Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

So after a couple of weeks of travel, hotels and apartments, team Serevena is at last in Gladstone, QLD. We are being accommodated in a temporary house in the town until Bechtel allocate our permanent residence. However, the house we are in is very nice and I am in no rush for us to move from here although the garden is a bit small for the boys trampoline!

We flew up from Brisbane yesterday (Wed) and on the same flight was the project HR rep (she was in Brisbane on compassionate) who had arranged for the house keys to be waiting for us at the airport when we arrived. A hire car (standard saloon) had been arranged but once she had seen how much swag we were travelling with (and the kids) and following my request for a Ford Territory (we had one in Brisbane and it was mega – 7 seater mock 4×4) she made it happen. I did offer to pay the difference but she said not to worry! This car appears to be my provided vehicle as the rental agreement is currently until August 2012. No complaints from team Serevena over this!

The project personnel are currently on their 5 day stand down period (after 4 weeks of the project cycle everyone gets 5 days of rest) which means we won’t find out anything new until Tue/Wed next week. Hopefully in that time Bechtel will have sorted a house but apparently they are at 100% capacity…wait out. There is no huge rush though as we can settle for now and our freight still hasn’t cleared customs. (Steve D note that your freight won’t be sent until you have arrived in Australia due to customs legislation so by sending my kit 5 weeks early I achieved next to nothing).  Hopefully we’ll have access to it by Tuesday as it’s Austyn’s 4th birthday and guess where all of his presents are!!!

We’ve all registered with the local doctor, medicare, etc and I’ve purchased a pre-pay broadband dongle so that I can remain in contact with the UK. Note that it expires in 60 days so if you don’t hear from me after that i means that Lisa is living the dream and emptied our account buying Ugg boots!

Apart from the above there is nothing else to report.  Until Tuesday we are going to do the tourist thing and hopefully I might slip in some diving if I can manage to convince Lisa to give me a leave pass! With only 10 days left until I start on site (at some ungodly hour as well) I’m going to make use of the free time that I have!

Roy

(Richard – my admin is still flailing behind me somewhere in Brisbane but I aim to post some photos on the next blog once I’ve downloaded and sorted them from our cameras)