For the first post about living here in Melbourne I'm going to babble on about where I'm living for a bit.  Hope y'all don't mind.  :)

Over the last few days I've been busy packing my stuff in Brisbane and preparing for the move to Melbourne.  There have been a lot of changes lately and I made the decision to move here and make a fresh start (in a number of ways).  Without going into too much detail I hope to take some off and travel a bit, probably to Canda - I'll write more about that later though.

With the packing finally done - getting a bike ready for air transport is easier than I thought - it was time to head to the airport.  For almost the last 2 weeks I've been staying with my friend Fiona, an ex-workmate who has since become a close friend.  She and her partner, Jason, were kind enough to let me stay while I sorted my stuff out and prepared for the move.  Thanks guys, you ROCK!  :)

The flight to Melbourne is pretty short in the overall scheme of things - only about 2h25m.  It was pretty uneventful and my bike and all associated bits arrived safely and in one piece.  Score!  Unfortunately my bag didn't have the same luck and it wasn't there when I landed.  When I checked in I changed flights to an earlier one and my bag ended up arriving on the next flight in (the one I was originally supposed to be on) - phew!  A $70 cab ride later and I arrived at the door of my new home in Hawthorn, a suburb about 5km from Melbourne City.

The house. :)

My new flatmate, Adam, is a really social and friendly dude from Canada, Cape Bretton (Nova Scotia) to be exact.  He's a great flatmate and I can tell we're going to get on well.  He's into mountain biking, the same music as me, knows a thing or 2 about IT and seems to enjoy the odd drink here and there.  I was hoping for a relaxed place to live and I've found one so I'm pretty damn happy about that.  On the first night here, in fact, we stayed up till after 3 a.m. chatting about travel etc so that's a good sign for flat cruisy-ness already.  Sweet.

The place is really cool.  It's not too big and not too small and so far all my junk is fitting in here just fine.  The 42" plasma TV has been very well received haha.  It's a bit of a lad's pad at the moment - speakers, fast internet and a big ass TV is all we need.  :)

The lounge, before I moved all my stuff in. There are recliners and the plasma now.

The whole place was renovated a while ago and is in really good condition. Gas cooking - HELL YEAH.

There's a decent sized shopping mall, 7-Eleven, tram station, pizza place and landromat (if required) all within 5-10 mins walk from the front door which is awesome as I don't want to bother with getting a car unless I have to.  There are also 2 bike shops within 5 mins ride from here too which is handy as I'm going to need to buy some more biking gear - it's COLD here at the moment, the apparent temperature averaging about 7 degrees Celsius today.  I'm from Wellington though the cold and wind don't bother me in the least.  It'll be a bit tough to get used to after living in ~30 degree Celsius temperatures for the last year though.  Naturally Adam thinks these temperatures are warm but he's lived somewhere where it got to -65 Celsius at one point so that's hardly surprising.

Another wee view from the place. It's amazing how much a place improves even with a small view.

I already feel like I'm settled into this place which is a really nice feeling.  With everything being so up in the air for the past few weeks it's a relief to have the move go so smoothly.  I'll miss some of the good times in Brisbane but hey, life does throw the occasional curveball from time to time, right?

Small photo but through the bug-screen I've even got a semi-view from my bedroom window haha

Being unemployed at the moment I'm going to go exploring this week and will take a few snaps of the city from my own perspective.  I'll throw the good ones on Flickr but will put a few samples on here too.  The small photos in this post are the ones Adam took for me when showing the place so they're really small for email purposes.

Here's to a new start in Melbourne - it should be an interesting time as this is the first home move I've made alone for quite some time.  :)