The Janergy Effect e-book link
In preparation
for my new job, I was flown to Melbourne for a day to meet the team, and the
excitement of that was something I’ll never forget. I felt just like a character out of a movie and
the whole experience felt pretty surreal. I was going to be the new girl in
town and open an exciting new chapter.
My arrival into Melbourne was also pretty exciting and that was partly due to the wild weather that was making its presence known – it’s always fun in a cross wind when landing. I caught the bus to the city and loved watching the skyline unfold in front of me. It was only a few months before, that I was in Melbourne for a fashion show, but this time it was different and the skyline was going to become a permanent fixture, not just a passing scene. I would only be going back to Brisbane temporarily and that felt great.
And my arrival to the hotel for this flying visit was somewhat comedic. My rookie move was to catch a cab from the bus to the hotel. If only I’d known that the hotel was literally two blocks away from the bus stop, I would probably have walked, or caught a tram. But in my own defense, I had not spent a lot of time in Melbourne, so I didn’t really know where me or the hotel was, plus the weather was wild and I might have frozen or got blown away in those two short blocks.
Next morning, I headed off to the office and it was so wet and freezing cold. Melbourne was in the middle of one of the worst polar blasts, but the city looked so beautiful and I was excited to think that in a few short weeks this would be home. I WAS MOVING TO MELBOURNE and happy to let everyone know…… Did I feel any fear? Not really, as I just take everything in my stride and like to think I live with the belief that everything that is meant for me won’t pass me by and it now seemed that I was about to go in a very clear direction.
The settlement on our house was very fast – thank goodness – and by now my ex-husband had found a new place to live and we were doing the final deciding of who gets what. I packed my belongings into two moving pods ready to be delivered once I was settled in Melbourne.
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| Nearly ready to go |
I had arranged a small farewell at our local coffee shop and it was lovely to spend time with people who had been part of my life for many years. There were memorable moments shared, laughs, hugs, photographs and many “I can’t wait to see you again”.
With the final tidy up done and the keys handed back to the agent, there was a definite parting of the ways with my ex. I went to stay with my son for a few days before we set off on our two-day drive to Melbourne.
I had everything I needed packed into my cute car ready to drive off into the proverbial sunset, but as I’m not one to go with convention, I drove off into the sunrise, well it was just after sunrise, but this day represented a new beginning. I had one final coffee at my local, gave my ex-husband a goodbye hug and I never looked back. Ironically my relationship with my coffee shop lasted longer than my marriage.
We drove from Brisbane to Melbourne on the inland highway and most of the time had the roof down on the convertible. It was the perfect road trip and a few hundred kilometres into the journey, I asked my son to stop the car. I needed a moment. It was here I got out of the car in the middle of nowhere and yelled “FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK”. I had learnt this technique from a woman in Fiji who told me that doing this was cheaper and better than therapy. She wasn’t wrong. This was a great release and I yelled at the top of my lungs with only the mountains, the wild animals and my son to lay witness to my thundering voice and the freedom this brought.
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| The time I stopped for roadside therapy |
Inland Australia is very beautiful and apart from the occasional photo stop I was enjoying the ride in the passenger seat. My son did a lot of the driving and all was well until he seemed to zone out and I noticed we were veering off the road towards a rather large pole. Thankfully he responded when I called his name. It was a scary moment but he assured me he was okay to keep driving and we made it safely to our first overnight stop.
We hadn’t planned where to stay for the night but stopped in Coonabarabran – the stargazing capital of Australian. We found a hotel, checked in and then went to a most amazing Chinese restaurant for dinner and the owner told me that all the interior of the restaurant had been transported from China when it was originally built. After dinner and after such a long day I was ready for bed. My son complained that he had a headache and said he was going to go and get some headache tablets. Fair enough I thought, it had been a long day and he’s done a lot of driving.
I had no idea that the headache tablets he needed were the ones feeding an opioid addiction that I would come to find out about the following year and one that would nearly cost him his life. Maybe you are wondering how a switched on, loving mother didn’t know her son was an addict? Well, he never presented as you expect an addict to. He was still holding down a job, was in a relationship and living a life that I knew as his “normal”. He was hiding it very well.
The weather inland was also very cold and when we came out the following morning from our toasty room, the Volvo had iced over. I used to call my car VOVO and I guess at that moment, she was an Iced Vovo – which is nothing like the Iced Vovo that we know and love as the delicious Australian biscuit.
Taking this
route to Melbourne meant I got to see some parts of Australia that I had never
seen before and the landscape is ever changing.
As night began to fall, we were edging closer to Melbourne and when we
got to see the twinkling lights of the beautiful city that lay ahead of us it
was the best scene of all.
