Preparation gets serious

I didn’t manage to get all the painting completed in the main bedroom on this trip to Melbourne. It’s so tricky and time consuming painting cornices, when they are a different colour from the ceiling and walls. I threw in the towel at 2.00am. There was no way I could possibly finish the job at the rate I was going before it was time to leave. Anyway, I was beginning to feel wobbly on the ladders, and there’s no point risking an injury over a coat of paint.

With two and a half hours sleep under my belt I was whisked off to the airport. For the first time ever and despite my child like fascination of the view from aeroplane windows, I dozed during the bulk of the flight back to Canberra. I felt dead all day at work. I hope no one noticed. I couldn’t concentrate on work, and left for the day earlier than usual. I caught the bus home, but unfortunately got on board the wrong bus and had to walk miles in the hot afternoon sun.

Less than 12 hours earlier I was cleaning paint brushes in another state, and here I was trudging along a street swishing flies away on a hot afternoon. What a day!

Not sure why my back was aching: because of the strange angles I was standing while hanging onto the ladders, or because we slept on the lounge room floor on the last night trying to avoid the paint smell that was in the bedroom.

So many things didn’t get done on this trip, but a lot did get done. The house is taking shape ready for sale, but oh, it’s a slow, painstaking, painful, tedious, boring job. I'll say more shortly.

I phoned home in the evening. S said that Elsa (our cat) was pining for me. She had been wandering around the house looking for me. Poor thing. I played a trick on her when I got home. When I arrived, I crept quietly into the house by the back door, and tiptoed into the bedroom, hid behind the bed, and called her name when she walked past. She took a double-take when she saw me. Okay, I’m a softy for our cat. Her nineteenth birthday has just gone.

Bonython in the Deep South

There was a property in the deep south of Canberra that I’d spotted earlier. S was interested in everything about this house in Bonython. The web really comes into its own in this situation. We can both view the same web site, and at least get some idea of what each other is talking about when we are discussing properties. It would have been so difficult otherwise.

So, I arranged a visit with the agent one lunch time to have a second look. It was a 25 minute trip from door to door, from work to the house. Real estate agents will just about fall over themselves trying to help you if they get wind of a possible sale.

The house was a bit rough in spots, and there was a general run down look to the place that I’d missed on my first visit. There were stains on the roof where the screws are located (rust), the timber on the steps was soft (wood rot), the veranda looked roughly made particularly with the handrails being roughly sawn timber and badly in need of painting, there were dead pot plants around the place and things that needed repairing. But for all that this place seemed sound. Once again, the asking price seemed high for what it was. But this is Canberra. There was a note in the news saying that, “The median house price in Canberra jumped 6.7 per cent in the December quarter to almost $507,000.” Oh, joy.

Its amazing what you miss on the first visit that you see second time around. One of the nice things about this place was that it had a toilet and sink in the garage. It would be great to be able to clean up after some work in the garden or after working on the car, without trudging the dirt into the house.

I took lots of pictures, so we’ll have a virtual tour happening when S gets to view them. Off to Melbourne for an extended Australia Day break for more painting and clean up jobs, and am getting a ride to the airport courtesy of my lovely land lady. It'll be nice to be home again.

North vs South

I had an interesting conversation at work. I was talking about some of my experiences on my property search. I was speaking, in a favourable light, about the properties in the south of Canberra, and there was an overwhelming exclamation, “you don’t want to live down there.” As you might gather, I work in a northern suburb and most of the people who work there also live in the northern Canberra suburbs. There is an actual north-south divide between the people here. It reminded me of the Sydney – Melbourne rivalry. Certainly, with my job in the north of Canberra there is an incentive to live locally, for ease of travel.

Though, from my experience of Canberra so far I couldn’t really spot much difference between the north or south. There are posh districts as well as run-down trashy streets distributed all over Canberra. In my observations, the roads, streets, shops, and general appearance of the north seems much like the south. Canberra is pretty much the same where ever you go, but that’s only me.

