Getting by with a little help from some new friends...

THREE months into life Down Under and we can now boast equally as many friends.

Since moving to the peninsula three weeks ago, we've put ourselves around and got stuck in to some serious social networking. I'll admit I thought it'd be a whole lot easier for me ... I've struggled to get some mates on my side even with my knack of striking up a conversation with a total stranger and have them eating out of the palm of my hand within nano-seconds.

When we arrived, we were lucky to befriend the children of a former Buckley-ite who moved out to Melbourne as a £10 Pom back in the sixties, fed up to the back teeth of negotiating their youngsters' pushchair through 6ft of the white wintry stuff ... the type of weather she and her husband wanted to see the back of.

So they packed up, paid their tenners and got on a boat for six weeks with two young children. Another two were born in Australia and made the family complete.

She, and her children, who are all our age, have been untold good to us. She has a son and three daughters - one of whom I have a particular affinity with. We laugh at the same stupid stuff, we enjoy a glass of white, we're equally as disorganised as one another and we even have a freckle on the same part of our face. Destiny!

Now we've moved into our gaff in sprawling suburbia, we are striking up friendships with our Aussie counterparts, Over the road, there's 'Stuart the Salesman' and 'Nicky the Naturopath', over in Mount Martha, we have 'Helen the Hairdresser' and right next door to us is 'Michael the Maths teacher'. Wife, Lisa, is a book-keeper by trade and is going hell for leather with her attempts to come up with plans to get me back into the work I love.

But last week I applied for a job as a cleaner. A high class cleaner. A cleaner that would put $40,000 (£20k) a year into the household coffers. Not to be scoffed at I thought so I went along for two interviews... but during the second one, I heard my imaginary Lisa in my head telling me it wasn't for me.
"You'll get bored", "You need to find something in which to showcase your talents", "You need to bide your time and wait for the right job to present itself to you"... I 'heard' her say.

So halfway through the interview, I fessed up and said I didn't want to waste their time further but if they ever had an opening for a secretary to give me a shout. There would be no need for further interviewing as that had already been done.

Now husband has started his full time work, I can concentrate on getting myself fixed up with something I like the look of. I'm quite enjoying being a stay-at-home mum but there's only so many times you can hoover up the floorboards and clean sand out of the bath without it starting to grate and if I get a job soon, it will be me employing one of those high class cleaners that I almost became myself...