hello!

howzit? thought i should email just to let you all know that i am still alive, ive just been very lazy in the emailing department recently and now that i actually have a job and have quite a normal life i feel its maybe not very exciting to email about! ive been working at the tower for a month now and i do feel very at home in sydney. i do sometimes feel a little guilty selling people photo packs that a wouldn't buy myself but im sure ill get over it! it is a fun job and i am meeting many interesting, amusing and rude characters and customers! i think my favourites would include the cleaners and security guards who give me sweets and tell me jokes! today the tower was closed due to high winds, at time of closure there were people stuck in a lift and at the top of tower...i really wanted to be the hero and go and rescue people from the top, but i had to stay at the bottom and try and sell people photos of the day they got stuck in a hot and sweaty lift for half an hour...!

and all is well at my apartment too, now that ive established that my roommates name is yuki and not yoshi (of super mario brothers fame!) as i called her for the first few days. i live with 4 japanese people and i am fascinated at how they can make a packet of m and m's last a week and a half. i kid you not. maybe before i leave i can leave a little of their restraint in the chocolate department. ok probably not.

ive really enjoyed having some quality orcadian company in the form of lousie and ian and then last week ruthie and chris! it was funny how normal it felt! we had enjoyable and only slightly cold day at the beach in manly where 3 chinese guys asked if they could have their photo taken with us, we are trying to decide which of us looks like a famous chinese superstar? maybe christopher because he is tall and ginger! i was very sad to see them head up the coast in thier betty boop wicked van, im sure i could have squeezed in!

im now all booked for my return to zim, i leave here on 1st august, i will miss sydney, though i am keen to get back to africa and to catch up with all the mutare dudes. i hope everyone is having a fun summer at home or whatever part of the world you live in! we have apparently had the wettest june on record i think and i'd confirm that that is a true story! but the rain and storms have finally stopped and the sun seems to be back - although it seems to be a bit windy today...

well kids, i think this has been a bit drole but i felt i should explain my recent absense and pass on my best wishes to one and all,

shalom,

love jules xx

hello!

feels like ages since i last emailed! its probably not though! but to be fair this is probably going to be quite long, though i do feel small drole which may cut it down a bit? i think i last left you at hostel in cottesloe...

so i pretty much cleaned at the hostel for 10 days on the trot, no day off and some days i even did 2 hours work instead of 1.5, its no right but i was so brave and just kept going. apart from working flat oot we had quite a lazy week of mainly beachness, we buried magnus which is always a classic and jig was sick in the sea but not too eventful apart from that! the hostel is pretty cool and we met some quality people who we will hopefully keep in touch with.

then we were off on our exmouth adventure, we joined the infamous terry and his red earth tour bus and headed up the west coast. our fellow travellers were good banter which was a huge help, plenty of germans, dutch and the token swiss cheesemaker!

we went so many places! i just know you'd all love me to take you through every single day... but i'll spare you that and just give you the highlights...

- sand surfing (and jig pencil rolling!)
- snake handling and..wait for it...alpaca feeding - delighted, beautiful moment.
- visiting the country of hutt river province to meet with prince leonard and princess shirley..he's some boy, he was a bit miffed with the government so found and loophole in the law and made his farm a separate country ruled by himself! even has his own money, stamps etc and we got our passports stamped there! hmmm, princess julie of aikerness holm...
- abseiling (backwards and frontwards!) tip - if the rope touches the sensitive underarm skin it may burn. quite a lot.
- evening in an artisan spa, under the stars...
- dolphins swimming around our feet at monkey mia and feeding one.
- night sleeping under the afore mentioned stars at an outback sheep station, though i do get a bit distracted by the stars and forget to sleep!
- ningaloo reef for a day of snorkelling with sharks (yes, sharks! 2m long ones, but its ok, apparently they only bite you if you have a son with a spear. i dont have one of those.), manta rays (huge! one was 5 m wide, look like stingrays and can do impressive barrel rolls) and TURTLES! i love them, they have secured themseves in my top ten animal list, maybe even number 1... such a good day.

made some good friends on the trip, some of them are heading in a sydney direction soon which is good because i need new friends now that i have left the boys in exmouth. apparently thay have all got themselves jobs as cleaners which im pretty delighted about!