The only mildly negative aspect I had noticed in the south of Canberra was that there appeared to be more young men hooning around in their hotted up cars; more than I have noticed in the northern suburbs, but that could be coincidence. I also noticed more burn out tyre mark circles in the middle of street intersections in the south, but you get them everywhere, and that too could have been coincidence. I definitely noticed a lot of bent street signs down there, that I haven’t spotted in the northern suburbs. This of course could be a phase. Perhaps the age group of youngsters prone to that kind of behaviour have predominance in the south, that they may have grown out of in the north.

Anyway, despite the pressure of their attempts at persuading me against the south, I won’t let up and will consider everywhere in my real estate hunt.

Another real estate hunting weekend

There was a house for sale in Macgregor that I’d seen a week or so previously, and I returned for a second look with my camera in hand. I took a swag of photos for S to look at. She seems keener that me. Maybe I talk up the properties too much. Of course, that’s the trouble with me being in Canberra and her being in Melbourne.

It’s interesting what people will put up for sale. There was ducted air conditioning in the house, which would have been a bonus, but I noticed something on the outside of the house. There was what looked like an air return for the air conditioner in the hallway. Not sure. Some sort of vent. On the outside of the house, on a section of the wall near where this air return would have been positioned, there was a large discolouration in the brickwork. Condensation? I had an image of the brick cavity being full of water. Hardly likely, but air conditioners can develop condensation. It had me concerned. There was also some cracking of bricks running up from this area to a nearby window. It may have worried other punters too, so why didn’t they fix it. I find it difficult to work out why people leave things like that. Structural repairs can be expensive. Would you sell a car with a flat tyre or broken windscreen? Who knows, maybe that problem was one of the reasons the place was being sold; to get rid of their problems.

I also checked out the deep south of Canberra. Banks is one of the southern most suburbs of Canberra. I thought it was bit like Dunlop but with views, and boy, are some of those views spectacular. There seem to be a lot of new houses as well as building activity. There are a lot of large houses on small blocks in Banks, and a lot of them don’t have any style to them. Building houses without style seems to be an architectural trend I’ve noticed in recent years.

I had been passing a property in Banks that had an open-house sign out the front. So, why not just have a look; nothing to loose. It was a hot day, and the coolness of its air conditioned rooms was welcome. It wasn’t a property for me; far too large, but I had a pleasant chat while there. The very friendly real estate agent gave me the address of a house in Gordon, which is also in the south, and not too far away. We had a chat about Canberra weather. Her advice: get a house with central heating, saying that it can get into minus figures during winter in Canberra. And of course, as I am only too well aware it gets darn hot in summer. So, an air con too presumably.

I had a look at the Gordon house the agent had recommended. No one was living there so I peered in the windows and had a walk around the property, but my attention was taken by the view to the south west. The panorama of the ranges that was visible from the property was astounding. There are some beautiful vistas to be had in the northern side of Canberra, but none are a patch on the rugged majesty of southern districts. Being a bit closer to the hills makes a lot of difference.

The conveyancer

A conveyancer was selected. It does no harm to get things organised early. The conveyance fee was estimated at $470. Nothing is ever cheep. I find it interesting that in some states, such as in Victoria, you can choose to use either the services of a conveyancer or a solicitor to conduct the property settlement tasks. Solicitors are notoriously more expensive than conveyancers, but the job still gets done by whoever does it. So, I don’t know why people use lawyers, when there is an alternative. There must be a lot of very suspicious individuals out there who think that it’s only a lawyer who can be trusted to do the job properly. Of course, in some states there is no choice. The ACT does not use conveyancers and it’s the same in Tasmania.

I don’t think it takes too much imagination to guess that a legal practice is not going to set a top lawyer to the job of sifting through land ownership documents and the rest of the guff that’s required for a property transaction when they can put a clerk on the job who is on a fraction of the salary, and no doubt charge top dollar for the service. If that’s going to happen, why not use a conveyancer in the first places; there are dozens listed in the phone book. Save some money.

