I love my job, I work with some ace people, I get to do lots of interesting and sometimes exciting things, and I get paid for it.  But after almost ten years in Warrington, I’m moving on.

To Townsville.  But you’ll know that already if you’ve been reading these posts in the right order.

A few months ago, (actually, quite a few months ago now), an advert was circulated round the various UK Trading Standards offices for a couple of jobs in Australia.  The one I kinda liked the look of was for a Senior Trading Standards Officer in Townsville.

I applied, and then heard nothing more

Which is surprising, as re-reading my cv, I seem almost superhuman..

I am a motivated and professional officer, with 9 years of experience in this field, as well as over 6 years training to attain the high level of qualification which is statutorily required to fulfil this role.  I currently work well as an integral part of a dynamic, highly publicised and award winning team at Warrington Trading Standards, and I am looking for the opportunity to advance my career, and to seek new challenges whilst remaining within the career path to which I am committed.

I’d give me a job!

But I heard nothing more, for ages.  Then they invited me to an interview.

Sadly they weren’t flying me over there, but doing it via conference call.  I spent an hour at some unearthly hour in the morning (9am) being interviewed via telephone by 3 Australians.  After a number of other stages, including further phone calls, and written tests, I was offered the job!

3 months later, and I’m now all Visa’d up, and am starting on October 13th!

The job is basically centred on just the Weights & Measures part of what I currently do, so there’ll be less kicking down doors, raiding premises, chasing away rogue traders etc.  But it’ll be Weights & Measures.. in Australia.

A few quick facts about the new job

Where I work now, there are 4 officers to cover Warrington.  In Australia, there’s just me to cover an area 9 times the size of Wales.

It’s a promotion to a ‘senior officer’ position

My closest bosses will be 1000 miles away in Brisbane

One of the areas I’ll cover is called Mornington Island, to get there I drive 1000km inland to Mount Isa, then turn north to the coast.  Mornington Island is an Aborigine colony, and nobody is allowed to step ashore without first seeking written permission from the Aboriginie Council 6 weeks in advance.

My office is about 300 meters from the beach.

In preparation for my move, I’ve been reading the local Townsville newspaper, the Townsville Bulletin

As a daily local paper, there’s not often too much in the way of exciting stories, to the extent that Cane Toad eats Snake was the main headline a few weeks ago.

But on Thursday, the headline was: Pirates hijack ship for ransom after leaving Townsville Port.

Pirates!  Now I can’t wait to move there!

I’ve not mentioned it on here before now, but there are big changes coming soon in the life of me.

In a couple of months time I leave my job, rent out my house, leave England, and go live in Australia.

Townsville, in Queensland to be precise.

(If you’re Wiki’ing Townsville right now, there are two.  One is the cartoon city, home to the Powerpuff Girls and the evil Mojo Jojo.  The other is the one in Queensland.  Mine is the Queensland one).

A quick factfile about Townsville:

Townsville is in the tropics, at the start of the Great Barrier Reef, and is described as “where the rain forest meets the sea”.

It’s the ‘unofficial capital’ of Northern Queensland, and is a neighbouring city to Brisbane.  ‘Neighbouring’ in Australian terms means it’s 1000 miles north of Brisbane.

There are 320 days of sunshine a year, with a dry season and a rain season, 35 degrees in the summer, dropping to about 25 degrees in the winter.

If you can survive the abundant & deadly sharks, crocs (saltwater & freshwater), stingers, spiders, snakes, and cyclones, then apparently it’s a great place to live!

I’ll do another post soon explaining why I’m going to Townsville!

This strip was a conversation between me and WrongMark before one of our ninjutsu gradings.

Our sensei had a habit of occasionally conducting the gradings in Japanese.  Mark & me seemed to manage consistently to learn the Japanese phrases before gradings when he spoke in English, and not to do the Japanese before gradings when that was the language chosen, with the result that we failed more gradings than we probably should have.

Here is one of the few times where we learned the Japanese before the grading:

I was looking through some old stuff the other day when I found a list of conversations that I’d meant to turn in Monkeys Like Us cartoons, but never gotten around to.

Here’s one of them, dealing with Claires supernatural understanding of how clocks work, and just what mysterious forces cause the hands to move: