This Adventurous Age

Adventures travelling and working around Australia.

Monthly Archives: October 2023


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2018 Travels Mid 2018 (2)

MID 2018  (2)

After the long day trip to go house-hunting, with its obvious limitations, John decided we should take Bus and spend a few days viewing properties – going where the flow, or agents, took us.

To that end, Bus needed a service first. Not that we had done lots of kms since its last mechanical attention, but with it sitting unused for lengthy periods, I worried that things might go “off”. To my disappointment, found that the bus service establishment that was adjacent to Ventura in Knoxfield, now no longer serviced buses for the general public.

This brought to the fore another drawback of Coaster ownership, which I hadn’t realized back when contemplating buying one. It is not easy to find places and people to work on them. Many owners of motorhomes based on Coasters belong to the DIY fraternity, both in terms of doing the original conversion themselves, and then doing their own mechanical works. From what I had seen they were not always experts at either aspect.

When we bought our Coaster, I was determined that it be a professionally converted one, where I could be most confident about the quality of things like the plumbing, gas and electrical fittings, the overall balance of weight, and so on. But, just like it was increasingly hard to find professional converters, it was hard to find mechanics.

Good looking Bus

I sent out a plea for advice through a couple of online forums, and received from some different people recommendations to try FMA Car and Truck Repairs, in North Nayswater. That was just down the road – very convenient.

Bus duly went there. We were most impressed with the set up and expertise. Came home satisfied that Bus had been checked over thoroughly. Were not so happy, though, with the finding of a small radiator leak and the verdict that a re-core would be needed. However, there was not enough time to get that done before departure, so I bought some Stop-Leak – and hoped.

I also had the same place service the Terios… when you are onto a good thing. More bad news – new muffler needed, and CV joints on the way out. These would also have to wait until after the coming jaunt.

The agent we’d dealt with in Bendigo had booked an inspection of the unadvertised house he thought we’d like, for a Friday, but vehicle servicing had run us short of time, so John phoned to move the inspection to the following Monday. He wasn’t able to speak to the agent, but left a message.

After much online browsing, John also phoned another couple of agents, and organized inspections of places that looked possibilities.

With only a few days away planned, packing took minimal time. A few food items, the usual electronic gadgetry, the dog’s requirements, and the medications that must go everywhere with us, these days.


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2018 Travels Mid 2018 (1)

MID 2018 (1)

With the house sale process  out of the way, it was now time to think about heading back up to Bendigo to house hunt in earnest. With some three and a half months until we had to leave our old home, it seemed we had plenty of time to find a new place….

The sign says it all…

Being able to search for properties online made house hunting much easier than it once was. Go to one of the main sales sites, fill in some search parameters, and up pops an array of choices and information. All from the comfort of the study chair.

Given that John’s stated requirement was for no close neighbours and at least an acre sized block, that went into the search engine, plus wanting at least four bedrooms – well, we would be having family and friends to visit, plus we each needed a study.

I also contacted the main large real estate firms in Bendigo, by email, stating that we were looking to buy, and giving a broad indication of what we wanted. Only one ever bothered to contact me back.

A couple of Open for Inspections looked interesting, both on the same Saturday in very early July. Drove John’s Passat up there, for a long day trip to look at these.

The first place was not our dream property, but proved very informative, because it was on an acre of land. Suddenly, the reality of an acre hit home to John – much larger than he thought! Standing on the house verandah, surveying the expanse of ground beyond the immediate fenced yard, he asked me what one would do with it. I replied “mow it” – which was not how he envisaged spending his time. So, revise block size downwards – gladly!

A big back yard to mow!

The other home was interesting, in the very pleasant eastern suburb of Strathfieldsaye, but the shed was small and grotty and the yard shaded by large gum trees. However, that did give us direct contact with an agent, who listened to our wish list. He thought he might have something that would suit, a place that was for sale but not actually being advertised. He would have to contact the people to arrange an inspection and would get back to us.

This agent had told us the address, in Maiden Gully, of the place he had in mind, so we drove across town to have a look from the outside. It appeared a definite possibility – an older build, architect designed, somewhat unusual, and on a very good sized block in a quiet area.

On the same street were a couple of vacant blocks for sale – again, a very good size, and we sat in the car opposite these for a while, pondering the “build or buy established”  question.

 We headed back to Melbourne, with a lot to talk about on the way.

John decided to liven up the late afternoon by becoming sleepy and so getting me to drive. Nothing unusual there – except that the Passat was automatic, and I had only ever in my life driven a manual shift car. Quick lesson ensued, after which he was relaxed enough to doze off, while I proceeded, tensely, and a good deal more slowly than he would have been driving.

It was a long and tiring day trip.


