We’ve spent most of today shopping for our new house.

We went down to IKEA first thing, arriving for opening time at 9am. The IKEA in Brisbane is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and is absolutely huge. What’s more it was pretty quiet and quite an enjoyable experience, unlike the last time I visited the Leeds IKEA!

We managed to pick up a bed for Lauren (which she chose herself) along with decent mattresses for us all (no good buying a cheap matress if you value your sleep!), a coffee table and other bits and bobs.

We got back to our new house at lunchtime to await the delivery of our new bed, which arrived on time just as they had said.

We then went to Cannon Hill Shopping Centre in Brisbane to look for a fridge/freezer and washing machine. We managed to pick these up at what I think is a really good price after a bit of haggling. The Salesman welcomed us with open arms and quickly told us he is Welsh, from Cardiff, even though he has lived here for 25 years!

We also bagged ourselves a real bargain. We had no intentions of getting a Dining Table set yet but we saw one we loved on a Manager’s Special. It’s a dark wood table with 6 dining chairs with Suede back, and what’s more the whole lot only cost us $499 (2 hundred British pounds (I’m going to have to work out how to input the British Pound symbol from these Ozzy keyboards)).

We returned at 5pm to our new house to await delivery of the Sofas which again turned up on time.

So far, touch wood, everything in Australia has been a breeze. The people are fantastic. Everyone is friendly and can’t do enough to help you. It must be the sun. It’s so uplifting waking up to clear blue skies and glorious sunshine every morning.

It’s quite funny really. It has been about 25 degrees each day while we’ve been here but the ozzies have been moaning that it’s cool while we’ve been sweltering. Some are even wearing coats!

Anyway, this looks like being our last night at Cath’s. She’s been great letting us stay her (again) and I know Lauren’s loved it playing with Bonnie and their dog Lucy.

Tomorrow’s going to be another busy day building our bed and other flat pack furniture, while we’re awaiting our IKEA delivery. We’re also going to have a look for a telly. I very nearly bought a 40 inch Plasma with built in HD tuner today but I decided to be sensible. We may have made quick decisions so far with everything else but I’m not taking any chances with a telly, I’m going to have a good look round.

I suppose I also ought to think about looking for a job so I can pay the rent on our new house in the coming weeks!

Can you believe it. We arranged to see a couple of houses early that day. We loved the second place we saw, put in an immediate application, paid the bond and picked up the keys that afternoon!

It’s a 3 bedroom house on a gated community in Carina – a really nice part of Brisbane. We’ve got a garage (with remote control electric door and everything!), a separate laundry room, en-suite master bedroom, the second bedroom has got it’s own balacony, fitted kitchen with dishwasher, the lot. There’s a shared pool near enough next door to our house along with a BBQ area. Only problem – it’s unfurnished.

After picking up the keys we immediately headed down to Capalaba to a couple of furniture stores we had been recommended. Within the 2 hours we had before they closed we managed to buy a really nice sofa (or lounge as they call them over here) and Queen size bed. We actually got 2 sofa’s – one 3 seater and one 2 seater, both in Coffee coloured suede fabric.

I’ll post photo’s when it’s all set up. We managed to get free delivery for the sofas to be delivered the next day.

We stayed another night at Cath’s and managed to stay up until 10pm this time!

I got up at 4:30. I had already planned to do this because I wanted to be in Fortitude Valley to watch the Liverpool v AC Milan Champions League Final. Someone had told me on BritishExpats.com that I’d be able to find at 24/7 Sports Bar in Fortitude Valley in Brisbane which would be showing the match.

Having never been to Fortitude Valley before I wasn’t fully sure where I needed to be but I looked all around there and could I heck as like find a sports bar that was open. There were a few restaurants that were open at that time in the morning, strangely enough, but no sports bars.

I quickly jumped back in the car and headed back to Cath’s as I new it was being shown on terrestrial TV on SBS. Why didn’t I just get up and watch it on the telly in my wangers in the first place rather than venturing into Brisbane in the middle of the night trying to find a sports bar! It was about a 20 minute drive back to Cath’s so I searched the radio waves trying to find a radio channel where I might be able to listed to the match while I was driving. I did find a channel, but unfortunately the commentary was in Italian. I couldn’t believe it, I was in Australia and the only radio channel that I could listen to the match on was in Italian!

I was pretty pissed off (with myself) but I figured that at least I’d make it back to catch the second half. However, I had made another fundamental mistake. I had assumed that we were 10 hours ahead of the UK as last time when we visited in January, but I didn’t take into account British Summer Time. So we were in fact only 9 hours ahead. Meaning I got back just in time to see AC Milan score their second goal 10 minutes before the final whistle. Liverpool lost and I went back to bed. I’m strongly considering following Aussie Rules football from now on!

Later that morning we went into Brisbane CBD (Central Business District (city centre)). I opened a bank account with Bank of Queensland. This was pretty straight forward and only took about 20 minutes, as opposed to the 40 minutes it took when I went into Worksop to close my Barclays account before we left the UK. We also went to a Starbucks where I got online and applied for a Tax File Number for me and Rach. A TFN is like a National Insurance number in the UK and is needed for everything in Australia. We also had a quick search for rental houses and wrote down a few numbers to arrange a viewing for the following day.

Cath made us a lovely meal in the evening with an obligatory bottle of wine. We were still jetlagged though and in bed asleep for 9pm.

We didn’t do much at all on our first day in Oz. I think we were in bed before 9pm that night (even though we did have a bit of a kip as soon as we got there). Jetlag had fully kicked in!

I made the mistake of leaving it late to book my hotel for this week, with the result that I have ended up having to take a smoking room. As a non-smoker with a very sensitive nose, this week has not been a pleasant experience to say the least. The room is clean, but there doesn’t seem to be any way of getting rid of the stench of stale smoke, short of re-painting the walls and replacing all the soft furnishings. On the first night I emptied an entire spray can of Oust into the room, covering everything – ceiling, walls, carpet, curtains, bedding, the lot. The effect lasted for about 10 minutes before the stench began to fill my nostrils again. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a particularly strong smell, but it is there – it is noticeable, and it is bugging me!

I’ve tried each night to move rooms but I seem to have chosen a week when everything is booked solid. If I was staying in the UK I’d definitely consider building a business case to open up a new hotel in Manchester as there’s clearly a shortage.

Smoking is yet another reason on the long list why I can’t wait to move to Australia.

I already new that smoking was banned in pubs in Oz but I wasn’t aware of the extent of the smoking ban in Queensland until I read this post by a Brit family in Oz talking about their visit to see Robbie Williams play Brisbane, where he (Robbie) was fined $150 for lighting up on stage.

I’m now extremely pleased to discover that as well as eating and drinking venues, smoking in Queensland is banned in ‘outdoor public places where people gather as groups, and particularly where children are present’, including:

• Patrolled beaches
• Artificial beaches
• Major sports stadiums
• Children’s playground equipment
• Building Entrances

I love the fact that it is illegal to smoke within 4 metres of a non-residential building entrance. So not only do smokers have to go outside, they have to smoke away from the entrance so we don’t have to walk through it when entering or leaving the building.

Full details are here

I went on a stag weekend to Dublin shortly after the ban was introduced there and it was so nice to be able to go out on a drinking session and wake up the next morning not smelling of smoke.

The Wetherspoon chain of pubs in the UK has already made 146 of its 673 pubs non-smoking, and many of its other pubs have non-smoking areas inside. I used to think Wetherspoon pubs were crap because they don’t play music, but now being a thirty-something I actually find it quite nice to be able to have a pleasant conversation (cringe!).