A real estate agent is chosen

We settled on an agent to sell our house. Gardiner and McInnes valued our house and suggested it be advertised within the range $300,000 to $350,000. This was disappointing. We had undertaken huge amounts of work on this property over the years. The garden was an oasis, we had enlarged the usable area of the land by building retaining walls, and some of the interior fittings were well finished. Overall it was a very nice place. We thought the agent might have come back with something like $360,000 - $390,000; particularly as we had been watching the market in the local area. They also quoted $700 in advertising costs with a possible all up bill of $3000 for the works, with their commission being between 2.5 to 3%. This was all so disheartening.

We also eventually heard from Landfield real estate. They thought our house was worth between $400,000 to $450,000. That’s too much! I think they were just trying to get us as a customer. With this property facing a main road a big for sale sign with their name on it would have been wonderful advertising. At that price the sign would be there for eternity.

So, with some recreation leave lined up it's on the road again, and a trip to Melbourne.

Auctions

Canberra seems to have a lot of property auctions. Personally, I don’t like auctions. I think they are dodgy at the best of times. My experience noted in an earlier post is an indication of that. From what I’ve spotted in the newspaper it appears as though Hooker has more property auctions than any other real estate agent.

I’ve been to a few auctions in my time and the auctions vary from one industry to the next. The government occasionally auctions of its disused equipment. There may be some bargains to be had there. I’ve bought quite a few motor vehicles at auction. Some were lemons, but then I got some beauties too. I’ve been to diseased estate auctions and factory auctions following bankruptcies. They all have a different flavour, and attract different clientele, and the mood varies between each of them. Some are exciting to attend but others are so boring. The first rule of auction: fix your limit and be prepared to walk away empty handed.

In my experience, the biggest auctioneering cheats were at car auctions. I was at one many years ago and I badly wanted a particular car. I had in mind just how much I wanted to pay for it, and bidding was well below that mark. I was in the race. What I didn’t know was that the auctioneer no doubt had a friend in the crowd or someone who had passed a bribe prior to the sale which influenced how events unfolded during the bidding. The bidding was in relatively low dollars, so I began to push myself forward through the crowd. Just on the first call I spoke up with what I thought was a clear “yes” to indicate my interest. I was on the front row when the auctioneer called for bids a second time. I had my arm above my head and called out “yes” again. How could I not have been heard? On the third call I was waving my arm around madly and I yelled at the top of my voice, only to hear the auctioneer call the sale at the original price to the other guy. I confronted the auctioneer, who claimed he didn’t see or hear me. The auctioneer had no trouble spotting me later in the day when he sold me another that wasn’t a patch on the first. Second rule of auction: get noticed early, and the eyes of the auctioneer will return to you. On this occasion I think the auctioneer was corrupt. How can anyone not notice anyone dancing around and yelling in front of your face? I hope he was embarrassed by his action.

I have heard that some auctions, where few people attend; particularly where specialised equipment is being sold, that interested buyers get together prior to the sale. There is generally a viewing period prior to the auction. If the items for sale don’t attract much or any interest, and if you happen to know the people who are interested in the sale, and if you happen to mention how much each item might be worth to you, and after some discussion you can work out ahead of the auction just how badly each of you want particular items, you might be inclined, through an arrangement with those other bidders, to hold off in bidding for those items, and so let your friends have those items at a very low price. This favour only works when they reciprocate and let your minium bid be the winning bid for an item you are particularly interested in buying. The auctioneer may well see what’s happening, but what can they do? If they are selling the items on behalf of a company and there is no reserve you have got some bargains to take home. But sometimes the auctioneer has an interest in the property and may apply a reserve to stop this tactic.

I had a house that was auctioned in Tasmania. It didn’t sell at the auction. I stood and witnessed the auction. That was a scary experience. The auction was held inside the house, so we stood at the side and watched. There were about a dozen people, the auctioneer and assistant. I was almost shaking in anticipation, and can understand why the owners tend to wait in another room. It’s nerve-wracking. I was sure the house was going to sell by the way the auction was progressing. The auctioneer was going furiously, once the auction started. The bidding was reasonably fast to and fro between the different bidders. And then it was passed in. I was confused when the auctioneer told me there was only one bidder. The other bidders were plants by the auctioneer who were pushing the bidding up. I couldn’t spot the fake bidders from the real ones. I had no idea this was happening, didn’t know it was going to happen. It was a beautiful con job that failed to pull off anything.

A most unusual auction

I had a look at Queanbeyan. There seems to be an older part in addition to some newer areas. Some of it looks really ordinary looking, or is Canberra turning me into a snob. Very close by were some spectacular spots in Dodsworth and Ridgeway. Million dollar properties some of them, no doubt. I went to some open inspections in Jerrabomberra. What a name for a suburb. Large houses with prices to match. Some of them nearly take your breath away in the way they have been built and fitted out. I called in at an auction that happened to be about to start. I was first there, and had a chat to one of the agents.

On the way through the door I mentioned that I’d be a spectator only, and asked the price that the property was expected to bring. “Mid three hundreds,” she said. It was a very nice place, enhanced by the modern furnishings, if not a bit cramped inside, and the building almost filling the block completely. Anyway, while waiting for the auction to start, I began chatting with a couple of people outside, and mentioned the morsel of information I got from the agent. I was unaware at the time that this particular couple would buy the property. It was one of the most unusual auctions I’ve ever witnessed.

The auction began in the usual way with the auctioneer running through various attributes of the property and as far as I could tell seemed just another ordinary property auction. It’s the events which followed that surprised me. There were about three other agents on site in addition to the auctioneer, and they, along with a small group of perhaps ten or so spectators gathered on the small patch of lawn to the side of the house. There was only one interested buyer, as it turned out. Or rather, there was only one individual who was vocal at the auction. No one else showed any interest in bidding.

The bidding commenced at $300,000 with this chap calling out his bid. There were no subsequent raises in the auction despite the auctioneer’s usual banter of talking up the property. It appeared that this person had turned up to the auction and had no opposition. To me this is an ideal situation: it keeps the price low. And if the property gets passed in at the end of the auction, the highest bidder generally has first rights on negotiating a price, in private. Which also, is an ideal situation for a buyer. It has been known for properties to fail to sell at auction and subsequently sell at a lower price. The reverse also occurs.

So, here we are all gathered at this auction and there is only one bid, and that bid is for $300,000. One of the sales team approaches the bidder and speaks to him. I’m a little too far away from them and I don’t hear everything that was said, but I did manage to catch a comment by the sales person along the lines of, “…so you will be willing to raise your offer by $30,000.” This whole process took about three maybe four minutes; which is a lot of time to be standing around in relative silence. I thought this was an auction and not some badger-the-punter session.

My first reaction was wondering what this sales person was doing speaking to this guy. I’d feel inclined to tell them to get lost. My second thought was over the word “offer.” This guy didn’t make an offer on the house; he made a bid at an auction. Perhaps I’m splitting hairs, but it did seem mighty strange.

Anyway, this sales guy goes back to the auctioneer and whispers in his ear, to which the auctioneer immediately addresses those assembled, but to the bidder in particular. The auctioneer immediately asks to hear the new amount as a bid. And sure enough, like the little sheep he was, he responded with, “$330,000.”

This guy had just bid against himself. This was stupid, was my first reaction. This was outrageous of the agents to push this guy like this. Of course, the property may in fact have been worth a whole heap more than this amount. So, perhaps bidding against himself was no great loss. On the other hand he has just committed himself to another thirty thousand that perhaps he may not have had to put up. This guy doesn’t know the sellers situation. Perhaps the seller was in urgent need to sell; perhaps the property had to be sold on that day to get out of some financial trouble. We don’t know that possibly the seller had instructed the auctioneer to sell it any price, just get rid of it.

