Settling In

I've been here a couple of weeks now and I'm coming to the end of my first week at work.

It's been a good start, although a little frustrating at times as we've tried to sort out things like bank accounts, medicare, driving licences and, mainly, somewhere to live as we've got no permanent address or credit history here.

The bank accounts weren't too bad as they were happy to take my work address as a mailing address. We'd set the account up before we left the UK so it was just a case of presenting ourselves to the bank and giving them some more information so we could access the money we'd deposited.

Medicare for me was fairly straightforward and I just had to show my passport to set it up. Once again they were happy to take my work address. However, as my wife is a returning Australian resident she had to prove that she had left the UK and broken any links with them. More by luck than judgement we had brought some letters from our insurance company stating that we had cancelled our house insurance. This and some documents from our shipping company seemed to do the trick.

So, that was the bank account and Medicare sorted we just had to find a place to live. More of that next time.