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Published: March 3rd 2008
Finally in Perth. - 26th Feb - 2nd March
Colin dropped us off at our new abode in Perth.
Very nice, and not too small either.
It’s a one bedroom apartment with a living room and kitchen, also spacious bathroom - a well recommended choice, as it is on Mounts Bay Road just a couple of streets down from the main High St and good views over the city.
All mod cons, such as 2 x TV’s, hi-fi dishwasher, fridge-freezer, washing machine (top loader), dryer, oven, hob, microwave, as well as the usual stuff.
So, Colin left (full of beans as usual), even though it was now 4am in the morning, and still hot from the day before.
We thought we might as well get some sleep and went to bed.
But couldn’t get any shut-eye, as Perth started to awaken, with the Parrots, Cockatoos, and all the deadly insects we guess, began to fly past the window on mass, making more noise than an aviary.
Anyway 20 mins later, we decided to have a shower and get up again, do a little sorting of the “excess baggage” and begin some washing.
This lasted a few hours, as you
Apartment..
A view down to the 'en suite' and kitchen area.could imagine…. almost 120kg of clothing needed either putting away, washing or ironing.
As daylight increased from slight sun peeping over the Perth office blocks, to a blinding Laser like penetrating beam through the balcony window, it was time to get some fresh air and see if we could get our bearings once more.
A coffee and Big Breakfast (extra lard) later, and we were hot on the trail of buying an Australian mobile, and some food stocks to fill up the fridge and cupboards.
So we checked out the Mobile companies, of which Vodafone Oz, seemed to be the best option, as you buy a $40 pay-as-you-go and get $130 worth of calls, which aint all bad.
Then off to Woolworths to get the groceries. That’s right good ole Woolys, they are as big as Sainsbury’s here and no sign of tacky plastic toys or pic’n’mix. Best of all the meat is fresh and although they persist on you having taken a ticket to get in line (even though no one is in front of you), the service is pretty good too. The till lady even packs the bags as she robotically passes the goods over the
The view
Perth by night as viewed from our balcony.. thing that goes “beep” and increases the total on the LCD display in front of you as if by magic.
About £90 later we had around 8 full bags of the makings of a few hearty meals in hand.
And that was a problem!!!! - We didn’t arrive by car, so of course there was none waiting with boot space to load, as you have come to expect when super market shopping. As we were in the middle of the city, with all this chilled and fresh produce, it was averaging at around 40 degrees, and as usual the bags were thinner than tissue paper and starting to fall apart before we even got out of the supermarket. We sort of semi-jogged about half a mile up the High St, before stopping in the nearest shaded area we could find and making a decision on next steps…..
A: Keep on struggling in the heat and let the food cook in the bags on the way
B: Jump in that taxi just dropping some fella with Roy Orborson specs, off about 20 feet away.
It was definitely B - Without so much as a quick glance at each other, we
pushed passed the said bespectacled chap, and jumped into the back of the cab before the seat had barely had time to recover shape. And 5 mins later we arrived back at the lodgings with relief and the need for Air Conditioning, water and some where to lie down.
An hour later and we thought we’d go look at Motorbikes, so off we went (by taxi) to a bike shop that we had seen advertised somewhere or other…… around 20 mins later we arrived at said shop (bearing in mind it is approx 40 degrees of blistering heat and we are both in jeans) where the bikes were lined up outside and not under shade..
After about 20 minutes of Oggy chatting away merrily to the owner and eyeing up a nice Husquavarna.. I had decided to go inside and seek some shade, where I happily fell asleep in a rather old looking but never the less, very comfy chair.
I am sure we didn’t buy one in the end although we do have all the details and a tel. number for another day………..but you never know……..
We eventually stumbled across a Nissan garage and went in to
Arthur & Terry
Its a good deal sir..... just get some facts and figures on a much wanted and needed Navara, as our main car out here. Ideal for picking up goats, lama or visitors.
But managed to walk out £25k lighter in the pocket and holding a piece of paper with the words Contract on it.
Car buying is a bit like the old days in UK. (Paddy take note)
Arthur ‘Bruce’ Daly, a cheery and very amiable chap gave us the spiel, and managed to get us to sign the dotted line.
This all happens through him telling you about the car.
Then you make an offer.
He ums and arrs.
He then says he will throw in the fluffy dice etc. and comes back with a counter offer.
You ask for the Wayne and Waynetta sun visor strip and go fast stripes.
He ums and arrs.
He goes out and comes back 5 mins later, with a sad face and mentions how he is gonna have to sell the kids to make ends meet.
Then agrees on a final figure.
You then sign, and pay the deposit etc.
The new edition to the family will arrive at the end of March……….
Thankfully we
The new addition to the family
Coming soon... with the extras had collected the hire car on Thursday morning so no more of trying to sweat our way through places with hoards of shopping or having to rely on taxis.