Having just bid against himself, the same salesperson approached the bidder again. Another prolonged discussion took place. Further delays as sales folk disappears inside the house. Possibly the owner was inside and they were seeking instructions from the owner. They come out for more discussions with the bidder. They troop back inside the house again. This would be funny had everything been captured on video and sped up like an old Keystone Cops silent movie.

Then finally they emerge and the figure $363,000 is announced by the auctioneer. The bidder acknowledges it. Then as quick as a flash, as though allowing no time to retract the bid, a mighty fast, “first call,” and without pause for a breath, “second call,” and immediately, “third call, sold,” exploded from the auctioneer’s mouth. It was all over

Unusual practice at best, more like a con job to me.

Private sale or no private sale

Now there's a question: to sell your property privately or go through a real estate agent.

At home, the Landfield real estate didn’t call by as expected. So, we chose another agent. That’s the way it goes. In many ways your life choices are not made as a result of careful weighting of the pros and cons of something; those of agents in this case. It was more about who was there at the time. There’s not often a lot of personal experience people might have on which to base a decision.

In actual fact, with this property being located on a relatively busy road, I was inclined to sell it privately. I was thinking of doing little more than sticking a sign up on the front and waiting for the punters to call. Real estate agents don’t have your best interests at heart. Well, of course they don’t, they are in the business for the money. The best they can do for you as a buyer is put you in contact with sellers, and you have to resist being influenced by anything that might sway you from your goals, like paying more than you want. The best they can do for you as a seller is bring in the punters, and you have to resist their persuasive tactics of lowering your asking price.

I’m reminded of a Canberra real estate company, though the name escapes me for the moment, that had a really obscure advertising strategy. They were aiming their advertising at property owners. They said that they consistently obtained higher sell prices than any other agent for equivalent properties, and this was the reason you should use them rather than any other Canberra company. Hmm. Sounds like a great thing if you are selling your property; we all want as much as we can get. Suppose you are shopping for a property. The slogan doesn’t sound nearly as good. Why would anyone want to buy through an agent that boasted of fleecing its punters?

There is quite a lot of information, on the web, and books that specialise in selling privately. Basically, the main reason for not doing it was that I was in Canberra and S was in Melbourne with the house. It may have been awkward. If you have time to browse some of this literature before deciding how to sell it will be worth your while. There was one book I had a look at, which was quite interesting to read, particularly some of the experiences some agents get up to. It was a real education. It described various scams real estate agents have used to squeeze more money out of a deal, and how to go about selling privately. If I can find it I'll edit the post.

Walking is faster than email

My brilliant idea of taking a lot of happy snaps of the properties that might have potential and emailing them home turned out to be less than satisfactory. I think it’s pathetic in this world of computers that I’m being driven to use snail mail.

I took about a hundred photos of a property that caught my eye. My plan was to move in and around every room, hallway, carport, shed and drainpipe putting together a virtual tour of the house in the form of photographs. It actually takes a surprising amount of time to do this. I would then email the lot along with a few comments. The size of the file didn’t break the email, but it just refused to go. Too big, was the smug response from the computer (actually, the company mail server). I tied splitting the stuff into a lot of smaller files, zipped in various ways, but still too big. I gave up, and copied everything onto a disk, and let Australia Post do its trick.

Sometimes I get really fed up with the way organisations run their IT infrastructure, and this is just one example. One of the companies I had an association with had a contract with DHS, a state government department. Both had offices very close to each other, being just one city block distant. Anyway, this company was bought out by GE, an American company with tentacles all over the world. As part of restructuring its new acquisition, email was routed through GE’s network, which meant that sending an email from one Melbourne city block to the next Melbourne city block went via USA.

We become accustomed to email being relatively fast, but with this company change sometimes email took several hours to be delivered. When time was important sometimes it was more efficient to walk across the street with an envelope in hand, to their offices, and hand deliver the mail rather than using email. Pass the ink and quill, please, it may be quicker. While I’m in the mood for it, another example comes to mind.

The first personal computer I used at work in 1986 was in fact a Mac. (Mainframes were generally all the go, but they could be cumbersome.) The Mac was on a trolley so whoever needed to use it could wheel it from one office to the next. MS Works was the thing at the time, and to get it going you shoved in floppy disk and I think you could save your files to this disk too. There was no hard drive on this machine.

Then the developers of MS Works added bits and pieces to the software, and the new version of MS Works resided on two floppy disks. So, whenever you needed to use a function that it couldn’t find on the disk you currently had in the machine, you’d be prompted to swap disks, and swap disks, and swap disks. It’s not such a bad thing to improve software, but I hate the tradeoffs you get lumbered with. Your computer gets filled with stuff you’ll never use and it slows everything down in the process.

I have broadband on at home and it seemed great, at the time, when it was new to me. But it doesn’t seem great anymore. I have this feeling that about 10 years ago my old dialup modem used to access web pages and paint the screen at about the same speed as my broadband does now. I can’t help wondering about all the ancillary software that web pages come encumbered with that everything has slowed down again.

Presentation

Presentation is important when you’re selling your house. Don’t people know that? A coat of paint where it’s needed can do wonders to a place, which gets back to my ‘make it sparkle’ notion, but for heavens sake, do the job right. If your window frames have weathered, a coat of paint may brighten them up. Here’s the important bit: if they need to be sanded – then sand them, undercoat them, paint them properly. If there are a few pits in the woodwork – fill the holes with putty, sand it back, and paint properly. If the wood is rotten or so badly weathered that it looks and feels like a sponge then rip it out and replace it before paining. A coat of paint over rotten timber looks like the rough job it is. When I see it I tend to wonder what other botched jobs have been done on the house. This type of work does nothing toward presentation.

A possible contender

I arranged to have a look through the house at Evatt. It was good of the owner to allow me through. I brought my camera with me and took swags of photos to send to S in Melbourne. She seemed to be getting excited over it, as though this house was the ‘one’. This property was a bit rough around the edges, but it was also the first house I’d seen with a decent sized yard. It also had a good sized shed, with plenty of additional parking, and it had a relatively large kitchen. The lounge was a strange shape, main bedroom small, very ordinary bath rooms. It had a wood heater upstairs; now that’s an odd design feature. Heat rises. Wouldn’t you want to have the heater on the lower floor, and bringing firewood inside would be a pain. It was also in very close proximity to HT power lines. The views were okay, but not great, mostly looking out over other houses form it’s slightly elevated position.

Showing your hand

I came across a place in Evatt that was up for auction. I’m spending a lot of time driving around the suburbs. With the street directory in hand, steering wheel in the other, I’m slowly ambling along the quite suburban streets looking at the lie of the land, looking at the houses, and the environment. Just getting a feel for what’s out here. I think it’s all very well to check out the newspapers, but until you drive down the street and see the neighbours fighting over the side fence, see the houses with dumped car bodies or engine parts in the yard, and eye the cheeky looking kids (and adults), and depending upon what you see you might mark the suburb as one to avoid or one to keep an eye on if any new properties come onto the market. This detail can’t be picked up from newspaper ads. I’ve been marking my street directory by pencilling circles around streets or areas that I think might be nice areas to live, should something come up. It’s also good to note things you spot in the newspaper, that you might otherwise forget, like suburbs where the mobile phone coverage is poor, or where broadband hasn’t reached yet.

I was driving in Evatt, as I said, and was noting the auction details from the for sale sign of a house I spotted. As it happened the owner was tidying up the yard and he came over to chat. He must have spotted me making some notes. He said he’d bought a place interstate and had to sell this house, and invited me in to have a look around. I declined, saying I’m not ready to buy, which was true. Our house wasn’t on the market yet. He said his house felt like a millstone around his neck. (To me, this is like telling me he was desperate and might well accept any offer. I think it’s a mistake to say anything like that if you’re selling. I don’t think that sort of information should be told to anyone, including your own real estate agent.) It was a nice looking place. With the details duly noted, I’ll return to see how the auction goes. Could this be my new house; with the benefit of this ‘insider information’ I might get a good deal.

