...for the 1st of the month.

Ah yes, April Fool's day no less.

But this is no April Fool's joke, no...this is the first opportunity I have had to sit down and follow-up on the last rhetoric post.

I arrived in Melbourne on the 1st of March, one month ago - after finally managing to sell just about everything I owned (the exceptions being my mountain bike and my computers), and leaving my home for the last seven years in an embarrassing state for the land-lords to deal with (not to mention lumbering them with my very missed pet dog Akira).

Since then I have managed to land the dream job (SEO Analyst - a job I applied for before I left even though I didn't get accepted till after I was already here), and tomorrow I pick up the keys to the dream apartment (photos and more to come I can assure)!

I knew around November last year that I was doing the right thing when I started thinking about moving to Melbourne. It just felt right. After only a short visit in 2004, I fell in love with the place. Since being here I am absolutely blown away by the beauty and diversity of Melbourne and Victoria - a large statement given the renowned beauty that New Zealand and Taupo are known for.

40 minutes in just about any direction can take you from high-rise city, to lush green woods, to rolling farmlands, to beaches to snowy mountains (in the winter). The juxtapositions between old and new, quiet and rowdy, country and city are very in-your-face and marvelous to behold.

The sad point to note is that there have been very few opportunities (so far) to take any quality photos, or those opportunities that have arisen have yielded less than great quality. The current two to two-and-a-half hour (!) transit each way to and from work hasn't aided that, so hopefully with my new pad located in the CBD I should get a lot more time to explore and take some shots.

City life certainly has been a nice wake-up for someone who has been pretty much a country hermit for the last dozen years. I hope that this new leash of life will give the same to this website!

Finally, if you're in Melbourne and wanna meet and hangout over a latte or VB, then drop me a note!

In November last year I turned 36...yes I am that old. This arbitrary threshold-crossing gave me cause to reflect on where I was in my life, and it wasn't exactly the greatest scorecard - still single, renting, in a job that was going downhill, stuck out in the wops with only the cat and dog to talk to yadda yadda boo hoo etc.

Not only that, but I had lost inspiration and motivation for taking photos, which for me was a real litmus-test. So several sleepless nights went by with me wondering how I could re-inject some stimulus into my 36 going on 76 lifestyle.

In one word: Melbourne. Complete upheaval of my life seemed about as good idea as any, and where better to upheave myself to that one of the most beautiful cities in the world than Melbourne. Why there in particular you may ask? Well, I have family there (Hi mum!), the quality of living is excellent, I loved it when I was there a few years ago, it's I.T. central for Australia so jobs wouldn't be an issue and it offers a complete juxtaposition of my current lifestyle, with more things to take a photo of that I could possibly want.

So after some procrastinating, online surfing, job hunting and other nonsense, I handed in my notice at work at the end of last month, started selling up everything ("The things you own - own you") and just the other day cemented it by purchasing a one-way ticket on the 1st of March.

So three weeks to go, and finally the anxiety has been replaced by the excitement. There is so much unknown - but that both excites me and frightens me. All I can hope for is to finally get back to posting daily photos that don't start looking like more of the same...