Just to let you know that Ellie’s leg is a lot better, the antibiotics seem to have had the desired effect, still a little red but getting there. Apparently the whitetail spider is a shy spider and doesn’t normally bite unless it has no choice so I don’t know what she did to it!

The weather here over the past few days has been terrible, very heavy rain, 10 deg drop in temperature and gale force winds, there have been floods throughout Sydney, snow in some parts and 10 cyclones brewing off the gold coast in Queensland! It is predicted to return to 25 deg by Thursday though.

Don’t know whether you have seen any coverage on TV, but Australia had it’s first saint cannonised in Rome yesterday, it’s been quite a big event here and we kept winding Ellie up, telling her we were going into the city to watch the formalities – not something she was thrilled about. We were really going in to have a look at the Melbourne museum & Carlton gardens as the weather was overcast and not beach weather, and when we got to the museum there was a large crowd and TV cameras so we walked further to have a look and ended up stood right in front of all the dignitaries that had come for the formal ceremony for Mary McKillop’s sainthood, there was Julia Gillard the PM and Brumby (premier of Vic), a bishop and a few others, we turned around and there must have been a thousand people behind us! Talk about just wander into something randomly we had no idea the event was being held there. Ellie was mortified that her friends would see her on TV at religious occasion – no good for street cred! I went to the mall on Friday and there were Trinny & Suzanna doing a live show, they have a  TV series soon, I watched for a bit then left when they started asking for volunteers, see I’m mixing with the famous now!

Work has been going well, I went out on my own and did a few visits- thank god for sat nav. I am getting used to the main roads in the area but it is a large area we cover, say 4 times larger than the area I covered in the UK. I went to get my laptop as it is a paperless system but the IT for some reason couldn’t get mine sorted and the fingerprint security swipe wouldn’t work either, so they are coming again on Wed. It is a really good system though, like a cross between a laptop and I-pad, and we drive our Toyota corolla DN cars, same as UK though, a high percentage of clients are elderly. I am looking forward to my first payday on Wed, you get paid every 2 weeks here for some reason, even gym membership fees etc are all worked out 2 weekly, probably keeping someone in a job!