Following a Friday morning meeting to open our bank accounts at Bank West, we are now in full swing of becoming ‘Aussie’d’ so the next natural step is to head up to the hills to start looking for a permanent abode.
Just to give you a little insight into what ‘The Hills’ are like.
The whole area is known as ‘the Shire’ and any planning, tree felling, bush clearing or building has to be passed by ‘the Shire’. Somehow it conjures up a vision of something similar to hobbits and goblins from Lord of the rings.
Mundaring is a small friendly community and has a central shopping square (about the size of St George Square in HX) just off the main road up into the hills and has everything that you need in one place when living approx 40km from the city folk, (especially the coffee house - where we have now made friends with the owner and staff who advise us on the area, house prices and what we
Huge sheds!!.
The rather large shed that the Aussies seem to love... should offer!). Very friendly and they do the best BLT for miles around.
We have been into every estate agent at Mundaring where we were greeted by a variety of individuals and were told about the strange custom when buying a house here in Oz..
Apparently you choose an agent from any of the estate agents and they will arrange viewings regardless of whether or not a certain property is registered with them…...so once you have selected the agent of choice (based on whether or not you like them I suppose) you let them know the property’s you wish to view and they arrange. If the one you buy is not registered with them, they approach the other agent to arrange viewing and split the commission on the sale………odd.
In good old Oggy & Ang style, we totally ignored that and arranged several viewings with each of the agents, purely based on the houses we liked and not the agents.
We won’t bore you with the ins and outs of every house we viewed over the previous 4/5 days but will just say that after viewing quite a few there is/are:
•One that is very ‘liveable’ but in
The Huntsman..
A rather scary looking chap but totally harmless.. or so we are told..! need of the Og-Ang personal touches - with 5 acres of good cleared land, orchards and a pool
A newly built (still smells of plaster) very nice large house, need cosmetic work and painting - 5 acres of uncleared bush and no pool - but has potential
•One that needs a little work on the inside, but again very liveable - with 5 ½ acres of good cleared land, paddock for horses/Alpaca’s - no pool but scope to add one
•Some that needed a lot of work, just about liveable- with 8 acres of land all bush
•Some that needed knocking down but with good cleared plots of land ranging from 5-8 acres
•And some that you would not arrange viewing for as a potential house for your enemies …
We have narrowed our choice down to 2 definites. and 1 potential
Ang desperately wants to get an offer in now against one of the (obviously missing the cleaning and general house pottering women do) but we have to wait until the nice man from Bank West has told us how much we can borrow….
The houses in the hills, depending on how far into the hills you
Big Jarrah tree
ideal for a swing chair on those long sunday mornings... go, tend not to be on what is termed as 'scheme' water, in other words they are reliant on tank water (these are the large round tanks in the pictures) Rain water and condensation is collected from the roof and transferred to the water tank.. great idea really as there are no water rates or charges and if collected water runs short you just buy in! The tanks are massive and all those we have seen have been nearly full..
Some of the houses also have bores and the water from the bore tank is used to reticulate your land and gardens, some of these bores have the capacity to pump approx 250 gallons per hour..
Both of the houses we like are in an unbelievable picturesque area of the hills. Pastured land all around, horses in everyone’s ‘yard’ and whilst we have been driving around looking at houses we have also seen pastures of land with Goats, Emus and Camels.Yes Camels!! The aussies are not really lovers of goats as they tend to eat everything (Goats not aussies) but we have seen lots whilst meandering the hills, so Flipsy & Flopsy number 2 is still an option! (Flip
& Flop were our goats back in UK)
There is even a section in the local papers that has ads for ‘free’ animals to good homes, ranging from Cats and dogs to Goats and Llamas.
The area is ideal for what we want. Just a very open, vast and beautiful part of this huge country while still being in commuting distance for work and shops. Either of the properties will please both of us especially as having 5 acres of land gives us the chance to buy our very own bobcat to play with. (You just wouldn’t pick up some of the stones/rocks out here in case something lurked underneath.)
There are so many digger stores out here and well it would just be rude not to…….… (and Oggy would sulk!)
Just a few facts about Australia (taken from Bill Bryson’s book “Down Under”, and something to bear in mind when looking around through 5 acres of bush-land, whilst viewing properties out here, or taking a dip in the lakes and seas in between.
“Australia is the worlds 6th largest country and its largest island. It is the only island that is also a continent, and the only
Hillary's Boat Harbour
Great place for the kids, sand, sea and shops and not one sighting of a shark..! continent that is also a country.
It has more things that can kill you than anywhere else in the world.
Of the worlds top ten poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures, - The Funnel Web Spider, Box Jelly-fish, blue Ringed Octopus, Paralysis Tick and Stone fish - are the most lethal type in the world.
