Australia: Life in Melbourne

Life in Melbourne has been a rollercoaster from start to finish, but despite the highs and the lows, we've both fallen in love with the world's most liveable city.

We arrived at a farmhouse in Research, on the outskirts of Melbourne, where we spent a week helping a couple renovate their newly-purchased house and looking after their 3-year-old daughter and 5-month-old son. We absolutely loved our little separate studio cottage and waking up to find kangaroos outside the windows, but unfortunately we were hoping for more hours than the family could give us so we moved into a shared apartment in Abbotsford, just outside the city. The complex itself was incredible - two gyms, a rooftop pool, a sauna and a movie room were all available for our use, as well as being located right next to the Yates River trail. We were sharing the two-bedroom apartment with another English couple, and it was a great location to start getting to know Melbourne and understanding the tram system.

After a month or so, we decided to take the plunge and move into the centre of Melbourne, in Southbank, to do a flat-sit for a couple who lived in a similar style apartment complex to the one we were used to. Living on the 25th floor, we enjoyed 7 weeks of breathtaking city views and loved being walking distance away from the centre of the city.

We decided to move into our own apartment in East Melbourne for our last few months. We loved being in this suburb even more, as we were right opposite a huge park and we found we'd really missed having the green areas, as Southbank was purely buildings. We really settled into life here; finding our favourite takeaways and embracing the Melbourne food culture. The apartment also included a parking space for Will’s work van and was about a 20min walk (or tram on lazy days!) to Julie’s work.

When we first moved from the farm, we both took jobs with HelloFresh. We quickly realised that neither of us have what it takes to be a door to door salesman, so that didn’t last long! Will took labour and construction jobs until he was offered a contract doing building inspections, and Julie worked in various admin positions, eventually finding positions in psychology-related organisations.

We both wanted to feel at home in Melbourne, and Will quickly found a gaming group he met up with a few times a week. Julie spent a while looking at different dance groups, went for a trial session to train with a jazz team, and ended up being offered a place on both their jazz and lyrical competitive teams. This took up a few evenings each week to train for the upcoming local competitions, as well as the Australian Nationals in the Gold Coast at the end of the season. The icing on the cake was also qualifying for Pinnacle, a bid-only event where only the top teams of the season are invited to compete. It was an incredible opportunity and definitely a memorable moment from life in Melbourne.

Although we didn’t visit as many tourist attractions as we were hoping to, we spent a lot of time walking around Melbourne CBD and our suburb of East Melbourne. During our time in the city, a few friends were also in the area at different times so we had the chance to try a few of Melbourne’s hidden bars and explore new parts of the city with them.

Before living in Melbourne, living in a city had never appealed to either of us, so we were very surprised at how quickly we settled here. It’s definitely somewhere we would enjoy living again if the opportunity ever came about.