Getting settled

Hello from Brisbane!

The last week has possibly been one of the longest on record, the immediate nature of doing things once you arrive in a new country is incredibly testing and has meant that the actual enjoying of things has been slightly put on the backburner in place of admin tasks!

My impressions of the city and people varies tremendously, as with anywhere in the world, some people can't go far enough to help you, others really try to put block in your way, but it is most definitely all good!

From a geographical point of view, Brisbane is a fascinating place. It has a wonderful multi cultural aspect to its demographic, with a large proportion of native Australians, a huge number of immigrants (1st,2nd and 3rd generation) from both the Pacific Islands and the Asia states and a surprisingly large amount of Irish!.

There seems to be a mild form of almost ghettoization to where these groups live. Socio economic factors dictate that many people from far northern Queensland seem to live in the far suburbs of the city and use the very effective public transport to get into the developing and industrial areas for work. The CBD is obviously for the higher earning professional residents, although a large amount of high rise buildings are in fact family owned immigrant houses or apartments. Having only been here a week however, these are some generalisations, although with our extensive housing searches taking us all over the city, I can offer some backing to my claims!haha.

As with any modern city, the universities of the cities dominate the inner city housing directly outside the CBD, with thousands of shared housing and what seems slightly sub standard housing.

The levels of redevelopment and gentrification within these inner city housing areas are huge and almost seems to include redevelopment of redevelopment in some areas.

I would love to create some GIS work on the demographics of the city and map the findings on a mapping program-something that I may look into for possible lessons.

In terms of job hunting and changing the face of teaching of Geography, this may have to wait a little longer.I have registered with a supply teaching agency for the last academic term of 2010 and hope that this will provide an insight into the schools and provide much needed funds for rental housing!Supply is far better paid relatively speaking here than in the UK.Comparatively speaking, it works out as about £220 quid a day after tax, which would be very good to get some of.

In summary, the other side of the world is far from easy and for those who plan on moving to the sunshine, be prepared for the fact that it is not cheap in the slightest and will take a significant amount of savings to set yourself up in the country!

I will update you soon!