You might like to think that if you employ these people to look after your interests, then that’s what they might do. I purchased a property in Tasmania some years ago, and of course, employed a solicitor to manage the transaction. One of the things that annoyed me was a letter I received from the solicitor asking me to check that the property described on the title was in fact the one that I intended to purchase. This is a reasonable concern, and requires a certain expertise.

I recall watching an evening current affairs TV program some years ago. One of the program’s segments was about a builder who had mistakenly constructed a house on the wrong building block. The house was constructed on the block next door to the one it should have been built on. A house is a difficult thing to move after it has been constructed. This would be a difficult situation for all concerned. The block owner wouldn’t want to pay for a house they did not order. The intended owner wouldn’t want to pay for a house they don’t have. I’m not sure how this was resolved, but it’s a dilemma to be avoided.

The solicitor’s letter went on to say I should also check the boundary pegs to ensure everything was as noted in the title document. Have you ever tried looking for a boundary peg on your property? Very often they don’t exist. Perhaps if I were a surveyor I could get my equipment out and determine the boundaries from the nearest benchmark. I am not a surveyor, and was annoyed by their request. I wrote to the solicitor suggesting that it was their job to do this and should be part of the conveyancing service. They said they would not proceed until I confirmed the details were accurate, and suggested I employ my own surveyor if I had doubts about the property boundaries.

I wasn’t impressed. I can’t help wondering if you’d be just as well picking up some how-to book and doing your own conveyancing.

Flying home

Another trip to Melbourne is required. I booked an air fare this time. I just have to figure out how to get to and from the airport. There is an amazing amount you can do on the web. I don’t do a lot of air travel, and I was quite surprised; impressed in fact.

During my web browsing, I quickly lost faith with the WebJet and Flight Centre web sites, preferring to fly Virgin Blue. WebJet and Flight Centre, despite all you hear of them did not provide the cheapest fares. Their web sites do display a lot of options which is good, but they do like to grab some commission from you that you can avoid by going straight to the source. The Virgin web site was easy to use. I’m not sure if it was the cheapest, but at least there were no extra charges. Well, almost none. The prices seem to change and vary depending on the day of the week you want to travel.

Now, having got myself a flight organised I began to ponder the pros and cons of air travel vs. car travel. Travelling time by car between Canberra and Melbourne takes about 8 hours. The flight time for a trip between these two cities is a little less than an hour, or is it? Consider the following.

The drive to the airport from work will chalk up about 30 minutes, the flight time is a little less than an hour, and the drive from Tullamarine airport to Warrandyte is about an hour. It’s amazing how much time you can spend walking to and from car parks, so I’ll chalk that up to half an hour, and airport waiting around time is perhaps an hour, to say nothing of flight delays. All this adds up to about four hours for a one hour flight. In four hours I could have been half way to Melbourne.

Another interesting thing I noticed. On my web surfing, I had a choice of hopping aboard an international flight which stops over for domestic travellers. Well, I think that’s the arrangement, and because of the increased security for international flights passengers are required in the terminal 90 minutes prior to the flight; whereas Virgin require only 30 minutes. If I travelled Qantas my air tip starts to look like a five hour trip door to door. This all sounds like an argument to hop in the car and drive.

One of the great things I noticed with Virgin is that you can print your boarding pass anywhere you have access to the web, which can save you the hassle by avoiding one less queue. And if you are running really late and get to the airport just as the plane is boarding, you are still okay.

On the road again

I have always had the habit of glancing at the number plates of the cars that come my way. If they are in your home town you should be a bit more patient with them; they may be having a hard time getting around, and any courtesy you can offer will probably be appreciated. I also check out the number plates when driving interstate. Anyway, on the trip from Canberra to Melbourne, before Christmas, I couldn’t help but notice the number of cars that were overtaking me that had ACT registration numbers. At times, that’s all there was. It seemed as though every car on the road had ACT registration. There seemed to be a mass exodus from Canberra. Maybe Canberra shuts down during the holiday period. I’ve never seen the likes of it.