Real estate hunting

One of the difficulties in coming to grips with a new city is getting to know where the various suburbs are located, and their relative position to one another. In one of my early scans of the real estate section of the newspaper I spotted a house that was very reasonably priced, and generally sounded quite good. It was a definite contender, or at least it was until I spotted it on a map. My failing was that I didn’t realise that Bredbo was a small township about 80km south of Canberra and not actually a Canberra suburb. Any local would have known this.

My Saturday mornings developed into a routine. With my lack of experience of the Canberra layout here’s what I found worked well in making a few property visit open inspections. I got up early and grabbed a copy of the Canberra Times, which has an excellent pull out real estate section, and with a notepad and street directory in hand spread everything out on a tabletop, usually with some fruit toast and coffee to help get me through.

1. Mark the properties that you clearly want to visit by reading the ads. Isn’t that what you do anyway.
2. On a page of the notepad, make very brief notes of the advertised properties, and be sure to include the address, inspection open and close times, and page number that you saw the ad. (you can seldom find the ad after you have closed the paper, and you usually only want it when you are in a hurry.)
3. Number each property on your pad sequentially.
4. Look up the street directory of each one, noting on your pad the map number and its grid coordinates. This saves you doing it later when you don’t have time and are a bit flustered. Doing this now makes the day much more pleasant.
5. Now comes the mildly artistic part. Street directories usually have an index page displaying the locations of all the individual map pages. This index map is essential for getting a bearing on where the properties are in relation to each other. Find that page.
6. On another page of your notepad, sketch an outline of the area you want to search for properties and mark the map numbers on the page just as it is on the index map of your street directory. This takes 30 seconds. If you can’t do it within a minute you are spending too much time.
7. Now, refer back to your first page of notes and mark on your sketch index map on your second page of your notepad where each property is located. Don’t write much. The property number you used and the inspection times may be sufficient. Try to do this as near as you can to being accurate within each map, but it doesn’t matter a whole heap, you just need approximates.
8. When you have transferred your brief notes to the even briefer notes on the sketch map, sit back and have bite of your toast, sip your coffee, and consider what you’ve got.
9. Study the open times and their locations that you’ve got on your sketch map, and work out a sequence of visiting them. Doing this will prevent you from doing too much backtracking, keep your petrol costs down, and you might even see more properties in the one day.
10. When you’ve got a sequence worked out you might write it down somewhere because you’ll forget it otherwise. You might even like to draw arrows all over your sketch map.

This is just the sort of project that some whiz kid needs to develop on a computer to make the job simpler for the punters, but the method I’ve outlined works for me.

You could just scan the newspaper and if you spot something interesting just go and look. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you are like me and want to see as much as possible you’ll need to get a bit more efficient. The last thing you want is to be doing is wasting time looking for an address with only a few minutes to get to a property, or having to drive half way across town when you have only just been there an hour ago. Anyway, enough of this.

I went to another auction, this time in Evatt. It sold for $365,000 at the auction. Its great to see an auction go to the end and see it sold, rather than being passed in. The house was on a small block of land. It had a small lounge and dining room. It also had a small kitchen and family room. The bedrooms were a reasonable size. It did have a nice bathroom, but no bath. That seems like a contradiction in terms to me. There was a good deal of decking outside. It had a garage designed for a mini because part of it was used as a room! It was a well kept property but was just a very ordinary place, and small at that. $365,000 - house prices seem so inflated in Canberra, for what you get.

I had a look at Duffy and neighbouring suburbs. The occasional vacant block where houses used to be can still be spotted. A result of the bushfire, of course. It’s sad to see garden remnants, retaining walls, garden paths and steps at the front of the empty block that don’t go anywhere. The house was gone, just traces in the dirt where the foundations used to be. Though, it’s interesting to see the number of new houses in the area. And not just ordinary looking places either, but large, luxurious houses. I gather that some people won as a result of the fire, and by the look of some of those new houses did very well indeed.

I discovered the Woden shopping centre to the south of Canberra. Now there’s an unusual name for a place: Woden. I can’t help but wonder if the individual who coined the name had a speech impediment. I laugh to myself whenever I hear someone refer to it: “I wink I’ll wop wound to Woden wopping wentre to wet a woo wings.”

Four days in Melbourne

It was 10.15pm when I got back to Canberra, after an eight hour trip. Eight hours seems to be the time it takes me to drive between Canberra and Melbourne. I don’t quite know how I did the trip in seven and a half hours on my first run through, but that was in the MR2. Maybe I was speeding.

The speedo in the EXA reads high – in so far as I can tell 110 on the dial is actually 100, and 120 is actually 110km/hr. The highway speed check systems that are put on the highway every now and again are a great service. Though I have to wonder why so many of them have been installed on sections of the road that are on a slope. This is a difficult situation for people driving a standard car without cruise control. I find I’m forever adjusting the throttle to try and maintain a constant speed to compare it with the over head indicator. The trouble with that is that I could be accelerating or decelerating at the point in the road where you pass the speed sensor, which kind of makes the whole thing pointless.

It was a fabulous trip, and with the new tyre fitted the vibration that worried me on the last trip was gone. I enjoyed it immensely, except for the last couple of hours from Gundagai to the ACT, at night. I don’t have a heater in the car. The return trip contrasted with the run to Melbourne with the sun in my eyes. I have to wonder if when engineers and surveyors are planning highways they consider just how they can annoy motorists, for a bit of mischief. I can imagine them sitting in their site office looking at a topographic map of the district where the road is planned to run, and considering the options of where to site the road. I can just imagine a handful of young civil engineering graduates who might have been sitting around in a site office under a shady tree in a paddock in the middle of nowhere, before the Hume Highway had been built. I can imagine these highway engineers in a conversation, joking around, wondering where the sun sets in the afternoon, and then having the highway surveyed so that at certain times of the year the sun hits you square in the eyes as you top the crest of a hill. Just kidding; this would never happen, would it? Would it? Surely, not.

After taking advantage of an early break from work (3 hours) I got to Melbourne at about 10.00pm. Squeak, one of our cats, bolted out the door as soon as she saw me. Frightened of the stranger at the door. She always was a scardy cat, but it hasn’t been that long since she’s seen me. And Elsa, our other cat, ignored me. What a welcome. S is obviously the only one who loves me.

What a huge house this place at Warrandyte seems. It’s funny how you forget things. Oh, well, there is an excuse for the cat’s behaviour. The polished wooden kitchen bench tops seemed strange and stood out. I guess I was getting used to the plastic bench tops of where I was in Canberra. The lounge room seemed huge. Outside so much had grown; even the weeds.

I spent more time lazing around than I should have, but made good inroads with the list of things to do. There was a stuck key to the back door that had been broken off in the lock, not long after I left. It took me two minutes to get the broken key from the back door lock, and here was S unable to get out the back door for about 6 weeks. A quick tug with a pair of long-nose pliers and it was easily pulled out. We bought a new hand-truck to help get the old fridge and dishwasher onto the street for the hard rubbish collection that the council had planned. So, that was a bit of good luck that resolved a problem and the expense of taking it to the dump. I should have bought a hand truck years ago. I used it the whole weekend, and advocate anyone who is doing a move go get one. They are very reasonably priced at the large hardware stores.

It’s amazing how the wildlife takes over the things you don’t use often. We had an old fridge in the garage. The fuse blew as soon as I switched it on. I hope I didn’t electrocute any of the little creatures that seemed to be setting up home in there. The fridge and a dishwasher had to be dumped. It was kind of sad dumping these two items. The dishwasher was a Bosch. It was a brilliant appliance. We had it for years and it was superb, and it had been in the house when we bought the place. I must get another Bosch as this one gave fabulous service and lasted for years. So, now we have a gap in the kitchen where the dishwasher used to be. Is it better to have a hole where the dishwasher used to be, or have a dishwasher in place that doesn’t work? The punters, when they come walking through, might see there’s no dishwasher, and take brownie points away from their assessment of the property. On the other hand they might think, “beauty, I can buy my favourite brand.” These things are hard to say, really.

