6th - 26th September 2003

We arrived in Adelaide in the early hours on Saturday 6th September 2003. After hassle getting through passport control, and then all the stress of retrieving our luggage (a great feat believe me) we finally walked out the arrival gateway to a wonderful greeting by my cousin Diane, her husband Mark, and two of their sons, Christian and Kyle.

After such a long flight and arriving in a City we have never visited before it was nice to have someone to lean on and take some of the stress and worry off our shoulders - like how would we get to our apartment we had rented with our twelve, yes I did say twelve, pieces of large luggage. Luckily for us Diane and Mark had everything in hand and had come to the airport with their two cars and their trailer for our luggage. After taking us to our apartment in Somerton Park they kindly went to the shops and bought a few groceries for us to see us through the first few days without us having to worry about the essential things.

Had a barbie the day after we arrived, yep, we must be in Australia. Had a really nice evening and it was great meeting other members of my family.

The first few days weather wise was lovely, blue skies and about 18 - 20 temp. After the first few days it turned cold, bloody cold! brr! For the next week all we got was rain, rain, rain, day and night with strong winds. Out came the woollies, out came the coats, if I had my gloves and scarf they would have gone on as well. Believe me Australia (SA) gets cold.

Our first few weeks here have been very hectic. Our apartment that we have rented is only for three weeks so our time has been taken up with scouring all the suburbs, looking for a school we like for the children, in an area we would like to live in. I would like to say that Mark has been absolutely fabulous. He took a week off work to help us out and drove us around, and around, and around, and with three noisy children in the back seat. The children have taken to him like a duck to water and are constantly fighting over who can hold his hand, who can sit next to him, and who's turn it is to talk to him - Oh how it is to be popular.

Found a nice home up in the hills, superb views over tree tops, hills and reservoir. One big downside with it was that there was no air conditioning and we would need two cars right at the start, one for Bill to get to work (about a 50 minute drive away) and one for myself to get the children to school (7 minute drive away). However the views were breathtaking so put in our application for rental. While we were awaiting the outcome decided to look at a few more properties, this time nearer to Bill's work, or I should say near where he hopes to work (Interview). Found a nice one near a school we both liked and decided to apply for this one also. We were told that we would be notified within 24hrs if our application was successful, we were pleased about this as we had been informed that our application had been granted for the house in the hills and we had to let them know by the following day if we were going to rent it. The next day came and went, no news on our second choice of house (our favourite), managed to fob the other estate agent off for a decision for another day. Another day dawned with still no news, had a final call from the house in the hills agent needing to know a final decision, crossed our fingers prayed all would be well with the second house, and declined the property. GULP, would it pay off......err no. An hour later the second estate agent phoned to say our application had failed! Why, because the owners wanted references from previous rental properties and as we have never rented before we had none to show, oh bum!

After some deliberation decided we would grovel and beg the estate agents to change their minds, we only had a week  left in the apartment we were in and then we would be out on the streets! Phoned the estate agent and asked if the owner of the property would re-consider if we paid six months up front. After a long, long wait, and when we had given up and  had arranged three more viewings of properties they phoned back and said that they had changed their minds and we could now rent the property, halleluiah.

We moved to Athelstone on September 26th 2003.