Legoland , Australia

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Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne… Such a harsh mistress. We maintain with this town the type of toxic relationship a pop starlet has with her obsessive fans. We want to see her, touch her, and spend most of our time with her but every letter sent, signed with a touch of perfume, stays unanswered. It’s one thing to be publically rejected, but it’s quite different to be totally ignored. There comes a time when even the most ardent fan must realize this relationship is going nowhere fast, no matter how many letters written with newspaper clippings he sends.

What I don’t understand, is that we are far from being incompetent, I would even go so far as saying we are downright resourceful … Just this week, I repaired three different doors, a necklace, an electric hedge cutter and a washing machine. Having more than one string to one's bow, one would think it easy to find a job. But we have been here for six weeks now, and no paying job has found its way to us. We even went to the length of retaining the services of a head hunter. A person whose first duty is to call potential employers, praising our achievements in exchange of 12 % of our future wages, if there is a positive outcome. The results? Zip, Nada. It seems the market is saturated with travellers looking for a job.

With no money, we can’t stay in a town where the average rent for a single room is around $ 200 per week. So we decided to leave Melbourne for new places, new horizons. But until we leave, we take in fully the generosity of a small friendly family to live properly in Melbourne.

Allow me to describe this family in a few words: Rob likes board games. Especially the ones in which he can crush you. He adores building all sorts of things and is especially fond of LEGO blocks, which can be found in every nook and cranny of the house. He also shapes his own Warhammer figurines with such craftsmanship, putting to shame the pathetic plaster figurines I made during my fifth year in high-school.

Colleen is a wonderful mom: she prepares fantastic organic meals, rides with her offspring on a quirky bike imported straight from Denmark and likes to support local merchants. She beams with attention for others, so much so, she gets up in the middle of the night to make sure pure strangers are Ok when they suddenly cough abnormally.

The kids are, well, kids. Calm for a minute, tornados the next. Rarely boring when they’re present. Lizzie would be a born mime, if only she could stop talking for a few seconds. Charlie is an adventurer confronting zombies one day and building blanket fortresses the next.

With 3.8 million inhabitants in Melbourne, the odds of finding a couple with which we would get along so well are astronomical. We feel so much at home with them. It’s really hard to believe: two weeks ago, we didn’t even know they existed.

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