I had only been to Melbourne a handful of times, but I knew it was the coolest place ever. My employer had arranged accommodation in an apartment block across from our office and I was to meet a representative of the relocation company to give me access to the building where I would be staying. First stop was South Yarra where my son would stay with his father and the second stop was my new temporary home.
I had to have my first drive in Melbourne and made sure I avoided trams at all cost. The Hook Turn is something that one masters after a while, but my first night in Melbourne was not the time to try.
I had no information about my accommodation. I only knew that I was to go to a location called Freshwater Place in Southbank and meet a man who would give me the keys. Doesn’t that sound dodgy. Before I got to see it my apartment, I had to park the car. My car park was on level 8, so it was a dizzying drive to get to my spot and the entry routine was a bit like a scene out of Get Smart. I had to go down a narrow lane, drive down a ramp, go through a boom gate, drive to a roller door, go through it, then wait for the roller door to shut, then wait for another boom gate to open and then, finally, I could start the journey upwards. And what goes up, must come down, because I had to repeat the same process to get out.
This building was obviously fancy, because the net worth of all the cars alone, would pay for a penthouse apartment. It was full of Teslas, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Aston Martins, Mercedes, Jaguars and it now had one happy little Volvo.
If the car park was anything to go by, then what must the apartments be like? It was hard for me to gauge the height of the apartment as I was only looking ahead, not upwards as I arrived, so wasn’t sure what I was walking into. But wow, what a surprise.
We had to take the lift to the 46th floor of what I quickly realised was a 60-story building. OH MY GOD, it was soooo fancy. When the door opened to my apartment and I saw what lay ahead, my jaw dropped. I was in an ultra-modern apartment with the most incredible view of the city. I was mesmerised by the lights and how beautiful the city looked around me.
He hurriedly showed me around the apartment and gave me all the instructions I needed. I actually only needed the instructions to get me back to the balcony so I could take in the view and feel the cold fresh air embrace and welcome me. From my balcony I could see the beautiful buildings glistening, the Yarra River just below, Flinders Street Station looking so alive and I could slowly make out people on the walkway below. If this was night time, then what would daytime bring?
I do remember getting one other instruction and that was to make sure I didn’t set the fire alarm off. Apart from the whole building possibly having to evacuate and walk down 60 flights of stairs, it would cost me $3000 if it was a false alarm. I can confirm that no toast or anything else was burnt during my stay.
This apartment and
the whole complex was amazing. It had two concierge desks and was set up in a
way that you took a certain set of lifts depending on which floor you lived on.
If you lived on floor 40 or below, you
caught one set and took another set of lifts for the those in the higher
altitude.
Floor 40 was the segregation area and if you lived above this floor, you had the keys to the executive washroom, so to speak. It took me a while to find out about floor 40 but once I did, there was no turning back. The main pool and gym that any resident could access was nothing to sneeze at, but floor 40 was amazing. It had a sauna that was positioned on the corner of the building so while you were steaming away, you could look out onto the city from the floor to ceiling windows. There was a gym, library, cinema and an indoor infinity pool which could be seen glowing neon blue from the ground below and I had the key. Well for six weeks at least.
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| Freshwater Place, Melbourne |
So, what did I do on my first night in Melbourne? Well, it was late and I was starving so after lugging all my belongings from my car to my apartment, I went downstairs to try and find some food. I introduced myself to the lady at the Concierge Desk and she suggested I head off across the road to the Crown Casino Complex, where there would be an abundance of choice. Over my time at Freshwater Place, she also shared lots of other suggestions of things to do and gave me one other piece of advice which was to make sure I wasn’t out walking alone after about 2am. Noted.
It was three days till I started my new job and with my son staying in Melbourne for a short while, we decided to do some exploring and arranged to meet at the “clocks” the next day. The clocks are at the entrance to Flinders Street Station and are an iconic landmark where many people arrange to meet before they go about their business in the city.
The clocks also became the place where three and a half years later, I would meet the man who a fortune teller said would be the one I spend the rest of my life with.
After the long couple of days travelling, I was ready to climb into bed, but not before I stood staring for a while at the beautiful view that was so captivating.
On my first day in Melbourne, I remember waking up, lying in bed relishing the moment and wanting to pinch myself to ensure I wasn’t dreaming. Here was me, having taken some big bold steps into the unknown and feeling excited about this amazing new life change.
As
I lay there, my attention was drawn to something reflecting on the mirror, so I
jumped up, raced to the balcony to see the most beautiful sight of hot air
balloons floating by as the sun was about to break over Melbourne.
Melbourne is one of the few places in the world where you can take balloon flights across the city and this became one of my favourite things to watch on the mornings that the wind blew them in my direction. I decided there and then that this was something I wanted to try and make happen and before I left four years later, that dream became a reality.
As planned, I went and met my son under the clocks and we went off exploring. We only had a few days together, but it was spent wandering the city which was so different to the one I had just left behind.
