30th January 2011

Hello everyone,
So I am now in western Australia. Stayed in perth for a few days which
was nice. Very warm and dry.I met a girl when I was in Sydney who's
from canada and had planned on staying in Perth the same length of
time as me so we were gonna look into getting a flat. She is seeing a
guy from perth so is staying at his cousins flat. They offered to pick
me up from the airport and let me stay there for my first night. We
went straight into the city when they picked me up and ended up going
for chinese. Then the next day I had to get to my Hostel which took
forever as getting lost and 26kgs of luggage doesn't go well together.
I dumped  my bags and went for a wander around. Perth is really small
do did that pretty quickly. And its so hot!!
Changed hostels the next night and it Had a pool which was awesome.
Did a little bit of shopping but didn't really sight see. I have a
friend coming out to perth in april so I will save all that stuff to
do with her. I got a job offer at a place called mingenew
(ming-ah-noo) which is about 4 hrs north of perth. Its quite close to
a bigger town called geraldton. I havent been there yet though.
Mingenew consists of a population of 283 and has a post office, a
(small) supermarket, a bakery, a tele centre (think that's phones and
stuff) and a petrol garage. There is a train line but its jist work
trains. Its a farm town, not mining as I had thought. All about wheat,
corn, and canola (rape). Our hotel is the only bar and only restaurant
so iver heard it can get pretty busy.
There's 12 rooms in the main part of the hotel which don't have their
own bathrooms. Then there are 8 units at the back, separate from the
building that have 1 shower room per 2 rooms. But the rooms are nicer
and there's a fridge and tv. They've just had about another 10/15
units delivered that they are doing up. I've heard that in about a
month every room in the hotel should be full. Its a commercial hotel
so all the workers from out of town stay with us.

Then there was a massive storm on Friday night. The lightening was incredible, constant flashing for hours. And we lost power in the whole town. So it lit everything up, then it
started absolutely pouring with rain. The farmers are all very happy
about the rain. We went up the hill to watch the storm. It was just so
cool. The power was still out the next morning and then we found out
the cyclone bianca was gonna hit us at some point that day. We had
100km winds but only got the cusp of the cyclone before it went down
the coast. The power didn't come back on till 4.30pm so we had the pub
closed for the day. Although we've had trouble today cos 2 of our
massive fridges have blown so we've got warm beer. Not good when it's
40degrees and the men want a cold beer. Ha ha. I'm really liking it
here to be honest. It's proper australia. And i could earn enough that
i could stay in oz till the end of my visa in july and buy a flight
home from perth. But i think in a few more weeks i might be dying to
get out. Anyway hope you are all doing well. Love you x x x