Batemans Bay

The coast is about 150km from Canberra, and Batemans Bay is the closest coastal town. Since arriving in Canberra, trips to the beach were infrequent because of the distance.

It’s a great drive to the coast, but the seaside is rather more than just a short trip across town as would be the case for most people living in Australian capital cities. There are rewards though. The extra time it takes to get to the coast is compensated by the fabulous drive in getting there. There is some beautiful scenery along the way. The journey is broken by the two small towns of Bungendore and Braidwood, and there are enough curves and hills to turn the trip into fun. Actually, these small towns make good rest spots or destinations in their own right. There's plenty of interest in Bungendore and the Bakery at Braidwood must attract hundreds of customers; I'm one of their regulars.

The Kings Highway is the route to the coast, which turns out to be about a two-hour trip for me. This is a section of the road a few kms east of Braidwood. Despite the wintery weather these trees are not dead and will transform this section of the highway into a beautiful avenue when spring arrives.This highway is sometimes reported in the press in relation to the number of motor vehicle collisions many of which are fatal. There are a few passing lanes on the highway, but obviously too few to make the road as safe as it could be. I wonder that the poor reputation of the Kings Highway may be due to the few reckless drivers who use the road as a race track. Some motorists can’t resist passing on blind corners or where visibility is poor, rather than waiting for a passing lane. These idiots put everyone’s lives at risk.

As a young man I recall a road safety campaign which promoted the slogan “speed kills” which caused me and my friends some amusement. We had the view that speed doesn’t kill, but it is speed without skill that kills. If you have good driving skills then driving at speed is perfectly safe. We were interested in motor sport as casual observers, and drove faster than we should have, but we could handle a car on various road conditions and speeds. You get to know your limitations, the capability of your car, and you get to know the road. If you keep within your limits you will likely be fine. But on this highway I still see some darn stupid behaviour.

If you must exceed the speed limit please have a care for other people on the road. If you have to overtake everyone and anyone ahead of you give a thought to road safety. Not everyone thinks like you. Not everyone has the same reaction times or the same driving skills or experiences as you.

Anyway, having settled in our Canberra property we inevitably had a look around regions beyond the ACT. Our explorations led us to the coast. From time to time we had a look at a few properties. The allhomes website is fabulous for checking out what’s available and where. There always seem to be a lot of property open houses at the coast. One thing led to the other and we purchased our second property there.

I guess the attraction of the coast just crept up on me. We had spent some pleasant times at Depot Beach, which is a little to the north of Batemans Bay. I’d never heard of Depot Beach. With a name like that it conjured up industry, pollution, or some sort of dump. Wrong! Depot Beach is a beautiful location. The quiet beach side drive has a wonderful outlook across a bay to a tree covered promontory of a national park.

I was introduced to Depot Beach when I spent some time helping a work colleague do some maintenance work on her beach side property. I did a spot of painting in return for a free stay at the beach house. A nice cheap holiday.

This is the view from the house. You could forget the problems of life in a place like this. Just let your mind drift. The beach was only a short walk from here, and with Depot Beach being a bit out of the way there were never too many people on the beach, which was nice. This house had a fabulous view of the ocean. At times was good just to listen to the thunder of the waves breaking on the shore. I think this experience may have enhanced the appeal of the coast for me, because at that time buying a coastal property was the last thing on my mind. I was just happy to be there. Here's a nice little web site that might persuade you as to the merits of Depot Beach. And I must give the house a plug too.

The following photo is also of Depot Beach. You can often expect this amount of people on the beach. Isn't it great? It was also at this beach that I lost my specs. I was wearing them in the water when a larger than expected wave caught me off guard. I know it was not a wise move to wear spectacles when swimming, but it can be useful to actually be able to see where you are going, even at the beach. Normally, I've been careful enough not to let them come to any harm. Perhaps it was a freak wave. I looked away and a wave wiped them from my face. I immediately dived for the bottom to see if I could locate them, but with the seaweed and the turmoil of the swell they were gone. I scanned the beach the next day walking up and down, but they were nowhere to be seen. I wonder where they'll end up.

The following will tell of my experience in buying a second property, the finances, the hassles, and of becoming a land lord.

The house we purchased was very basic. It has a set up which allows half the house to be rented whilst leaving the other half completely separate as a home away from home seaside retreat. The property is a comfortable walk to the beach, which is a treat I would never have believed possible.

Settlement took place about a year ago. If my experiences can help others avoid problems then that would be great. I’ll try and keep things mostly in chronological order, but if I get a few things out of sequence you’ll probably still get the gist of it, and hopefully make some use of my experiences.

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.