Our exploring did take us in search of good coffee and from my previous trips to Melbourne, I knew of a couple of coffee shops that would serve up the good stuff but I have to say, it took me a long time to find a coffee shop that I was drawn back to everyday.
I think it’s important that I address this very serious issue of Melbourne coffee right now. As I mentioned, my relationship with my coffee shop in Brisbane was longer, happier and more stable than my marriage and I was hoping in time that I would form a long-lasting relationship with not only a man, but with a Melbourne coffee shop. I eventually found a place that was able to deliver my coffee the way I liked it as soon as I walked in and took a seat, but that took a few years.
Melbourne is the coffee capital of Australia – allegedly, but sadly, it wasn’t the coffee capital for me. There was a very high bar or should I say a high Bar-ista to be met in regards to my coffee and I struggled to find it. For the time I was in Melbourne, I found it very hard to have a consistently good coffee at many of the places I frequented. It was constantly changing and on any given day, it could be a goldilocks moment whereby one coffee was too hot, one too cold and one may be just right. Maybe! My coffee struggle was real.
The people who worked in the coffee shops were always lovely and friendly, but I’d often leave with a bitter taste of bad coffee in my mouth, and that hurt my coffee loving heart and my wallet. No matter where you went, people lined up to have what I considered at times to be ordinary coffee and this was very apparent near where I worked and I had to suck it up. Thankfully I was eventually able to get my coffee machine sent from Brisbane, so at least I could be guaranteed that I’d have the perfect brew at home. Sorry to hurt your feelings Melbourne, but I have to say it – sometimes your coffee sucks. Apart from that, you are the best.
I had my favourite places in the city and they were Brunetti, an Italian institution in Melbourne that sells the most delicious cakes. It’s a must visit, even to go and just drool over the sweet things, and my other favourite was Degraves Espresso, which is a quirky coffee joint in one of the cute laneways. I would often arrange to meet my dates here, because there was nothing cosy or romantic about the place. It had wooden benches and old cinema seats to sit on, so if any of those dates had hanky panky on their mind, this wasn’t the place for it.
I did invite “the one” for our first meeting at the uncomfortable coffee shop and it soon became a regular place for us to have a coffee and share a croissant on our lazy Sunday mornings. We always made those uncomfortable seats feel romantic.
I
was conscious that I had important work to do and that was to find a place to
live. But I did spend a lot of time staring at the beautiful city from my 46th
floor balcony. I’d race home from work
each day to watch the city buildings glisten when the afternoon sun shone on
them and many a morning, I’d enjoy a cup of tea as I watched the city come to
life as it was bathed with the morning sunshine. And of course, there were the balloons.
Taking daily photos of my outfits was something that became a ritual for me. I had started this a while before I arrived in Melbourne and continued up until the time I left. I’d been blogging for so long and sharing stories and thoughts as I was navigating my way out of my old life into my new one and was doing a little fashion writing project called “What I wore”. I do love a good project and for the remainder of my first year in Melbourne, I set about sharing my outfits and my stories of what my new life was like.
I
know people still blog about fashion, but I feel that social media has
saturated and taken away some of the simplicities of life and made this pond so
big that it’s hard to swim in, so I wound down my fashion blogging and continued
writing more about life and working towards finishing my Don't Sweat the Small Stuff Journey,
The weather is also a legitimate topic of conversation and one that used to amuse me as I listened to people talking about it at work and various other places.
One afternoon, we were expecting a very bad storm to come through the city and the office I worked in was on the 24th floor and faced out towards the bay, so we could see the storm rolling in. I was talking to my colleague about the weather we were expecting and he looked at his watch and said, I think it will arrive about 3 o’clock. Wow, that was some prediction and sure enough it arrived right on time.
I was given a beautiful umbrella as a farewell gift when I left Brisbane but the irony of this gift is that it hardly rained, but if it did, you didn’t want to use your umbrella because the wind could destroy it in a few seconds. The weather was surprising to me as Melbourne has always been known as the city that has four seasons in one day. I actually found the weather to be amazing even if a few umbrellas were lost along the way.
At
the time of my arrival to Melbourne they were beginning to remove the love
locks from one of the main walkways between where I lived and the city. None of
these are my love locks, but I did get to put one on a bridge before I left
Melbourne.
The six weeks in my work accommodation flew by and I contemplated all the suburbs I could live and decided to base myself in the city. One of the great things about Melbourne is that the inner city is so accessible that it wouldn’t have mattered where I chose to live and I eventually found an apartment on the 18th floor of a building which was literally a block away from my work at Southbank.
In hindsight, I probably could have made a better choice of location to live as there were so many great lively suburbs, but this place I chose served me well and was so close to everything.