The vegie patch up the back looked great, and I saw the new brick path that S had put in. We were sitting under a shady tree having a cuppa, and I was looking around at the house and garden. There were certainly some things that were wrong with this place, work that needed to be done, but by and large it was a nice property. We had put a lot of time and work into this place and it was about to go on the market. Were we making the right decision? At that moment I could have easily stay there for ever. Have you spotted the image at the top of my blog? The garden was an oasis.

I used to go snow skiing. One of the tips the experienced skier will always pass along to novices: Get fit before your ski trip. The same advice can apply equally to preparing a house for sale and or moving home. I began to do some real work that weekend, and discovered how unfit I was. I found myself becoming exhausted after only a sort time.

I packed the car on Monday with another load of things. You can’t get too much into a car that is not more easily left to removalists, but I think it does help. There are some things I’d prefer not to leave to removalists. Delicates and valuables, mainly, and of course, the newly repaired TV went back with me. Tom Kerkhof Television is the guy I've been using and he's good and resasonably priced. Give him a try if live in the area; though it probably is a bit much driving from Canberra like I did, but what the hell.

Our various trips up and down the Hume Highway have fallen into a routine of stopping at the McDonalds come petrol station, service centre, combination that’s not so far from Benalla in Vic for a snack and fuel stop, and then again at the Gundagai McDonalds in NSW to do the same again. I can’t actually stand McDonalds stuff. McDonalds don’t cater for vegetarians in a big way, the serves are meagre, and the thick shakes, while they taste okay, gives me an after effect in my throat like I might need a doctor’s visit and leaves me with a niggling cough for ages after. The fish roll things McDonalds sell are mostly okay, but once again you don’t actually get much of it, and because few other people actually order them, there never seem to be any ready and you always have to wait for them. At least that means they are fresh. Have you ever tried those apple pies that they do? In my experience, apple pies should be baked. McDonalds apple pies seem to be deep fried which makes them the biggest yuk I’ve ever come across. So, I continue to stop at the same places and phone home for a chat from each one. Poor S was feeling flat when I rang from McDonalds. I hope we can sell up and buy a new place quickly.

Melbourne bound

I’ll be on my way back to Melbourne later this afternoon after work, and really looking forward to getting back there for a few days. I packed a few things last night ready for the trip. My little TV set stopped working recently. That will be going back with me to get repaired at my local television repair shop at Warrandyte.

Canberra drivers

This is a generalisation.

I’m not sure whether Canberra motorists are generally very polite or inexperienced or just happy to operate at a slower pace than I’ve experienced outside Canberra. It’s quaint, though a touch annoying. Let me provide a few experiences.

I doubt there would be too many instances in other cities, when approaching a set of traffic lights if there happen to be two or more lanes and more than one car waiting at a red light, that you’d find a free lane. I find it quite amazing, sort of quaint, when approaching a red traffic light here in Canberra to see three or more cars stopped and waiting for the light to change to green, to see every car queued in the left lane. In most cities I’ve been in, if one of the lanes is free that’s where the second car positions itself. Depending upon how pressed I am for time, when approaching traffic lights I try to assess who’s parked where, trying to spot the slow vehicles from the faster ones and pull up in the lane that is likely to get away quickest. Perhaps it’s a Canberra thing, with fewer people in a rush, and I must say I’ve slowed down mostly, and I too keep to the left leaving the right lane free for anyone who wants to speed away. You could just call it a level of courtesy that you don’t see much nowadays. Of course, you can get around Canberra so quickly; there just aren’t the traffic snarls of the bigger cities.

Though, this sheepishness gets annoying at times. I have been spending some time driving slowly around the Canberra suburbs, looking at the properties as I go. This is on the side streets that are off the main roads, of course. I’ve been driving at perhaps no more than 15 or 20 km/hr at times. You can’t drive much faster than that if you want to have a look at properties as you go. So, when I do this, if I spot a car coming up behind me I move over and drive well to the left, as close to the kerb as possible to allow other road users who might come up behind me get by without trouble. And some do overtake me. Isn’t that what you’d expect? Very few drivers overtake without hesitation. But my experience is that the majority of Canberra motorists slow down and drive behind me. This is crazy. Why don’t the shoot past me too. I have to admit that a few of the roads in the Canberra suburbs are narrow, being little more than a car width, and in those circumstances I pull over and stop. But some streets are so wide they could have lanes painted on the road, and still the cars line up behind me as I dawdle along the road despite me being close enough to the kerb that I could almost be parked. Do they forget that they can overtake me on the opposite side of the road?

Trolling the suburbs

I took a drive through the suburbs of Scullin and Page after work. There is a strange mix of posh houses here and there amongst what look like older public housing. The locals refer to the older government provided housing as ‘govies’. Presumably, a lot of bulldozing of these old houses and rebuilding goes on. Presumably if you can come across the opportunity of purchasing one of these older houses that may be a bit run down, and you can get it for (mostly) land value, you may come out okay building a swish house on the land. These govies often sit on fairly large blocks, compared with what is generally available today, in Canberra. This would also have the effect of gentrifying the district.

I also discovered the suburb of Macgregor. There are definitely some nice properties in this suburb. Though there are distinct divisions between and within the same suburb here in Canberra, and Macgregor is typical of the situation. Macgregor starts on fairly flat land and gradually climbs to reveal views of the northern Canberra suburbs to the Brindabella Mountains in the distance. It’s very obvious that the more wealthy people have built homes that reflect their incomes and live on the slopes with views to the mountain ranges, whereas the poorer residents live on the flats often in ordinary looking houses, sometimes in unkempt streets, with no views. And the views are magnificent in Canberra if you get high enough up the slope.

Auction

I went to a couple of house auctions, only one of which sold. I’m beginning to get around Canberra and feel quite comfortable in getting from one place to the next; never without the street directory of course. I came across Scullin and found it to be a very average looking suburb, which might mean the prices are average. That may not be such a bad thing. There was an auction so I called in to watch what happened. There was only one bidder at the auction and a lot of spectators. This individual was persuaded to open the bidding at $300,000 and with no other action the auctioneer placed a vendor’s bid at $350,000. That’s a staggering jump. Everyone was quiet and the property was passed in. The house had a small lounge room, a small main bedroom with ensuite. Though, the other bedrooms seemed larger than average. This house had a very small yard and there was a lot of work to do to the place. It was rough. I thought the opening bid would have been a fair price. Perhaps I knew less about the location that I thought, and Canberra property prices gave me a shock.

The next house was auctioned in a nearby well to do suburb. It was near the top of a rise with views to Mt Stromlo. A huge crowed of people were present when I arrived. It was a 4 bedroom house on a very large block with a neat but very plain garden. It had a lounge room that was smaller than my place in Melbourne, but 4 very nice sized bedrooms that were accessed from a central passage. It was a simple design but the elegant furnishings made it seem to be a very appealing property. Unfortunately, the extension that had been added looked like a tack on; possibly a veranda had been enclosed. The auction started at $500,000 with $25,000 rises, slowing later, and selling for $775,000. It went well above the reserve. Possibly someone was trying to buy into the street rather than the property. The price didn’t seem worth it. Perhaps that’s just Canberra. Ouch!

Canberra suburbs

I was driving around some of Canberra’s northern suburbs, including Aranda which had a certain appeal to me. I find this a pleasant way of getting to know a town. On the way home from work I’ve been ambling (ie. driving) through the quiet streets having a look at what’s what. There are a lot of leafy suburbs that are brim full of character. And there are some that aren’t. The difference between those with money and those without is very apparent here in Canberra.

