it is really in the area I am interested in.

We have some friends who will arrive tomorrow and stay for a few days, so this week promises to be a very busy week!

I then started to wonder where our fog-light switch was. We looked all over the dashboard - nothing. Checked the car manual - nothing. I started to think that now the car was too complicated.

However, a colleague pointed out that a lot of cars don’t actually have fog lights, and his tone rather gave the impression that this was normal.

How I miss the fog of Europe