Life at Staff Village

Sunday morning Rob and I moved to the staff village accommodation at the Royal Darwin Hospital. After almost 3 weeks of living in a hostel, even though we had a private room, I was excited to have my own place with no roommates (other then Rob of course!) no sharing a bathroom, kitchen, or having to clean up after other people and a bit of privacy!!!! Now I would have preferred not to move in on a Sunday as it was a friends last weekend in town and his going away party was Saturday night. BUT, it was the earliest I could get into a unit, and with the Monday being Rob's birthday and having to start work Tuesday, Sunday was the day. Check-out was at 10:00am, (lovely) and a workmate of Rob's was kind enough to pick us up and take us to the hospital. There are 200 units in the area, and they are nothing special!! We are unit 8, my luky number! and I am about a 1 minute walk to work! We settled in pretty quickly, not that we had that much to unpack, well, I had more then Rob! The unit came with a single bed, and when I talked to the manager of the units, he said he was going to look for a spare double if available, and if not, he would get us another mattress. When we walked in, we realized the the spare single bed he gave us, was a hospital mattress, not a big deal, other then it is about an inch shorter then the single mattress. Great!

Our kitchen is tiny with a bar fridge and a small oven with 2 burners. We have a washing machine which is a bonus and there is a clothes lines outside.

The only thing that REALLY sucks about the unit, is location. And not having a car makes it even worse. Monday we actually took the bus into the city, well, i should say "buses" as we have to take 2, and looked at a car. Unfortunately, it didn't meet our standards. SO, we got back on the bus and went to the Casuarina shopping mall where we picked up some supplies (kitchen stuff, cleaning supplies, and of course a 6 pack of beer) and headed back to the hospital, on the bus. The bus doesn't run ALL that frequently which kind of sucks, but there was no way I was walking back with all our things.

Sunday night we actually walked to the mall and it took us about 30 minutes - we where walking in the dead heat of the day, and I was sweating like crazy by the time we arrived there. Not something I do not want to do on a regular basis, but may have to.

The only good thing is that Rob has a work truck during the day and is able to go pick things up and bring them home during his dinner break. Which is what he did Tuesday. He brought back a couple small tables and chairs which now sit on our balcony, picked up a TV that I purchased from my friend who left, as well as a set top box so we can watch TV - that was all Rob's idea, I think I could have managed without ;) ......maybe. lol

It also makes it a bit difficult to go into the city on the weekends if we want a couple drinks. The cab ride home would be a bit pricey, unless we found some friends to go with and share a cab home, who knows??? Maybe it will be a good thing, we will save more money, but it could make for a bit of a boring 6 weeks. Maybe we will have a naked party??? K, I won't go there!! haha