Warm sunshine greeted me, as I landed in Melbourne on Monday, June 23. Will, my employer at Little Sherwood Drouin Zoo, outlined the route for me to take to arrive at Drouin station, from where he would pick me up. The instructions worked perfectly fine, although I still bothered one of the metro workers to figure out how to get to my 9 ¾ 12th platform, going all the way to East Packenham. The overwhelming system of rails at the Melbourne Central Station, well, overwhelmed. Google Maps stayed true to the stereotypes and turned out to be absolutely useless.
As I was going up the stairs to my platform, one of the other passengers showed me the way past the gates, as the gates required a card to open. When I mentioned I do not have a card, and thus, cannot pay, he just shrugged, smiled, and said, not to worry – if the officer checked my ticket, I could just tell them I just arrived in Australia and didn’t have that set up yet.
I mean… Fake it till you make it, right? Seems to be my slogan for life.
Funny enough, my 2-hour train commute did pass the station called “Officer”. It was a small sleepy town – just like the one I was heading to, but the newly-arrived me thought that it was a ticket checkpoint. Gave me a small scare, but mostly its now just a fun story to tell.
Will and his wife Nat picked me up within 10 minutes as I arrived from shuttle bus (which, by the way, was the total nightmare – the railroad was in the process of renovation, and an unorganised mish mash of shuttle buses operated from East Packenham onwards).
And it did happen such that, in the farthest end of the world, in a small sleepy town, two women with Ukrainian roots met each other, which is an amazing and happy coincidence, still blowing my mind. Will and Nat also have a daughter, Anabelle, just one year younger than me. Honestly, this family is amazing – they welcomed me into their home so sincerely and with open arms. I could not believe sincere people like this still exist. On the day of my arrival, after we celebrated it at the Robin Hood pub nearby, I settled down in one of their cottages which they normally rent out to the visitors on AirBnb, and which was the most amazing place I have stayed in.
With wooden doors, and windows full height looking over the foggy fields, it is hard to not fall in love with the place. I even got inspired and created a small photoshoot for myself in front of the wooden door to the bathroom (that’s where my IG and Facebook post pics come from). The next morning Anabelle dropped me off at Woolworth’s (“woolies”) where we both did some grocery, and I also viewed a couple of rooms for rent. The first one that I saw sort of won my heart – I viewed another one after it, but the decision had been already made, and I even cancelled the inspection for the third room of the day. I stayed at the cottage for another night, before moving in at Patrick’s (“Paddy’s”) place – a very nice house with two other roommates.
Valentina, a backpacker from Italy, just moved in a couple days prior to me, and Hannah, a Filippino nurse, has been living there for quite a while. Patrick works away during weekdays and comes back home for the weekend – although “home” is not a proper term, as only us girls occupied the house – Patrick lived in a separate shed (partially resembling Dexter’s den), where his office and bed were placed. I first met him on Saturday after work, when Valentina and Hannah were both at home already – I offered him the rent for the two weeks, which he took, but seemed to be more concerned with a Qatan game we were all gonna play within the next 5 minutes.
Next Tuesday the Kruss family and I all went to see the Harry Potter exhibition in Melbourne, and the Friday of the same week all the residents at my new place tried out Hannah’s filippino soup sinigang; it did not end there and Saturday night we partied at The Bank, the club / bar in Warragul, and partied till 2 am. Since I get Mondays and Tuesdays off, don’t ask me how I made it to work the next day (same day actually), but on Sunday we once again went out to the Toolshed, an Australian – Italian place 40 minutes away, with great oven-baked pumpkin pizza, and an even better sticky date pudding.
Of course, there were so many more things that happened – but at this point I can’t recall them all. Nat and another British backpacker Cory work in the van café, and Nat is very kind to always offer me something during the day. She makes amazing crepes, and I usually go with strawberry chocolate or lemon zest filling; also, I absolutely love small talks we have with Will – right after Cory makes us both a pair of caps, and right before the visitors flood the zoo.
By another funny coincidence, Valentina used to be Cory’s roommie, before moving in with me. Will lent me an e-bicycle, which gets me to and from work within 30 minutes on sunny days, and they pick me up on the rainy ones (which touches me deeply. I would probably get a car to resell when I am done with Australia later). On some of the pictures here you could see the Italian strudel we baked with Valentina – actually we made the whole 3, but yeah, those disappeared real quick 🙂
So yeah, that’s how I found my new home.
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