I’m supposed to be dedicating all my time to finishing my thesis and finalising the book project I’m working on, but I’m deeply distracted by my plans for 2010, which seem all the more exciting when procrastinating finishing those other projects.
I’ve booked a flight for end of April to move to Chile!
After my taste of the Spanish speaking world based near Seville in 2007, I’ve been itching to get to South America. I made a pact with two girlfriends that we’d go on a trip there in 2009, after our Spanish holiday together, but it fell through, as we each were busy with our own projects in Australia. So I’m going it alone! Or rather with Tim, who I met in February and who is working on a comic book for a French publisher, so has the luxury of working from anywhere.
We’ve got 18-month round the world tickets, which means we have a year in South America, followed by Tim’s book launch and some time in France, then some time in Thailand on the way back home.
In the meantime, I’m planning to move to Chile delve back into the world of freelancing as I did in the UK, the payment for which should go a lot further in Chile than it did in England, if I’m working for international outlets.
At the moment I’m getting together the documents I need to get the Australian Government’s letter of government support to allow me to apply for a Working Holiday Visa there. I called the number for the Chilean embassy listed on the Australian immigration site to ask about how to apply for the visa, but they told me to call the number of the Chilean consulate in Melbourne.
While there’s no information about the Working Holiday Visa on the site, when I rang to ask, a friendly woman took my email address and said she would send me the details. Both Chilean consulate offices were quick to answer the phone, in contrast to the British and Canadian ones, which probably reflects the number of young Aussies who want to spend a year in their country. I’m looking forward to being a little more off the beaten track this time.
However the email from the consulate hasn’t arrived yet, so I might have to be more persistent. My experiences getting residency visas for Canada and the UK mean I won’t hesitate to follow up, as it seems to be the only way things get done.
Fingers crossed! Now back to the thesis.
I headed up to Mooloolaba on Queensland’s sunshine coast for my friends’ wedding. It seemed like bad timing, because there was a hurricane a couple of days before, so the beaches were closed at first, and the weather was grim. I was worried for a while that my flight would be cancelled – some guests who were arriving earlier suffered this fate.
My friends must have accrued some good karma or something, because after days of climate suspense their wedding was heralded by a perfect blue-sky afternoon.
The wedding was actually in Alexandra Headland, just north of Mooloolaba, where they’d hired a magazine-worthy house for the ceremony and reception. The views were sensational, while the possoms descending from the power lines kept guests amused at dusk.
I can see why so many people move to the Sunshine Coast. The surf is excellent, the food is good, the lush tropical environment is enchanting. Really, I don’t have anything bad to say about it. It was awesome.
I stopped posting when I came back to Australia. That’s a bit silly really, given that I’m still travelling a lot. Also, people have been emailing me questions about travelling. So I’m going to do 2 things: reply to the questions in this blog rather than just email, in case anyone else wants the information, and share my travels in Australia. Just because it’s my home country doesn’t mean it’s not worth writing about!
Filed under: australia, climate change, england, environment, events, science, travel
I deliberately have separate professional and travel/personal sites, because I like to keep things separate. But they’re merging! I want to talk about something that will also appear on my professional site in a few days.
Last night I went to London for an event by Advance, who have been promoting themselves around Cambridge through the Cambridge University Australia and New Zealand Society.
I dragged Ian along, because I thought he would also be interested to hear Tim Flannery talk about climate change, and associated things. It was fantastic. Ian was equally as satisfied.
I got to interview Tim before his talk, outside the Great Hall at King’s College, London. We sat on a bench. He was jetlagged, but very amiable and inspiring still. The interview didn’t take long – we were done well before he had to go on stage. We got chatting about how Adelaide is going, how great the Central Market is, what we were both doing in London (he was there to launch his books in paperback in the UK). Talking about what I was doing there led to me telling Tim about my various career options and what I might be doing next year, and he gave me some great advice.
Like me, Tim did a degree in humanities (English in his case) before moving into science. That’s good to hear. Realising that great people like him have the same humble beginnings as me was very motivational. Getting career advice from someone so successful who started out in a similar way is invaluable.
I feel very privileged to have properly met our 2007 Australian of the Year, I think he well deserves the honour. Thanks Tim.
I had a great family day today. Relatives came down from rural SA to say hello and goodbye, before I head back to the UK for at least another six months.
I got to see my little cousins – who aren’t so little anymore, being teenagers and all. We left the ‘adults’ to their coffees and headed down the beach to the Magic Mountain replacement, the Beach House, where they went on the dodgem cars.
I asked various strangers to take photos of us on the way (click on the photo at right for the album), then on the way back returned the favour by offering to take photos of various tourists otherwise taking photos of each other. I also took a few on my own camera of random beach characters, such as this guy and his dog.
Originally uploaded by cobismith.
Yesterday I took mum to lunch at the great new burger bar in Glenelg (Adelaide’s tourist beach, and my local).
I’m usually not one for burgers, but the Goose Gourmet uses local produce like Angus Beef and Kangaroo Island eggs, coupled with a great selection of South Australian wines. It’s just the kind of place I like to visit when I come back to South Australia for a couple of weeks.
A neighbouring chain restaurant was a little lacking in service staff evidently, allowing the pigeons to have a field day on an old meal. I found it entertaining, though some fellow diners said “are you going to send those photos to the health inspectors?”
It’s a sign of Glenelg’s cosmopolitanism that the seagulls have been usurped by pigeons.