I had a look at Cook, Macquarie, Weetangera, and Hawker. There will be some million dollar views to be had from some of the properties at the top of Hawker. I spotted a for sale sign on a house near the top of the hill. I must check it out and see what it sells for when the auction comes up; at least I can see what the views are like.

The Canberra suburb and street names are something to behold. I don’t know how the locals handle many of them, but I can’t get my tongue around half of them: Weetangera, Gungahlin for instance, and how do you pronounce Ginninderra Drive. Anyone for a tongue twister?

Then of course, there is the political influence in Canberra with the naming of its suburbs. How would you like to live in Fraser? And while Fraser has a fine tartan, I don’t think any kind of honour to that clan was intended. I knew a Fraser once; not Malcolm though, but I doubt if the suburb was named after him anyway. Would you want to live in a suburb that reminds you of him? Alternatively, you could go for the suburb of Latham. This name would have little to do with Mark, but the name does have an association that might put some people on edge or swell with pride. Could you live there? I wonder if the suburb names attract people with the associated political views. Perhaps people don’t care.

For the nation’s capital, I’m surprised at the lack of political chit chat that goes on around the traps. The people I’ve come across in my travels here don’t seem to bother with politics, as much as I thought they might. Before I came to Canberra I thought it would have been awash with conversations and gossip about the politicians and their schemes and scandals. Perhaps I don’t mix in the right circles.

Old Bus Depot Market

Canberra has a great little market in a fabulous venue, and the name says it all: the Old Bus Depot Market. Have a look here. It’s all under cover, and there is a wide variety of stalls, which I must remember with Christmas coming up. Who wants to struggle with the heat and flies or wind and rain when you can stroll around the stalls in the shade? There’s a guy there squeezing fresh oranges, and offering a variety of other drinks from the middle ages; an Ethiopian food stall with some spicy dishes; and of course a stack of the regular art and craft traders.

I think I've just given away my preferences: more emphasis to food and drink than craft.

Out and about

I took a drive to Bungendore. This is a little town to the east of Canberra just over the hills, past Queanbeyan, in NSW. What am I saying? Almost everything outside Canberra is in NSW.

Bungendore could be the land of red necks. Maybe it is. Anyway, it was flushed with quite a few tourists including myself who were mostly just ambling aimlessly through the wide streets. There are craft shops and restaurants in Bungendore. It’s definitely a town that’s trying to entice the tourist. It'd certainly be a town to worth a second look.

This is a picture of the main street and here are a few more of the town. The only thing that had any lasting affect on me was the discovery of a great little photo studio. Well, more accurately it was a photo gallery that sold nicely framed photographs. But these photographs were some of the best panoramas of Australian landscapes I’ve seen in a long time. Seeing this place made my day. Click here and spend some time looking at this guy’s stuff. I used to like to call myself a photographer, having made quite a hobby of it in the past. Michael Scott Lees has done wonders to support photography as an art form. His work is absolutely superb. Look for yourself. Don’t miss it.

I took a drive through Canberra’s northern suburbs. Some of them are very squashy. I find it ironic that this ‘bush capital’ is plonked in a place in Australia that, on the face of it is swimming in space, and yet so many properties in Canberra have very small block sizes.

If I get into my car I can be on the road for less than 10 minutes and be in the country on a highway driving though fields of pasture with cows grazing. There are many places in Canberra where you can drive for several kilometres at 80 or 100km/hr as you drive from one suburb to another (yes, within the city) and not see and single house as you go. In fact, if you look to the left or right as you go, you’d think you were 100s of miles away from anywhere. Canberra is designed with suburbs squashed into ‘islands’ that are linked by main roads that are surrounded by bushland. In its own way, this design is unique and it’s a pleasure to experience, but if one of the costs of this design is to force people to live closer to their neighbours than is comfortable than I think the design needs review.

It’s not uncommon to see houses in Canberra occupying the majority of the building block. I seem to recall a time, not so long ago, when most houses occupied less than half the land area of the plot. A consequence of the small block/large house syndrome is that there is almost no rear garden space, and at best a very small front garden space, and with narrowing streets some suburbs have a very claustrophobic feel to them. The rear of some of these properties are so small that rather than being a space for a garden it is really just a yard to store a few odds and ends. What happened to the quarter acre block, I wonder?

There are times when people need to get out of the house. If you have space in the back yard you might willingly sit and rest your bones under a tree, and if you expect value for your time in any kind of personal retreat you really need a space large enough that gives you the feeling of escape rather than being confined between the rubbish bin and the hot water heater as you sit on the back door step. This claustrophobia isn’t the same everywhere in Canberra, but I find it depressing to see houses built so close to each other that the guttering on the eaves is almost touching the guttering on the eaves of the neighbour’s house. (When I say almost touching, let me get specific: think the width of your finger. Not kidding.) For a ‘planned’ city, I don’t see much planning here.

I think there is something lacking in the architect’s plan when it includes modern and wonderful interiors but overlooks the areas outside. Though in fairness to the architect, perhaps it’s an issue of boosting the profits of the developer at the expense of the punters by trying to squeeze more blocks of land out of the one development. Architects and planners of Australia: get a grip – start correcting these mistakes.

Yass and Wee Jasper

A quick vacuum and tidy up of my things, and then out for the day before my landlady had her house open for inspection later in the morning. I ended up in Yass, a town directly north of the ACT, and went window shopping and generally had a look around.

Yass is not really far from Canberra and I gather a lot of people commute from there to work in Canberra. It took me about 30mins to get to Yass from the northern end of the ACT. So, commuting is quite a reasonable option. When I was in Melbourne I had a 10 or 15min car trip to the railway station, followed by a 45 or 50 minute train journey, and with the walk from the train to work my travelling time was always over an hour.

I found an antique shop in Yass. Oh what a beauty this was. It was jammed packed with stuff, and I had a fabulous time browsing. I’ve never seen such a place so chockablock packed with stuff. As I was walking into the store I heard a customer speaking to the storekeeper at the counter, “I can pay a few dollars to hold it.” I don’t know what he was purchasing, but it was the shopkeeper’s response that brought me to attention. “Don’t worry,” the shopkeeper said, “take it now and drop the money in when you can.” I couldn’t believe my ears. There are still some wonderful people around. Stuff like that renews my faith in the human race.

Back in the car, cruising around, I spotted a sign to Wee Jasper. I couldn’t resist. There was no way I could prevent myself from going to a place with a name like that. I had no idea in which direction it was, what, or where it was, but off I went. It took me along a narrow road through rural areas, with undulating hills. The wind was gently disturbing the grass in the fields, there was hardly any traffic, and it occurred to me that this is the sort of place I’d often wished to be when stuck in traffic in the city. The narrow road crossed the Murrumbidgee River and ended up at a general store, where I had lunch. There were a few other buildings, but it was a very small town. Wee Jasper boasts some caves, camping grounds, as well as walking tracks. I must get back there at some point.

A bonus to living in the ACT if you like to get out and about is that you are streets ahead of the folks in the larger cities. When I was living in Melbourne, Warrandyte was almost on the outskirts which means there was about a 20 minute drive through that area before you are starting to get into the less built up areas, but it takes about an hours drive on top of that to get what anyone might call the country. If I wanted to go south, I loved The Prom (still do), you have about an hour’s drive through busy city traffic before you get to the other side of town and the beginnings of getting anywhere. But my experience, living in this bush setting, a 10 minute drive puts you in the country, in 30 minutes you are in what seems like a remote rural setting, like Wee Jasper, a place of dreams for city workers.