With the money I had left from the insurance, I was able to relocate my things from Brisbane, pay my bond and get some of the things I needed to set me up for this new life.
My
new apartment had so much room. It was
two bedroom – making it perfect for me to eventually set up a sewing area and
have space for when people came to stay.
The lounge and bedroom had floor to ceiling windows giving me
uninterrupted views out to the mountains. I loved that bedroom so much as it was
bathed in light all the time and with no curtains, I had unlimited views of
everything going on outside and people had unlimited views of everything going
on inside. I would tell people I lived in fishbowl because that’s what it felt
like.
Upside of this great place was that I was so close to work and the city, but the downside was that I could see work and they could see my apartment. Not a great place to be if you wanted to chuck a sicky.
Some of my colleagues thought I was crazy to be paying inner city rent, but when I did the sums, it made perfect sense to me. I could pay lesser rent in the burbs, but I’d still be paying public transport, or parking and when I sold it like that, people were on board. Plus, I was a city slicker. I don’t do well in the burbs, so I was paying for the convenience.
I had come out of a situation where there was joint income and even while we were cohabiting, we split the living expenses and now, here I was on my own with nothing but a car, a few possessions as assets, and a lot of sexually transmitted debt.
So many women find themselves in this very same situation after making the decision to free themselves in order for happiness – or having that decision made for them and if I was to have my time again, and knew what I knew now, I would have definitely done many things differently around how I managed my money and how I would have progressed that relationship.
I, like many others is/was/is a spender and this new lifestyle meant that I had to be totally responsible for myself financially and as the old saying goes, cut my cloth accordingly.
I was being paid monthly in my role in Brisbane and also being paid monthly here in Melbourne and this was also a challenge and here’s how I managed to navigate my way through the new financial chapter.
- When I got paid, I would pay off or contribute the required portion to all the bills that were due – rent, phone, electricity and the sexually transmitted debt…
- If there was anything essential I needed to get, I would go and buy it.
- I would then divide the remainder of my money into how many weeks till the next pay and transfer it to a separate account. Each week I would then transfer the amount for my weekly living expenses back to my main account to use until the following week and then repeat the cycle.
- I had a mindset shift as to how I spent my money. Before I bought anything, I really weighed up whether the purchase was going to cause me hardship later on and that really did mean turning some things down because it just wasn’t financially practical.
- Treat yourself when you can. We all deserve to feel like we are living, not just existing.
This might seem like a no brainer of a budgeting solution, but for me it was the only way I knew to ensure that I had enough. Money scarcity has always seemed to be a theme in my life and one that I have recently been able to overcome.
I kept myself occupied with work, my writing, exploring the city and local surrounds, finding anything free or super cheap to go to, and exploring all manner of wonderful places to take my outfit of the day photo which I now only occasionally post on my Instagram. Melbourne has no shortage of locations for this and what I do love about social media is that it documented precious moments of my time there and when I look back, I can relive some of the good and not so good times. And yep, more “not so good times” were coming.
Melbourne also has a good bike sharing system and one of the perks of my job was that we had a subscription for these. That meant that staff could borrow bikes when they pleased and I would often arrange to use one on the weekends so that I could go exploring, and that became a really nice way to see the city and surrounds in the first few week. I found the inner city also very small and when I looked on the map, I didn’t realise that the places I wanted to explore were ever so close and was kicking myself when I realised that I could have had many more adventures in the fascinating surrounds.
The other thing I would do is walk. And walk a lot. Melbourne is the perfect city for walking and if you didn’t want to walk you could just jump on one the free trams that traversed the city and enjoy the ride.
I soon discovered one of my favourite places in Melbourne, called Lord of the Fries. It’s a fast food vegetarian and vegan burger franchise that my taste buds just loved. I would make it my Saturday morning ritual. I had no friends to hang out with, so kept myself occupied looking for places where I could have my Saturday treat of good coffee and vegetarian food. I had my little routine of walking over to the city, eating a big fat burger with fries, savouring a coffee and then just exploring all that Melbourne had to offer. Even when I left 4 years later, I am sure I hadn’t even scratched the surface of this beautiful city but I always felt like I saw the city through fresh eyes.
I was living very lean, and toast and dahl became a staple for me. It was cheap and nourishing and tasted great. I would go exploring and look at all the wonderful things at the markets but was realistic that some things were just out of my financial reach and weren’t deemed as essential, so I kept things super simple, but still made sure I had my weekly burger treat until I found other more interesting things to do on the weekends.
It certainly took a while to feel really settled and I began to feel one with this beautiful city and start to build my new life. It was still so cold and I remember my sister telling me that when I felt the first warm winds of spring, it would be a beautiful moment. The warm winds did come and the trees began to come alive and along with that, so did the city and so did I. I began to feel like I was free and just like the spring buds, I was ready to blossom, but there was still some healing to do.