I’m becoming relatively accustomed to the Hume Highway. I’m also getting to know the sections of the highway where the pot holes are located and able to avoid them by changing lanes beforehand. The Hume carries a lot of traffic, and at times seems over crowded by trucks, which in itself can be a bit daunting, and may well be the main reason for the poor condition of this road.

It is generally always the left lane that is in poor condition. It’s generally the left lane that trucks use. That’s not a coincidence.

Despite the occasional road sign advising drivers to use the left lane, there is no way I’m going to drive in the left lane over ruts and pot holes that are potentially damaging and dangerous on a highway that should be properly maintained. The Hume Highway must be an embarrassment to the NSW government.

I’ve been driving for a few years having had a wide variety of driving experiences. In these few months I have been spending a lot of time on the road. The quality of truck drivers has declined, I’m sorry to say. There will always be idiots on the road. Though, with the following exceptions, most idiots are car drivers rather than truckies. In my experience of maybe 20 or 30 years ago truck drivers were generally good reliable drivers, who were courteous, and friendly on the road. They were something to aspire to. This is not quite the case anymore.

I was on a quiet country road late one evening, and I was shocked and amazed at the antics of two courier truck drivers. I was cruising on the speed limit on a relatively narrow country road, and a truck passed me like I was still in second gear. People speed and that’s okay if the road is up to it, but this particular road didn’t seem suitable for high speed driving; particularly not in a truck. Anyway I didn’t give it much of a thought at that moment, but the experience sticks in my memory because of what happened next.

In under a minute a second truck zoomed past me at much the same speed. It must have been going faster than the first because I could see that it was beginning to gain on the first truck. I was very curious so sped up to see what they were about. These two truck drivers were racing each other. The terrain was gently undulating and I could see the gap between the two trucks narrow as they twisted and turned on the road. Despite the lack of clear visibility the second truck pulled out to pass the first. For some reason it couldn’t overtake and pulled back behind the first; it pulled in so quickly that it wobbled on the road a few times. After a short time it pulled out again and started to overtake. So, here they were, two trucks with about the same engine power, and both drivers pushing them flat out, driving side by side. It took ages for that second truck to get past the first. With so much time on the wrong side of the road I was certain there was going to be a collision. They faded into the distance and I slowed to a reasonable pace. I kept my eyes open for the rest of my trip fully expecting to see the result of this pair’s stupidity. I was expecting to see blood and guts over the road, or hear the sound of an ambulance siren, as one of these two trucks had a head on collision with another vehicle. Fortunately, I saw nothing. Perhaps the collision occurred on some other road they may have turned off on to.

Then of course, you have those sections of the Hume Highway where the two lanes converge into one. And then you’ve got one semi trying to pass the other semi before the road runs out. Of course, every other motorist does this too. But when you see truck drivers behaving badly it seems so wrong. At times it is absolute madness on this road.

And so here I am, driving my little car on a one-lane section of the Hume, determined to keep within the speed limit, and I notice a semi in the distance coming up behind me. Over the next quarter hour or so I notice it getting closer, until all I can see from the rear vision mirror is the radiator grille of this monster. What did this truck driver expect? What goes through the minds of these people? I don’t doubt if the road had been less busy this truck would have overtaken me; I made it wait until the dual carriageway came our way and it shot past. It could have been that some inexperienced motorist might have succumbed to this pressure and driven faster; perhaps faster than they were capable of, which could have been dangerous, or cost them a speeding ticket. Be warned: some trucks have road handling capabilities far superior than some cars, can go a lot faster, and generally, a truck driver will know the road a lot better than you. Don't try and complete.

It’s not hard to work out exactly what’s on the mind of these people. A truck following by half a car-length will certainly put the wind up the motorist. It’s intended to do so. But that won’t be a legitimate excuse if you get caught by police radar for speeding. They want you to speed up. No one want’s 20 tons of truck looming behind you, and they know that. If a roo comes out of the blue and hops across the road in front of you, and you stand on the brake pedal there is no way a truck will stop as quickly as a car. That’s it, you’re gone.