Getting around

There was a Nissan EXA advertised for $150 in the newspaper. The turbocharger in my EXA needs to be replaced. And for that price I might be able to remove the turbo and throw the rest of the car away. Well, that was my idea in checking it out. There must have been a lot of interest as it had been sold by the time I got there. Anyway, it didn’t have a turbo. The turbo had been removed, extractors fitted, and the air inlet pipe that would normally have gone to the turbo went straight to the inlet manifold. Now that’s an interesting idea I could use if my turbo gets much worse. The car is beginning to put out some smoke when I decelerate, to say nothing of the noise that comes from the engine when the turbo kicks in under hard acceleration. It sounds terrible and I try to avoid it. Consequently, when I accelerate from traffic lights I do so gingerly. I doubt if too many other road users appreciate my sluggish driving habits.

It was a nice day so I spent the time driving around the Canberra suburbs, ending up on Mt Ainslie, and what a wonderful view can be had from there. I’m pleased to be able to get around Canberra okay. Though, you can’t go to anywhere unfamiliar without a street directory. In fact, I saw a couple of people walking in a quiet suburban street one evening after work, and one of them was carrying a street directory in their hand. There’s hardly a straight street in Canberra, and with so many no through roads, crescents, and curved roads it’s so easy to loose your way or sense of direction.

My landlady advised me she is having the house open for inspection on Sunday. I’ll have to clean my part of the house beforehand. She's selling her house privately; no agents for her. They do take hefty commissions. So, I'll be interested to see how things go. It's an idea I have been toying with. She has a very plain ‘for sale’ sign in the middle of the front garden, and when she has an 'open house' places a sign at the end of the street directing any passers by toward the house, and another sign on the footpath out the front. And then just waits for punters.

I found the car wrecking yards. They seem to congregate in the nearby NSW town of Queanbeyan. Canberra must be too good for this type of business. Anyway, none of them had any turbos available that were suitable for my car. I’ll keep my eyes open.

There is a sharp contrast between Queanbeyan and Canberra. It doesn’t take long to get used to Canberra’s clean and tidy appearance with few electricity power lines on the streets, no corner shops, and curved suburban streets that generally don’t go anywhere. Most other places, including Queanbeyan, are built in a rectangular street pattern, where there is often a corner shop, with ribbon shopping strips on the main roads as you get closer to town. On the other hand, Canberra tends to have clusters of shops grouped into tiny shopping precincts. I went into town for the first time; they mostly call it Civic. The centre of Canberra is very unlike most other CBDs. The majority of the shops seem to be built into a mall, though I must say, a very large mall. But when I say mall, I don’t mean like Rundle Mall or the Bourke Street Mall. Think about your local Westfield shopping centre mall, and then think much, much bigger. It took me ages to find a petrol station in Canberra. You’ll seldom see any on a main road, as in most other cities. Usually they are tucked away in the suburbs out of sight. It must be something to do with having a clean tidy image.

One of the most delightful things about getting around Canberra is the system of main roads. They generally all have 80km/hr speed limits, which is very different from other cities. Travelling from one suburb to the next is best done by getting to your nearest main road, zipping up to 80, and the road signing is good here, and then getting off at some side street near your destination. I used to drive a taxi and you could often cut through just about any suburban side street and find yourself bypassing almost as many traffic lights as you wished, but you can’t do this in Canberra because so many suburban streets are no through roads or loops that take you back to the same road you just left. Of course, the advantage of that is that most streets in Canberra are quiet and serene.

Just getting started

So far my house-mate has almost been invisible. In the last few days I haven’t seen a soul. She leaves for work early and I don’t see her in the evening. It’s as though I have rented a house for the cost of a room. This means things are a bit quieter than I expected, but there are no fights over who watches what on the telly.

There was a house in the next street to ours in Melbourne that was up for sale. I had a look at the photos of it on the web, and it seemed a tad run down; particularly the kitchen. S went to the open inspection and thought the place was much worse than the pictures showed. It’s good to have a look at the opposition; to help set the price. Don’t just rely on what real estate agents might say. They can be wildly wrong, either setting the price too high or low to suit their own ends.

The kitchen cabinets were pretty bad apparently, but looked mostly okay in the photographs. I wonder if they were touched up. So there’s a concern: how do you advertise your place, which includes photos as well as the description, that shows it off well but doesn’t exaggerate. In some ways the photographer needs to use a wide angle lens to capture everything that’s on offer, but sometimes when you get to a place thinking it was a certain size only to discover the reality is vastly different. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, because everyone else does it. Do you do anything to get the punters coming around and risk them being disappointed, or do you adopt a more honest approach and show pictures that are as true as you can get them. I don’t know if there is an answer to that. No one is going to point out the flaws when selling, but I would err on the side of honesty in my descriptions.

Presentation is everything

I had a list emailed to me, of things to do before the house gets put on the market. Things were getting organised at home, and this was a list of stuff that that needed to be done.

• chop fire wood,


• fit a moulding to the laundry door frame,


• fit moulding to the cornice in the study, and spa room,


• secure the lattice on the front decking,


• dump our old dishwasher and fridge,


• tidy the garage and clean out the rubbish,


• organise a trip to the dump,


• paint the bedroom, bathroom, study and spare room,


• get the broken key out of the laundry lock,


• repair hole in the driveway bitumen,


• repair kitchen bench top, and


• decide on the furniture to sell or keep.

A thorough tidy up and clean out like we’ve never done before, that should probably been done years ago.

If you’re selling your car, you clean and polish it. It should sparkle. The punters should be able to see their face in the paintwork. There should not be a single spot of dirt on the windscreen. So, it should be the same when you are selling your house. Give the punters nothing to complain about. Make them go oh-ah when they see your house.

There was an experience when selling my house in Tasmania that is burned into my psyche. The house was on the market for ages and not selling. The whole thing was getting us down. The house had a mezzanine floor. So, it was kind of two storey, and because of that it had huge sloping steel roof. There was also under house parking, and it had huge foundations for all this to rest on. The garden was neat and the block was adjacent to a park, where peacocks strolled on occasion. Actually, this park was one of Launceston's nicer places to be. The roofline of the house was a dominant feature of the building. It was a colorbond steel roof but it was looking a bit jaded and dusty due to oxidation over the years, but it was sound. We wondered that because everything else had been spruced up, and because the roof was such a dominant feature of the building, that it too needed some attention.

You can buy car shampoo that’s a sort of soapy preparation that leaves a shiny waxed effect when it dries. We got some of this wash & wax, donned overalls, and with buckets of the preparation clambered onto the roof, slopped it onto the steel sheets, rubbed and polished off the old oxidised layer and wiped it dry and clean. I’m sure the neighbours must have thought we were nuts. It was a little dangerous, but the view from the rooftop of a two story house gave an entirely different perspective of the suburb that became a bonus to a tedious job. The next day that roof glistened like new. No kidding. And it may have been coincidence, who can say, but after the Saturday open inspection on the very next weekend the house sold.

It was time to work on our Melbourne house, and make it sparkle too, and the list of things to do was just beginning. The trouble is, I’m in Canberra and the house is in Melbourne.

Mt Stromlo observatory

I wanted to have a look at some real estate on the weekend, but did the touristy thing instead. I happened to be driving near the Mt Stromlo observatory, which is very close to the Canberra suburbs. So, I drove up to have a look.

I was particularly interested in this, having a passing interest in science and having lived in Warrandyte which is a known bushfire hotspot. Though, I didn’t know about the Warrandyte bushfire risk before I bought the property. The Warrandyte house was a nice property in a very pretty setting. It was irresistible. Anyway, I knew the observatories at Mt Stromlo had been hit by the fire. It was on the news Nationwide. So, it was with a sense of empathy as well as curiosity that I went up there to see the place.

Within about a week of moving into the house at Warrandyte, a bushfire broke out in the Pound Bend reserve, which is only a few kms from where we were. Fortunately the fire was controlled relatively quickly, and was a tiny fire by most standards, but the experience put the wind up me. Following that experience summer used to scare me and I was always on the look out for smoke on the horizon. This is something to consider when choosing a place to live. If you want to live in a leafy setting, you are living with a bushfire risk. If this concept is too stressful, live in a more insulated traditional suburb. Of course, you can always buy a big water pump, fire hose, and tank, to help fight the fire yourself. But what if you aren’t at home when the fire breaks out.