was sad to say good bye to them (dont tell them!) they do make for very entertaining travelling companions! i travelled back to perth with the rest of the group, had a few hours of very pleasant refuge with lester and janet and then got my overnight flight to sydney.

i arrived here at 7am yesturday and had big plans for getting jobs, appartments and my life sorted out asap but in reality thinking it would take a few weeks... but within 20 mins of leaving the hostel i had a job! thank you jesus! it was a bit surreal, id been tipped off that a good job would be working as a photographer in the sydney tower (top of highest building in syd, you'd love it cam!) so i just went to inquire and was immediately taken through to the boss who said yes that would be fine, we have someone leaving in 2 weeks can you start on friday? eh, yes, ok! the team seem like good banter and they all assure me its a great job so im looking forward to starting. accomodation hunt seems to be going ok, looked at a few today, think ill just take one of them, all central with gym and cheaper than hostel!

louise harcus and ian hutch arrive on sat so it will be fun to catch up with them and have friends again!

i was stopped on the street today by a guy who said i was commiting an illegal violation and he was going to have to write me out a ticket because i

greetings from a very hot and sunny cottesloe!

we're now been in WA nearly 2 weeks though i must days/dates/weeks are starting to merge! was sad to leave melbourne but great to see a bit more of oz, i must say i like the west. we have met up with the boys so have been doing lots of boy things - been to several rugby matches, golf (i was caddy/cart driver/score keeper - more fun than i sounds!) and throwing a rugby ball around anytime we are stopped for more than 30 secs!
last week me and stu did a spot of WWOOFing (yes, WWOOFing or willing workers on organic farms - you get free accomodation and food in exchange for 4 or 5 hours work a day!) at Boshack, a little farm out in the bush! its just a few tin shacks next to a lake in the genuine aussie outback. its set up to give tourists opportunity to experience life in the outback, i thought it might be quite cheesy and touristy but it wasn't at all, there were no visitors last week so it was just me, stu, deryck and lots of serenity!

our first job on arrival was to feed the kangaroos, they are particularly long bottom teeth. then stu was sent off in a big old yellow tractor (that old chestnut) he did get a little lost but we found him before he arived back in perth! i was given job or opening a rather complicated gate - during this process i was introduced to billy the goat with a fwew pretty well executed hesd butts! i managed to get back in the land cruiser relativey unscathed and deryck started telling me he\d read on the interent that to stop goats doing that you shouldget them on the ground and kneel on them for a while...so when we next got out and billy came prancing over for round 2 i grabbed him by the horns, kicked his legs from under him and jumped on top of him! im not sure who was more surprised, billy or deryck! he said that he normally just ties billy up as people wont usually do it. oh right. i then had to repeat the process about 7 times that afternoon so i would question its success!

other jobs included making a road, lifting stones, digging a trench and i did lots of cleaning! billy was part of the daily entertainment, on the last day he finally seemed to stop head butting me and i was just thinking to myself that there are few things sweeter than gaining the respect of a goat when he went totally physco at me! i may have been slightly teasing me but nothing to warrant the way he charged at me - i managed to get in the hut just in time but he kept charging at hte door, i promise you the whole hut was shaking and he knock down some of the bottles that were on the shelves around the walls. i thought the guys may have been alerted by the sound of breaking glass, but apparently not. stu did arrive down though, just when i was wondering if billy may actually kill me! i pffered on several occassions to make goat stew for dinner but deryck seems quite attached to the stupid animal!

deryck cooked us up lots of bush tucker on the barbie and we really enjoyed the peace and stillness and the hecticness of the hostel in fremantle. he took us out for dinner to the local pub in the nearest little village, it was tiny, just a pub and a shop and a few houses. was good fun to meet all the locals and sharing in their local banter, we even had a joke telling session, i shared all my best knock knock jokes...

such a good experience. we left on my birthday and deryck said as a special birthday treat he would take us to a chocolate factory on the way back to perth, and i could eat as much chocolate as i wanted on him. i wondered if he underestimated my chocolate eating prowess but turned out all the samples were free, nice thought anyway! in evenign the boys gave me free ticket to see western force play the blues and we then went to hear a band and they dedicated a song to me, pretty much the stuff that dreams are made of!

we have spent this week in great hostel on beach in cottesloe, we've explored perth a bit, been out to a random and really nice couples ho