Hi everyone!
I know its been a while since we've written, and so much has happened! Through some friends at the hostel, Jared got his dream job, just what every boy dreams of...solar panel telemarketer! He charmed the pants off everyone and managed to make a sale his first day...this was quickly followed by a more expected day, in which the first person who answered told Jared "You can go **** yourself!" I will never be mean to telemarketers again (probably)...anybody else got a guilty conscious? (Dad...? haha)
I was still working at the seafood restaurant, but not very happily. Another waitress who had just been hired had come from Perth, and she couldn't say enough good things about it. This was about the umpteenth Perth endorsement we'd heard, so on a whim Jared purchased some cheap plane tickets and we were committed to going across the country! I was dreading quitting the restaurant since they had treated me pretty well (the first day I was thinking about telling them I was quitting they first offered me half a bottle of 200 dollar wine...needless to say I put it off another day!). When I finally did tell them and give them a week and a half notice, they took me off the schedule! Jared had a similar experience with his shifts being cut, just when we really needed the moolah.
After saying goodbye to our friends in Cairns, it was off to Perth...people had been telling us that Perth was really crowded and it might be hard to find a place. We really should have looked earlier, but that day before our evening flight we exhausted every resource for accommodation we knew...and that's a lot. Hostels, Couchsurfing, Air BnB, and finally it was down to the dreaded hotel. Jared and I have stayed in a grand total of 0 hotels since our trip began last February, and we were ashamed that it had come to this...paying full price for just a bed! But when you have landed at 10 pm and want nothing more than to sleep, your standards go down...or up, whichever way you look at it. We booked the absolute cheapest thing we could find online for 110 bucks and caught a cab across town. When we got there they said that the room was not actually available anymore but they felt sorry for us so they gave us the last room they had...a business suite, for the same price. Yay!
In short, I have never ever seen a city with less accommodation for the thousands of people that come through daily (it's a mining town, so there are tons of people who stay a week before heading back to the mines)...If 10 new hotels opened up tomorrow, there would be no rooms left in about 10 minutes. This lets the hotels that actually do exist charge ridiculous rates...as much as 400 a night for just an ok hotel. Apparently Perth is the fourth most expensive city in the world, for living in general. So much for thinking the streets of Perth were going to be paved in gold...apparently everybody else thought so too, and I guess they just ripped up all the gold to pay for the crazy cost of living here.
After a day of panic, we have managed to find ourselves a share house for 400 a week and reverted ourselves to a mild level of panic. We hope to find a job this week and are basically devoting ourselves to the job hunt every second of every day, so keep your fingers crossed for us! We'll update as soon as we know anything.
P.S. We don't want to hear any I told you so's yet!
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