Living in Melbourne
The decision to live and work in Melbourne wasn’t taken too lightly, but I also didn’t spend too long overthinking about it. It was never my plan or intention to stay in Melbourne long term. My idea of what I wanted out of my Australian visa for living and wokring here included lots of sun, surf, and beach. Melbourne has some beaches, but not a whole lot of sun, and definitely no surf. But a job opportunity presented itself while I was approaching the end of my travels and trying to decide what my next steps where. Where do I go? Do I fly or take the bus? At some point I want a vehicle, but I need to make money first. Do I need to extend my stay in Melbourne to give me time to decide what I want to do? At the end of the day, I was offered a job in Thomastown (north of Melbourne CBD) and logistically it made the most sense for me to accept it and to start making some money. Who even knows how long it could take me to find a job after moving to another city. I had met a few people who found positions quickly and others that were struggling to find work. So in the end it seemed like the right call to accept the job, despite less sun and no surf. To top it all off, as I was in the midst of making my decision, I decided to go and try to watch the sunset in St. Kilda, it was the best decision as I was blessed with the most gorgeous of sunsets, reaffirming my decision to accept the job in Melbourne and to stay and try and make the most of it, because at the end of the day there is no wrong answer to this journey of mine and everything is going to be okay. EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY.
After my first day of work I moved from the hostel in St. Kilda to a longer term hostel/home in Brunswick, just north of the CBD. This also made it a lot easier and quicker to get to and from work. Here I had the opportunity to meet people who were also looking for work in Melbourne and living there as they were staying longer term and it gave me the opportunity to develop friendships over time. It felt natural and was easiest for me to adjust to my new role while also wanting to make friends in the city to enjoy myself while I wasn’t working. A goal of mine is to get better at meeting people and to allow myself the space and room to make friends that I can hang out with outside of the hostel to help and enjoy my stay in the new city. The choice to move to Landing Pads was the right one for me, I met so many new people, made some great friendships, and was able to hang out with people outside of work like going to the park, beach, do groceries together, go bouldering, and grab some drinks. People who had been there just a bit longer than me, so could recommend places and share with me the places they enjoyed.
Work was a new position for me. I started working in a beverage canning and packaging facility/warehouse. The first few weeks saw me packing cans by taking them off of the belt or pallets and then putting them into boxes. As the weeks went on my supervisor trained me on how to oversee the filler machine. This machine feeds the empty cans through, fills them up, places the lid of them, and then sends them down the line to go under the pasteurizer before being dated and packed. Once I was comfortable overseeing the machine, I also learned how to do the shutdown process and clean the machine through and many complicated steps. Over the course of the remainder of me working there I continued to learn the different procedures of how to run the two different filler machines, including little tricks and temporary fixes to keep the machine running and filling the cans. It was definitely something I was interested in learning more about, but when everything was running smoothly at 5000 or 6000 cans per hour there wasn’t a whole lot to do apart from replenishing the lid supply to the machine. Other things I got to learn was how to drive a forklift (although still uncertified lol) and how to operate the packer machine. There were lots of long nights that took opportunities away from hanging out with friends and also inconsistent hours depending on how much product the day shift worked through, but it was a good job to have while living in a new country, at least it was one that I enjoyed. It was a real life episode of “How its Made” and I was here for it.
Throughout my time in Melbourne, outside of work, I spent most of my time getting to know my new house mates and friends, finding new places to get coffee, regular day chores like groceries and working out, going to parks, and climbing at the bouldering gym. I would go to new beaches on my days off, explored the CBD and looked for street art, and went to check out ACMI. I finally went to another Grand Slam tournament (tennis) and checked the Australian Open off the list! (Just one more to go, Roland Garros)
While living in Melbourne I was also actively trying to be mindful of the money I was making vs spending, so I also did two housesits for a wonderful gal and watched her cat Eevee for two weeks at a time each. This was a great way for me to save on rent (as it didn’t cost me anything) and also gave me time to have space to myself after living on the road for the past few months and sharing spaces, rooms, and toilets. Yes I am allergic to cats, but Eevee was a cute cuddly cat that I enjoyed looking after. It was also a fantastic location, still in Brunswick and about a 15 min walk from the hostel and all my pals. One day we even had a visitor, a blue tongue lizard entered the house, which startled me before I had to find it and pick it up to take it outside! A first for me, but Eevee was so unbothered that she definitely isn’t a guard cat.
My last week in Melbourne ended with me finally finding and purchasing a vehicle, allowing for new adventures to come! So I spent the last week finishing up my last few shifts, finishing up the paper work for the SUV with VicRoads, and running errands to make sure I had everything I needed in the car to hit the road and camp and sleep in it for a few weeks as I make my way back up the East Coast. The plan for the next part of my journey, after Melbourne, was in question for a bit as the plan was always buy a vehicle and figure out the rest after. So finding the car at the last possible moment before my target departure day did leave me unsettled with lots of questions, but again everything came together and rather quickly and it came with the reminder that everything is going to be okay, and in fact in this moment everything is okay.
Photos to come. I wanted to share my writing first, as my editing of photos takes a whole while longer :D