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2018 Travels June 2018

JUNE 2018     SALE ACCOMPLISHED

Mid-winter is not considered a prime time to sell a house in Melbourne. But we had needed time to prepare it for sale – and probably more time because John wanted to do the work himself rather than hire professionals. I was conscious that the Melbourne market had probably already peaked, and was starting to fall, so we did not want to wait until spring.

Our agent friend and his team went all out, holding some open for inspection events, and scheduling a number of private inspections.

After the experience we had at an inspection in Bendigo, back in March, when the owner was present, we had determined we would not be such an inhibiting presence, so took ourselves – and Couey – off to the Lilydale Lake every time, sometimes at short notice! Couey had never had so many walks in such a short period.

We had to keep the home constantly ready for visitations, which meant being much tidier than came naturally. I vacuum cleaned the carpets every morning – definitely not normal…

Ready for inspection…

We had asked our agent to try to get us a sale settlement period of at least 60 days, thinking that this would give us time to find and purchase our new home, without too much pressure. Way back, we had purchased this house before we married, and before we both sold our existing houses, and then been caught with an extended period of very costly bridging finance in a falling market. This was not going to happen again!

After only three weeks on the market, we accepted a purchase offer. Even better, the couple was going overseas that same week, for three months and so did not want to settle on the sale until mid October. That would give us lots of time to visit Bendigo and find a really suitable new home, without being under pressure, we thought.

October 19 was set as the sale finalization date.


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2018 Travels March to June

MARCH – JUNE 2018   TREE CHANGING IS HARD WORK

If we were really serious about this move, it was time to get really serious!

I was fortunate that a former student who was also a friend now headed up a major local real estate company. He visited, gave us advice and arranged for his stylist to come and add her opinions about what was needed. In some ways it was ironic that improvements I’d wanted for ages now came about – just because we were going.

For years, the pathway outside the back door had been an area where work was needed to improve drainage in heavy rain and then re-pave. Finally, with the help of a friend of John’s, holes and trenches were dug, a drain pit installed, pipes laid and the path put back down.

This had needed doing for years…

Couey thought all this hole digging was a new form of dog games and just had to “help”.

This is a new game…

I chose to use Allied Pickfords as our removal company, mainly because they were used by the government when relocating diplomatic and other official staff overseas. Hence John’s daughter had experienced several moves by them and had been happy with their service. We found their quotes, both for interim storage and ultimate removal, were reasonable. Even more important, they would be able to cope with moving all John’s woodwork machinery, some of which was bulky and heavy – using a specialist sub-contractor. This would be harder than it first sounds as access to the shed was not straightforward.

After the rear landscaping, John got busy repainting the kitchen and living areas. For ages, I’d found the blue walls – not my original choice – rather depressing, and the stylist had agreed. So a warm pale peach colour was applied – big improvement.

Painting the living room

John was not looking forward to the big job of repairing and painting the rather old wooden front fence, whose main uprights had been the targets of cockatoo and galah forays, pulling bits off them, searching for grubs. I wondered if we needed a front fence at all? So we pulled it out and were quite pleased with the fence-less appearance of the place.

Look – no fence!

Completely of his own volition, grandson decided to try to grow us a replacement for our large and prolific lemon tree, to take to our new home. He retrieved some fallen lemons that were starting to sprout shoots, carefully planted and tended these over a period of months. His efforts did not result in a viable tree, but the thought was a wonderful and caring one.

Looking after little lemon trees

Major de-cluttering was needed before our home was ready to display. We had lived here for 27 years after all. It was time to be quite ruthless. No more of “it might come in handy one day”. Would I really need those several very large flower vases that had been wedding presents? All those travel books about places like the Gulf Track and the Kimberley could go to the young man across the road, who was gearing up to go adventuring – we would not be revisiting such places. Grandson received the large and assorted collection of shells that I’d picked up on far-flung beaches, over the years of travel. The clean out was actually quite cathartic – maybe something that should be done every few years?

Sorting through the shell collection

Belongings that we wanted to keep, but which would not enhance a minimalist look in the house, and which we could do without in the short term, were packed and taken off for storage, in Round 1 with the removalists.

De-cluttering

That did not include anything from John’s shed! Boxes and bags of items were taken to local charities and the Diabetes association came and collected a small truckload of our surplus. Some things were good only for the tip.

About to go to storage…

In a sign that the move was meant to be, our long standing, increasingly frail tenant of the granny flat decided that she could no longer manage on her own and gave notice that she intended to go and live full time at the ashram community she had been spending weekends at. So a tenant would not be an issue for any purchaser.

Dog not happy about all this change…

Finally, the place was ready to sell. Photos and a video were taken, the agent brought his local sales team to familiarize themselves with it. The Sale board was erected at the front – I think that was when the reality finally hit us.

After months of hard work