The observatory has been decimated. A few administration buildings remain, but rebuilding is changing the look of the place. So much was destroyed. The area must have looked like a bomb site with many of the buildings just husks of their original. Plaques have been placed against each, telling of what they used to be like and the purpose they had. Some observatories were quite old, and boasted of being the largest or the best of their type, in their day, and may have lost some of their edge through the years. But it’s still distressing. They would have been in use, providing service for researchers, students, and others.

This photograph is one of many from Coombs Photography; please spend some time looking at the others, and look here for more information, and this too is interesting. My eye caught sight of a lampshade that had melted into a weird stalactite. The heat must have been intense. One of the steel frames which supported a telescope’s mirrors or lenses had what appeared to be very thick steel supports forming part of the apparatus. These steel bars were twisted and bent as the heat had softened the once straight steel, and with the affect of gravity these hefty bars had drooped into a vertical position, with the rest of the telescope pointing skyward. What sort of inferno can soften metal allowing it to bend like putty? Sad as all this devastation was, as it can be replaced with a bit of cash, one thing that caught my attention was that the data archives, the observations that had been recorded during the service of one observatory over a period of about a century, had been stored on site and were lost to the fire. Some data may have been hand written, perhaps with a quill. Though, I expect much of this data would have been copied, computerised, by various researchers as the need arose, but now the notion of going back to the source is simply gone for ever. I felt a tear forming.

Sorry to go on about this but it really got to me. I was reading a CSIRO report about a year or so ago. Various people had related their experiences and opinions, and the thing that struck me at the time was the disorganisation and inefficiency in getting the right people into fighting the fire, when there was still time to do so. Two things that hindered fighting the fire struck me in particular. There were a number of bulldozers at the ready, to cut fire breaks. They weren’t used, or not used early enough, because they had not been washed after their last job. Washed. Do you like that? The resistance to using them centred on the risk of spreading weeds by seeds caught up in the mud and dirt on the machines from their previous work. Stuff the weeds, in my view. Spray the ground with zero after the fire, if necessary. It also seemed that fire trucks were not allowed into certain areas because the terrain and access was undetermined by officials. That’s a reasonable concern, but on some occasions the land owners were present, and despite their local knowledge their advice was ignored. That just doesn’t seem right.

A place to live

Up early on the weekend, packed the car ready for the move, and checked out of the motel; it’s funny how you can never repack things the way you had them before. When I arrived at my new home in Dunlop I found that a double bed had been put into the room. So, I’m unpacking my stuff, and was getting some sheets and blankets out to make up the bed when I discovered it already had been made up with matching sheets and pillow slips. There were also towels in the bathroom. Later I found a mat in the bathroom. I’m being fussed over. I felt quite touched.

S had been cleaning up the back yard at Warrandyte. She laid a new brick path in the veggie patch. There was a pile of old bricks that had the mortar chipped off them and they became pavers. She suggested we buy a new ute, pointing to the advantages of a reliable car and perhaps leasing it. I’ve never been impressed with new cars. I think used cars make much better deals any day.

Rental properties

I contacted the staff office at work saying I’d be out of the motel early. It turns out that I have to claim my removalist costs within 6 months from my starting date, but she did say there was flexibility regarding how I get the stuff shifted. I must keep a note of that.

I had a look at a bed-sitter after work. It was $160 pw advertised with polished floors (ie. no carpets) described as spacious (did they mean no bed) and partly furnished (it had a fridge, small table and chairs in the kitchen). It did have a lovely garden and was on a nice street.

I think I’ll definitely be moving into the place at Dunlop.

Boarding

One of my new work colleagues, on hearing that I didn’t have a permanent place to live suggested putting out a request via email at work. I did this and very quickly got in touch with someone. So, I took a drive out to the northern Canberra suburb of Dunlop to see what might be my new home. The young woman seemed pleasant, and seemed happy to have me. It was all very casual and informal; which kind of surprised me. Well, I was a stranger, after all. Of course, she pointed out the obvious, “Well, I know where you work.” So we agreed that I was to move in on the weekend. I was good for both of us. She had her house on the market and I moved in on the understanding that I might have to move out at short notice. It was a dicey arrangement, but there wasn’t much else for me to do. She had a very nice house, and that made the decision to stay so easy.

I took the car to a local repairer, and got it fixed. A new tyre did the trick. The suspension wasn’t about to fall off the car, after all. The problem turned out to be a tyre fault. Part of the steel belting that runs through the tyre’s construction had popped through the tread, or a fault in the tread had exposed it; one or the other or both. It’s a wonder the tyre remained inflated. Presumably, as the damage got worse it reduced the speed that I could drive. I can only guess that each time I stopped that car on the trip that I had stopped with the dodgy part of the tyre on the road surface, and out of view.

I was generally impressed that this repairer didn’t see me as some out of towner and soaked me for work not done. He also seemed to think the turbo might need some work, and a turbo repair job might be in the order of $1200. That would be a bill that I don’t need at the moment. The turbo had been noisy for some time, but I always drove carefully.

A great real estate web site

Canberra has a great web site for real estate. The AllHomes site has the ACT well and truly covered plus a few surrounding areas of NSW. This is a particularly good resource and I recommend you have a look at it.

There are a lot of rubbish sites on the web that are used for real eastate, and some are so annoying to use but you often don't have an alternative. In Melbourne I couldn’t find a decent web site that covered everything in the area I was looking in. Oh sure, there are web sites that list lots of properties, but the trouble is that with the sites I’ve used either their search engines don’t work properly or they have been designed to include a lot of unnecessary listings. For example, if you want to search for properties for sale, say, in Bayswater in Melbourne you would enter Bayswater in the search box. A reasonable request I would have thought. But these horrible web sites are likely to return a listing of properties including St Kilda or Queensland as well as Bayswater. With the AllHomes site, you select the suburb and it comes up with the listing, no more, no less. It also includes various maps that are excellent in locating properties that you’ve just got to see to believe.

Anyway, I spotted a couple of rental properties that looked good. I drove past them after work and there is some potential there. Next step: catch up with the elusive real estate agent and have a look inside.

Don't forget the important things

This is my first day at work, and thankfully everyone has been very welcoming. I met the staff office person I had been dealing with over the phone. She was a stickler for detail, and wanted to sight my degree before putting me on the payroll. I didn’t know where it was, except that it was in Melbourne, somewhere. You know, in one of those safe places that you forget as soon as you walk out the room. However, she softened, saying as my qualifications for the job were based on work experience rather than my area of study it would be unnecessary. My new boss was good to me, and having been new to Canberra herself had a lot of useful advice for me. She mentioned in regard to renting that LJ Hooker want a lot of cash up front for the bond and they have a multi page check list to go through. It sounded ominous.

Early days in Canberra

I had a motel room paid for by my employer, and the accommodation was fine. I had breakfast in a nearby shopping centre; Westfield Belconnen. These complexes seem to be the same everywhere you go. Inside the mall it was easy to forget that I was now in another state. It’s a pity the architects don’t have a bit more imagination, and vary the design from one to the next.

I bought myself a street directory and studied the real estate section of the local newspapers over breakfast. My first priority was to find a place to live; some rental accommodation. I couldn’t stay in the motel for long, as I was only funded for a short time. There were quite a few ads, but it’s difficult when you don’t know your way around. I got in touch with a few real estate agents, and soon discovered that Real Estate agents don’t help out much for renters, at least not in Canberra. This is probably related to the ratio of rentals properties and punters looking for them. Still, it’s early days yet. One thing I did forget to bring, not having rented for years, was that the real estate agents want references. I used to rent in Melbourne, and I could have got a reference from the agent who managed the property I rented. I didn’t give it a thought, which was a bit of an oversight.

