Updates a little later than usual this evening, has been a pretty busy day really. Achieved a fair bit so that's the main thing. The picture which I will hopefully remember to attach below is of the sun setting last night across the top of the power station.
Fitting that I took a photo of the power station, because today it decided to stop providing power. City wide blackout for about 15 minutes, I am informed that this can be a regular occurrence. I told them that back in NZ they usually didn't bother with small outages, when we have an outage it has to be good... like 7 days. Or more.
Slowly meeting some of the locals here, most of them are pretty friendly, and most soon cotton on to the fact I'm a Kiwi. Can't think what gives it away. "I've been in the country since about the 6th" tends to do it. I'm contemplating learning Australian just to be able to blend in. They tell me the ribbing stops after a few months... but seeing will be believing. It's all pretty light hearted stuff, and I just remind them that they are all a bunch of shackle draggers from way back either way.
When I applied for the job here they mentioned there was some "under floor" cable running etc... now I assumed this would be like kiwi floors, and was not looking forward to crawling around with the snakes. Well, I was a little mistaken. I have been introduced to a style of home called a "Queenslander". Which by the name, I am assuming is native to the queensland region. Basically imagine a large wooden house, similar to the early NZ ones. Now imagine it a story up, on stilts. That's pretty much 75% of the houses here. Even at my height I can pretty much walk around underneath them without hitting my head. Luckily, this makes running cables somewhat easier than I anticipated. (And it makes it easier to run if you do encounter a snake).
Most of these style houses are built from hardwood... drilling through floors/walls/beams etc is a lot harder than NZ pine let me tell you. The hammer drill investment was worth every cent.
The guys at Ashley's will be pleased to know some things don't change... I managed to shear off the head to a main coach screw holding up a projector bracket in a school the other day. I was reminded of the bolt up the pole on cave hill, I think that was also hardwood. You would think I would have learnt. However I did successfully attach about another 16 or so into hardwood beams without incident, so for all intensive purposes I'll try to blame the bolt for shoddy construction.
(However, I have managed to not drop anything on anyones head yet... it's still early days though).
Here's one for Marion "the shell lady"... all the petrol pump colours are stupid over here! It's still taking me a while to work out, but it's like black nozzles for 91, and green nozzles for diesel! Very confusing, your filling up and then you have a brief moment of panic when you look down and see a green nozzle into a diesel tank... then you remember it's actually normal for Auzzies. Crazy stuff.
Righto, it's about bedtime for me.
TTFN.
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