If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles…………….” Need I go on…..
We only came across a white tail spider at one of the less enchanting abodes we visited, which can kill you!!!! But found 3 of the scary but totally harmless Huntsman Spiders, which are almost as big as your hand and more furry that Oggy’s belly button.
As usual Oggy couldn’t resist………………
About 7 or 8 minutes down the winding roads from the hills is Midland.
Midland is a fairly large town and has a number of shopping centres. One that we found is quite large, about the size of White Rose, which is really easy to get to. It must have at least 10 coffee houses and 3 nail bars amongst the other variety of ‘Billabong’ and ‘Roxy’ surfy type shops..
Six boxes of air freight had been delivered to the apartment on Friday, but after a long hot day we decided that rather than sort through it all and try find space in our compact abode, we would go out for an hour or so for an early evening drive up along Hay Street towards Subiaco (one of the ‘desirable’ spots in Perth). There are a number of shops, boutiques and bars along the way so we parked up and decided to walk a little, as there was by now a slight breeze to cool down the 30+ degrees.. We had only been walking about 10 minutes or so when we spotted Nicky (Colin’s wife) outside a bar. Nicky was out with friends from work and invited us to join her and friends, which of course we did..! What better way is there to chill out, other than with a cold beer on a hot day. Friday’s after work is the busiest time for the bars, everyone goes out after work for a social drink, or two……………...
Saturday evening came around real quick and we were invited up to Alan & Alison’s for a good old barbie - including the obligatory shrimps!! (Alan is an old work colleague and friend of Oggy’s fromback in UK. We had purchased an Esky earlier in the day so had a few ‘prepared’ cold beers to take along.
Alan’s children were playing happily on the Nintendo Wii and Oggy could not resist.. Needless to say he was beaten by a teenager at baseball..!
Alan & Alison have bought a plot of land at another of Perth’s desirable spots, - Burns beach. And are having their new house built.
They have recently become the proud owners of the foundation concrete base and plan to have the roof on by July.
We had a very enjoyable evening, good food, good company and a few beers (for Oggy) to boot..
Ang drove home and bearing in mind that she had not yet driven over here. The hire car is an automatic, it was dark and the traffic filter lights and newly purchased Tom Tom were confusing her, but we got home in one piece..!
Mothers day - We both called ‘home’ to speak to and wish Happy Mothers day to our mums, its strange when calling the UK as there is a slight delay in the conversations but all was well and mum’s were happy to hear from us knowing we are both OK and settling in with the natives.
Thank you to Carli for the wonderful card placed in our luggage before leaving.. a different card from the normal type, just to build a picture for you…
When opened there was a photo of Carli neatly glued and when opened fully, a voice message from Carli .. Well, for any mother that is not with or not seeing her child on Mothers day, and knows that she wont see them for a few months.. What can I say…tears but smiles too x
In a bid to cheer up Ang and chill for a while after spending days travelling around looking at houses, we headed off to an area called Chidlow - a little far out from Perth and not an area we would consider for buying.. however one of the ladies at the friendly coffee shop in Mundaring had told us about a lake up there that was worth a visit.
Lake Leschenaultia is a beautiful place, in the middle of an area that you would not imagine it to be in. It has man made beaches and open areas for swimming, a diving platform for the kids to play on, canoe and bike hire and there are public BBQ's placed across the shaded tree areas where you can just pitch up with your picnic and cook your roo meat for free!
We have also had a 'beach' day where we drove along the very scenic coast road stopping off at the many beaches near and around;
City beach (approx 15 mins from Perth centre)
Scarborough Beach - Full of surfer doods & chics (10 mins up the road from City beach)
Hillary's boat harbour - Plenty of beach area and a vast array of shops and eating houses (approx 10 mins from Scarborough beach)
and there are many many more yet to find...
Kids - take note, we will be taking you to all these places and more when you get out here..x
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Tracey
non-member comment
G'day.....
Hi there Og & Ang. You sound like you are having a great time so far, bet your missing our 60mph winds, rain and sunshine all in one go...NOT! Ogmeister...your mail is piling up on my desk in Copley - Ha Ha! Shall I send it through clearing, better still I'll deliver it for you. I wish! All being well, later on in the year, we might be coming out to see our friends in East Fremantle - going to their house warming party! Long way to go, but they do do a good party. We'll drop by with your mail then....and an eskie full of beers. Strawberry Hill looks wicked plenty of room for you to park your toys....bobcat, truck thingy (Nissan) what about matching quads .and don’t forget Ang your replacement Lotus might as well throw in a motorbike for good measure.... Will you say to Colin T-bone says ‘Hello’ next time you see him. Take care, missing you both and don’t forget to ‘slip, slap, slop!!! TTFN. Tx