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Published: April 7th 2008
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Well, time for a quick update before Mam & Dad arrive.
Just a few weekends ago we were baking in 40 degrees, now autumn has arrived and the weather can turn surprisingly cold. We have even had the heating on a few times! We stoked up the real wood fire in the family room last week, it was very nice - good pizza, good company, good wine and a real fire - superb. Never thought we'd be in Australia huddled around a real fire to keep warm though!
Just like in the UK the cold weather outside brings the bugs and spiders inside. We've had a fair few cockroaches of late, a good number of regular spiders, another huge huntsman and Friday night we found a lizard sat at the top of the stairs at bed time! The weather has been lovely again today though, it's crisp on a morning, ( foggy too this morning ), and cold on a night, but today has been around 20 with clear blue skies and really crisp fresh air. It's cold in the shade, but nice in the sun. It's supposed to get up to 28 by the end of the week,
Em, escaping the heat.
Only a few short weekends ago it was 40+ degrees. not bad for autumn.
Last week we had severe gales for a couple of days. 100mph winds tore building down, wrecked boats in the harbour, brought down power lines and trees and today, 6 days later, thousands of homes are still without power! It took ages to get home form work as the traffic signals were all down and the roads were strewn with trees. It took Emma 2 1/2 hours to drive the 11 miles home from the city. The place was like a warzone the next day. Our huge gum tree in the front garden dropped a limb, which was a swine to move off the front wall as it weighed a ton! I spent an hour out in the street picking up branches it had dropped to the cars could get by. It's a good job no one was parked, or stood, under it.
We met up with a Geordie couple this weekend, who were very nice. So that's our social circle almost doubled! We went to a place called Camberwell for drinks on Saturday night with them. Camberwell is only a ten minute cab ride from where we live and is a really trendy
city suburb. There were some great bars, and we had a good laugh. If we could afford it, Camberwell would be high on the list of places we'd like to live as there is so much going on there, we head there for breakfast most weekends and the houses and roads are very similar to home, wide tree lined streets and big old houses. The problem is, you need about $3,000,000 for something similar to what we are building out in Berwick!
This month has been the Melbourne comedy festival. We are off to the Melbourne Town Hall this coming Saturday with some other of our new friends to see Geordie comedian Ross Noble. Should be a good night out.
We put our final revisions in for the house we're building over the weekend, so they're going off for final price estimation and plan drafting. In about a months time we go to a place called 'The Edge' in the city, which is the builders design studio. You go there to pick all your colours, brick types, tiles, carpets, door furniture, bathroom suites, floor tiles, window colours, roof tile colours etc etc etc - basically you spend a
full day completely customising all the non-structural elements of the house. Apparently they have a large plasma screen which updates the outside of the house with the bricks and colours you want so you can see what it should look like. We are going for a preview on Friday to see what the choice is in each range of everything, so we have a better idea of what we want when it comes to the actual day. One day doesn't seem like long to choose every aspect of your house interior.
Around the same time will be the electrical consultation, where you decide where you want all your power, TV and phone points, spec out your alarm system and choose all the light fittings and switches.
Within about eight weeks from now we should have a full set of plans back for us to sign off on, with a final price, then we just have to sign the contract - around June time.
After that, all we can do is wait. The title release on our land is still looking like November, so nothing can happen until then. After that it's is approximately a 10 month build.
So, hopefully we'll be in by around August 09. The house will be 100% finished at handover, there will just be some landscaping to do.
We had a look at our patch whilst we were up there, it's really change over the last few weeks. There is tarmac laid on about 1/3rd of the road, the drainage gutters are laid all the way up, most of the trees have been removed and the house that used to be there has gone! You'd never know there'd ever been one on it.
The lakes at the bottom of the road are taking shape, and most of the blocks up our road looks almost ready to build on. The rate they are going, it's wont be long before our block is ready, so we're not sure what the hold up with titling is.
Our friends Kim & Steve are photographers and needed some pics of 4x4's doing 4x4 things. They had heard of an unsealed road in the woods with a ford not far away from our new place, so they came along to the display home with us on Sunday and we went on from there. Within 15 minutes
of where our new house will be we were in the middle of the woods, on a wide mud road that led though a creek. We spent a fun half hour with me tearing the Pajero back and forward through the water. It was crystal clear when we started, and brown and muddy by the time we finished. Emma took some great pics, ( attached ), so looking forward to seeing how the pro's turned out.
It looked like a great place for mountain biking, so looking forward even more to getting gin the new house so we can go off and explore on the bikes.
We carried on a little way from there and ended up at Cardinia reservoir, which serves most of Melbourne. The place was huge, but the effects of the drought were all to evident when you see where the normal water level should be. It was really quiet up there with lots of walking trails to explore. The reservoir was only about 25 mins from the new house. So, after all the exploring and seeing what's around locally, we're even more excited to move out that way.
Mum and Dad leave for
Singapore a week on Wednesday, they sound really excited. After a brief stop in Singapore they will head over this way and land a week on Saturday. We're really looking forward to seeing them and showing off some of Australia. Stay tuned for the next episode featuring Ma & Pa Besterfield and their Melbourne & Sydney adventure!
Well, that's about all that's newsworthy for now. Can't believe we have been here in Melbourne for 5 1/2 months, and away from the UK for over 7 months! The time has flown over.
Until the next thrilling installment of 'Besty Down Under', Tara.
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