Feeling lonely I rang home. There were a few bits and pieces I had advertised on ebay when I was in Melbourne. We used to have a ute that gradually fell apart. I got $50 for it on ebay. This car had so much rust in it that you could actually see through it in spots, and the engine had blown a gasket. So, the $50 was okay. We sold a dog kennel for $26. I suppose we could have left the kennel for the new owners of our house as it wouldn’t have been in the way, but having an old car in the driveway was definitely a problem. So getting some cash for it was okay.

Ebay is a funny thing to deal with. I also had an old cement mixer for sale. I bought it second hand for about $80 or so, about 10 or more years ago. It was a rough old machine when I bought it, but it worked. It needed new bearings when I bought it, but somehow it survived without any attention, and I made it do a lot of work. Anyway I put it up on ebay for $30 because I thought that was a fair price, and if that’s all I got for it I would be happy. So, I was surprised to see the bidding getting up to $50. Mixers must be hot items on ebay, but I was feeling embarrassed because it had seen better days, and the neighbour borrowed it at one point leaving it uncleaned; there was a fair amount of lumpy bits on the inside. (There’s a lesson - don't lend your stuff.) I put a note on my ebay ad advising the bidders to slow down, that the mixer wasn’t in pristine condition. I asked them to study the photograph, and I reemphasized the problems, but they kept bidding, and I sold it for $120.

On the road

Eventually everything came together. The car was packed to the brim with just enough room to squeeze behind the wheel. A kiss, a hug, a farewell, and off I went. It was both a sad and exciting experience.

I wanted to pack as much as possible to help lessen the load when the big move took place, and I might have had to set up house in an unfurnished flat for months. So, I included a blow-up mattress, card table, folding chairs, crockery and the like, along with my personal stuff. It was comfortable enough in the car, but I couldn’t push or tilt the seat back had I wanted to, and I could barely see out the rear vision mirror, and the passenger’s seat was full too. The fuel economy wouldn’t have been too great, and getting to the spare wheel would have been difficult should I have needed it.

The drive out of Melbourne was perfect. It was a fine day, and an easy trip on the freeway was just what I wanted particularly with the car so precariously loaded. Albury is the half-way point, almost. It’s a great feeling when you cross the state border. It feels like you are really beginning to get somewhere; a landmark of the miles travelled.

So what happened to the freeway? Why is it that the Victorian government can provide a top class highway from one end of the state to the other (Melbourne to Wodonga) and when you get into NSW you are hit with a mixture of freeway and second-rate roads? This is Australia’s number one highway and all the NSW government can do is build sections of freeway interspersed with narrow single lane roads. With the amount of traffic that highway carries, it is dangerous.

The countryside in NSW along the Hume Highway is fabulous. The sun was going down behind me and it brought out the textures in the landscape. The view was unforgettable, and I can still see it in my mind’s eye. I wished I knew where I had packed the camera. I would have taken a few photographs. It must have been about half an hour before sunset, the shadows were getting long and the light was fading, and suddenly a bumping vibration started from under the car. It was a heavy, regular, fast vibration that pushed the car from left to right slightly. Oh no, a puncture. It felt like one of the rear wheels because the steering was still light. Thankfully this occurred on the freeway section of the road, and I was able to pull to the side of the road without bothering other road users in any way.

So, I stopped, got out, and walked around the car. All the tyres were okay. That was odd. I looked under the car, but it was getting dark and I didn’t have a torch. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Everything seemed fine. I felt the tyres; they were warm but not hot. There was plenty of air in them. This was a mystery. There was nothing to do but get back in the car and go on. I took it easy, expecting something to fall off at any time, but there was no trouble. The car was running nicely. Perhaps one of the wheels had picked up something from the road that had stuck to one of the wheels, and now it was gone. Then just as I was beginning to relax, thump, it came back again. The car was trying to wobble all over the road. Is the suspension falling off, I wondered, and I immediately slowed down, and the vibration stopped. It was sensitive to speed. I thought I knew what it was; one of the wheel balance weights must have fallen off and the wheel was out of balance. Anyway, I stopped to have a look. As far as I could tell the wheel weights were all in place, and there was no sign of any weights missing, like a ‘clean’ spot on the wheel. It was almost dark now. I grabbed each of the wheels in turn at the top, and shook them as hard as I could. I was trying to feel for looseness. Everything seemed tight. Back into the car and I drove carefully. Everything was fine. I found that I could drive the car up to about 110km/hr and if the speed crept up too high the vibration started. Well that was an easy fix; watch the speed.

From then on the pleasure of the journey had gone. Whatever was wrong was getting worse. I couldn’t drive at 110 anymore, because the vibration started to kick in at 100km/hr, which was just fine because sections of the highway have a limit of 100 and that wouldn’t have bothered anyone else. As I took the turn off to Canberra at Yass I couldn’t drive any faster than 80, which would probably have been annoying for other road users. The highway is a narrow single lane road between Yass and Canberra, for most of the way, and there was me hogging the road. Luckily there wasn't much traffic.

There was one other thing that happened on this memorable trip. This little car had been in storage in a corner of the yard. The car had had a car cover over it for about a year or more. When I took the cover off and began to clean up the car, there were some little droppings over parts of the bonnet. I had also noticed that a few fibre pieces from under the bonnet had been ‘nibbled’ by something. I think a few little mice had been running around under the car cover and perhaps trying to set up home under the bonnet. We used to have chickens and a few ducks right next to where the car was parked, and if you have chooks you tend to have rodents. Anyway, although you wouldn’t call October a particularly cold month it gets chilly at night. So here I am on the highway with the sun going down, and the temperature dropping. So, what else do you do but turn on the heater, but all these little droppings I found on the bonnet when I took the car cover off must have only been part of it, and I suspect a bucket load of droppings had fallen into the heater vent that runs just in front of the windscreen. The smell that came out of the heater was nauseating. This stuff stinks in normal circumstances, but here was me plying hot air on it when I turned on the heater. It was switched off in a flash. Of course, the windscreen fogged up with no demister. So, on this beautifully clear, icy cold night, I drove with the window wide open. I finally reached my destination in one piece, but cold and weary.

Expect the unexpected

My initial starting point in this adventure was simple. Get myself to Canberra to start my new job. I was leaving the Melbourne house in trusted hands with the task of getting it ready for sale. My more pleasurable task, on the other hand, would be scouting around the Canberra suburbs in search of a spot we’d like to live.

You just can’t plan everything, and allowing yourself extra time is essential to ensure you get everything done before you spiral into a panic. Expect the unexpected is probably a good motto.

Before I could head off I had some work to do on my old Nissan EXA before it would be ready for the trip. The front brakes were dodgy, the CV joint boots were torn, and the front wheel bearings had never been replaced. A front-end job was needed. I could do much of the work myself which would save heaps of money. Although things went to plan by saving on repair costs, I went off the rails due to a delay in getting the specialised mechanical work done. I had been using a small automotive outlet in Greensborough for many years; Deymo in Greensborough. They do pretty reasonable deals. They were a small business that I found I could trust. There are not many of them left. So, I don’t mind giving them a plug, and that’s where I took my bits and pieces to be serviced.

Anyway, because it took me longer than expected to get the components off the car, the person who was going to service them had gone on leave or something. I had to wait an extra week that I hadn’t planned on.

Welcome

With a new job interstate the old house was to be sold and another purchased interstate. There are a lot of things that can go wrong. However, having done this sort of thing a few times I don’t consider myself a novice. But unexpected things do happen. By following my experience, these jottings might prevent you from getting into trouble. Moving to a new place is exciting. It’s also a lot of hard work, but you should aim for a stress free experience.

It'll get underway next month.