Well, after being annoyed beyond all belief by QANTAS trying to get over to Darwin, I finally arrived 5 hours after planned and the humidity hit me smack in the face (as expected). First time here and I already like the city.
I organised myself a car today. Thanks for all those suggestions. In the end I bought a nice and girly Toyota Echo from a private seller. I decided the key features required were mechanical stability (ie., good servicing and no issues) and functioning aircon. This did the trick quite nicely.
I also popped out to the airport to meet some of the operators there. I found people overall to be quite friendly and willing to have a chat and give suggestions. However, nothing here seems particularly promising. I either fall well below the minimum requirements as a fresh CPL, or I am just one the dozens of people/CVs (many of whom have 5 times the experience I do). Still, you never know your luck in a new city! I did get the impression that due to the GFC and severe pilot surplus of late, many organisations have raised their minimum requirements because they can. That sucks. But hey, what can you do?
Anyway, I wasn't expecting much out of Darwin, it was just a convenient starting point. Tomorrow I head to Jabiru to make contact with the people I have spoken to on the phone. Again, Jabiru doesn't sound like it will be promising by any means, but since it is not too far away, and in an area of the country I'd like to see anyway, I'm going to stop by.
I am getting the impression that the 'popular' places already have dozens of pilots in wait. I also have the feeling that to get a job in these places, I would have to sit and wait potentially for a year. And I don't mean sit and wait while I do something else (like continue working in my professional capacity), but sit in town and do work which is unrelated to my profession. The downside of this is that I would be risking distancing myself more and more from my 'old' profession without any assurance of ever working in my 'new' profession....
Anyway, time to check out Darwin at night!