New Beginnings…
Well, we’ve been in our house for just over 3 weeks now and we’re starting to make some progress. Things haven’t gone as smoothly as we would have liked. The move itself was fine - some damage to our furniture but we have insurance so we’ll get that sorted out shortly. The 10 hour drive from Sydney to Melbourne with the cats in the backseat went surprisingly well - I was picturing stressed cats and meowing the whole way but they settled down quite nicely once we got underway. The main issue we’re dealing with at the moment is that we have no gas connection to our house, and therefore we haven’t been able to cook, heat our house, or use hot water since we got here!!! We’ve got temporary solutions in place - we bought a new BBQ with side burner so have been cooking on that (courtesy of insurance once we put in the claims as the movers broke our old BBQ). We also joined the rec centre which is at the end of our street so we’ve been going there every day for showers (it’s a fantastic complex with olympic size indoor pool, massive gym, and lots of cardio and other classes that I’ll be taking advantage of once we’re settled). The heat issue is the one that’s getting to us the most at this stage - Melbourne is much colder than Sydney and we’re just not used to having to wear a sweater. This old house is so paper thin that it’s the same temperature inside as it is outside so we’ve been wearing multiple layers around the house and dragging an electric heater we bought on the first day around with us!
Initially we were thinking of renovating the house over time, but we’ve since decided to knock the place down in a couple of years and completely rebuild. The previous owner was going to build a new home but decided to sell instead, so we became owners of all the architectural plans for the new house. Since it takes about 2 years for city council to approve any plans, we are probably going to keep these plans current for another couple of years and build when we can afford it.
Our aim for the interim is to make the house livable - no major home improvement projects but rather aesthetic ones like painting, fixing cracks, etc. The one major project I do want to complete though is moving the toilet inside (currently it’s in a separate “toilet shed” outside!!) Having to go outside to use the loo has not been fun! It’s bloody cold this time of year!!
We’ve managed to do a bit of exploring around the city so far. Melbourne is such a funky place, with cool cafes, one off designer stores, excellent restaurants, so many parks, and the best tram network to get you anywhere you want to go with ease. It’s like Queen St. West meets Montreal. We are really going to like it here and we are looking forward to making this “our city”. Last weekend we took some time off from “house stuff” to go see a footy game - our local team, Richmond, got creamed by Geelong. This weekend we went for a nice long walk around Fitzroy Gardens, then into the city, up to Dave’s office to see some views (he’s on the 44th floor), and around the city centre. We’ve also found a couple of great places to eat - a fabulous breakfast place here in Richmond, as well as a great value Curry House and a Nepalese Place (went there for Dave’s birthday earlier in the week). We also went to a very nice Spanish restaurant in the city centre last week with a fellow we know from Sydney who was down here for work. Melbourne is foodie capital of Australia, so we’re in heaven!