For a couple who moved to Australia with every intention of “travelling” – camper van, rucksacks, dirt, tans, dreadlocks (for Sean), beaded necklaces, sand in places, dry/no shampoo – we seem to have stayed in one place for a bloody long time. But we’ve certainly spread ourselves across inner Sydney during our time here, living in several houses and hostels across the city.

We started off in the Cross, which we’ve now learned was probably the worst first impression of Sydney we could have had. Rookie mistake. Onto Surry Hills – the house where we suffered through the worst of summer, leaving the doors open 24/7 and thus having to deal with Surry Hills wanderers nosying into the living room. One guy in particular liked to stick his thumbs in his ears, poke his tongue out and say “naa naa na naa naa”, four-year-old stylee. And let’s not forget the woman who walked her pet pig past the door every so often. Next up was Newtown, the hippy heart of the Inner West. Here we acquired two awesome cats, who regrettably came with REALLY AWESOME INDESTRUCTIBLE FLEAS. Newtown’s great for vintage shopping, beer gardens, and dog spotting (there’s a park which I used to sit in after work just so that I could get cuddles from strangers’ dogs. It was like that beach scene in Marley and Me). But we quickly learned that you don’t need to actually live in Newtown to enjoy these things. In fact, living there involved nightmareish commutes to work, fleas, being directly beneath the flight path (seriously Sydney, why is your airport so close to the damn city centre?!), scary drunk hippies, and taxis which could never find your home so would just leave you stranded in the suburban labyrinth at 5 am. We quite quickly decided that living there just wasn’t worth the cheap rent we were enjoying and started looking elsewhere, apparently kissing goodbye to our $500 deposit which seems to have been sucked into one of those damn low-flying planes.

And so, back to trawling through gumtree classifieds. We viewed a place we loved with great people our age who seemed to enjoy beer and goldfish. We viewed a place which was okay but where we could barely hold a conversation with the existing housemates (although they seemed pretty set on holding intense eye contact. Weird.) We arranged to view a super swanky inner city terrace with a man whose name I don’t remember and a sausage dog named Doug, before deciding that we didn’t really want to live there and just wanted to live with Dougdog. Finally I stumbled across this advert which mentioned a sun room/study, a fluffy cat, and wine. Sold. When do we move in?

Our new house is perfect for us – cosy, central, and fully equipped with cat and exposed brick walls. We can’t get a shower that lasts longer than 4 minutes thanks to an ancient heating system and our back garden is more of a corridor, but it was love at first sight. Our current housemate is a Latvian/Australian/definitelynotaKiwi who seriously lucked out in the chest department and is learning Spanish, which she practices by speaking to the cat. The cat, who answers to about 29 different names including Bubsy, Shwubsy, Schmookie, Cat, Sarah, and Bitch, is as fluffy as she is weird. She’s slowly learning to open doors, although she does politely knock before she breaks into your bedroom. If you get up from your seat or leave clothing on the floor, she will make her bed on them. She enjoys clawing her way backwards and upside down up the stairs, which has to be seen to be believed. She has no fill level and is constantly hungry – not only will she sit and stare intently at you while you eat, but she will place her paws/face on the edge of your plate, she’ll adorably reach her paw up to your fork and steal whatever is on it while you’re distracted by those big innocent eyes, and if you leave your mouth open, yep, she’ll put her face inside and take whatever’s in there too.

I’m not really sure how to round this one off… so… see ya.