I wouldn’t play the games of speeding up and slowing down, as I’ve done if a car has been following me too closely on multilane roads in the suburbs. Just keep to your guns and the speed limit and drive steadily and reliably, but if it’s all getting too stressful for you pull over when it’s safe to do so and let them through. Don’t make them angry as they may behave worse to the next poor sucker. Put you indicator on to indicate that you are going to shift off the road, but get your revenge by slowing down gradually. Truck drivers hate slowing down; it takes too long for them to speed up again. Perhaps if they realise the only way they can get past motorists is for them to slow significantly while you pull off the road they might be more reasonable in the future by allowing a reasonable distance between vehicles.

Anyway, back in Canberra. What will the new year bring?

Working holiday

I spent a bit too much time having fun. But the weather was very hot at times so we went to the movies a lot. Got two rooms painted. Shell Cove was a strange colour that looked different on ceiling and walls which seemed to vary in colour between rooms. It looked pink in one room and yellow in the other. How is that possible?

I had never used a paint roller before, but it wasn’t so scary after all. Rollers leave a mottled finish on the surface that I dislike that the brush doesn’t, but you can cover a lot more area much faster with the roller. Over the years, we got into the habit of painting the walls, ceiling, cornices, and skirting board different colours, and wished to continue it. It looks good when done nicely, and when selling your property if your place looks good it will attract the punters. When I say different colours, the colours have to blend. The colours must be shades of one another. Perhaps a very, very light yellow on the ceiling, with a deeper yellow of the same hue on the walls and the cornice and skirting board in a mustard to make it stand out, but it too has to be of a colour that fits appropriately with the other two. So, painting the wall and ceiling was easy, but the cornices nearly broke my back in the painstaking work that it was with fine brush strokes and keeping a straight edge between the different colours.

S got me a video game for Xmas – Doom. I got hooked and spent hours at it. I shouldn’t have, but I was on holiday so I don’t feel too guilty. I don’t think Doom is a game you can win, and it was kind of scary if you let yourself become engrossed in it.

I was looking in the roof space for some cardboard packing boxes. After we unpacked from the move to Melbourne we had kept the old removalist packing boxes. We stored these fire hazards in the attic space. They store well when flattened out, and surprisingly after about 15 years in the attic still seemed remarkably well preserved.

While I was in the attic I saw about 4 or 5 rats climbing over the bricks at the far end of the house. There was no scurrying away when they saw me. Mamma rat and her children or friends stopped dead in their tracks, looked at me for a moment, looked away, and continued on their way as though I hadn’t been there and casually went about their business. A couple of rat traps were purchased; we got cages that captured the little blighters rather than killing them. Three were caught within two days, though we couldn’t decide whether they were baby rats or large mice. We released them away some distance from the house and they scurried into the bushland. They ran like the blazes.

I had been reading some material on the web and had made a few phone calls about rats and how they are controlled. One of the more interesting things one of the commercial contacts said to me was something along the lines of wherever you are at any time, on average, you will be within 10 metres of a rat, and it doesn’t matter where you live or work; they will be there. Some of the poisons used to kill rodents sound nauseatingly unpleasant. There seems to be no regard for animal welfare in their development. From preparations that cause rats to thirst to the extent they will drink until they are dead to chemicals that induce bleeding both internally and externally. These animals will suffer an agonizing death. My solution to remove them harmlessly will at least provide some nutrient to the local wedge tailed eagle or other wild life interested in eating them, but at least their death will be relatively quick. And if some of them get away to live in the wild, that’s fine.

Looking back I recall watching one of our cats sitting on the lawn looking up at a tree. This was a cotton palm tree. As an old cat, she was content to watch the rats. I didn’t know it at the time but these trees are a lovely refuge for rodents. One evening I crept up to the tree and could hear a lot of rustling between the large leaves that was more than just the wind blowing.