A quiet day today with nothing particular planned.
We spent the morning visiting and playing with the kids at a park where they could let off steam on the skate park.
There was a decision made to go out for lunch before going to BMX in the afternoon.
We were taken to the local “Club Charleston” for a lovely meal.
Beef Scallopine
Grilled Barramundi
Even though is was not very cold today, M and I decided we would not go to BMX as we were both getting over a cold and racing did not start until 4:30.
Neither of us had packed “sit in a field in the evening air” clothes 😀
We went on a bit of a drive and look around the area before making a simple dinner of toasted ham and cheese sandwiches.
A few shows on TV and an early-is night. Tomorrow is T’s birthday party an the local indoor skate park.
We are off for a long weekend to Newcastle to visit the family.
An early 6:00am start, saw us heading down the highway to Brisbane airport for our 9:15am flight to Newcastle.
We got caught up with a bit of slow traffic around Northlakes, but it soon cleared and we made it to the airport carpark. After a bus ride to the terminal and a looooong check in queue, we made our way to the gate for a short wait before boarding our Alliance Airlines Fokker 100 to Newcastle.
It is only a 90 minute flight and the small plane is tighter than a full Virgin jet but we got there 😀
I had booked a hire car with Sixt and had booked a Kona or similar. I knew Sixt. have BMW cars in their fleet and I thought I would ask if we could have an upgrade. I got such a lovely surprise when the nice man agreed that I could indeed have a BMW and he would do the upgrade complimentary!
It certainly makes the trip a bit easier when you don’t have to work out where everything is on the hire car.
The navigation told us that it would be a 40 minute drive to our motel, so I set a timer for 20 minutes, with the idea of finding the nearest Woolworths to do our bit of shopping before checking in.
We duly found the shopping centre at Jesmond. The centre had a number of food outlets and we settled on pizza for lunch. We bought some bread, milk and eggs for our breakfasts for the next few days and made our way to the Esplanade Motel in Warners Bay.
We had looked at this motel when we were here last and it is quite close to the family’s home.
We unpacked our bags and headed to see the family. It is always great to see the little boys who are growing bigger every time we see them.
We had a lovely afternoon and dinner before making our way back to the motel. A cup of tea and a little bit of TV and we were in bed by 10:00pm quite tired after a fairly long day.
This is our new house 🙂 We will rent it out until we are ready to retire and move down. We have a number of photos from the real estate agent. Some were taken when the house was last sold in 2017, some taken for the current sale in 2023 and some we took when we were there.
Below are lots of photos. Hovering over any photo will show its description. Clicking on any image will open them up in full screen with the description on the top left of your screen, from the full sized image you see arrows left and right to click through to the next photo.
Apologies for this post being so long after the last one. We had a lovely couple of days in Hobart. After looking at the house on Thursday, we spent Friday looking at some other houses I had in my “Saved Properties” on realestate.com.au
Nothing came anywhere near the quality of the one we have chosen. We looked at a few that were a lot cheaper than “our” one, but they all needed a fair bit of work, which meant with the added expense, they would be close to what we bought.
On Friday, we went and had a look at the block of land and were surprised to see that NOTHING had been done across the entire stage that we bought in. Obviously, everybody is having the same issues with council, planners and builders in getting anything done. Seeing this certainly made us feel that we have made the right decision.
On Saturday we decided on a “tourist” day and caught the bus to Bellerive and then the ferry to Hobart and wandered around Salamanca Market. The ferry is great and it is good to know it has been a success and looks like it is here to stay. There are plans to expand the service to include a lot more stops up and down the Derwent River. As we were flying out the next day, we decided on dinner at the hotel. I did a load of washing in the guest laundry ( nothing to do when I got home) and we had a quiet night, packing and watching TV.
Monday morning we checked out, drove the car back to the drop off and were at the airport ready for our 12:30 flight. I was not able to get us seats on a direct flight to Brisbane, so we had to fly Hobart to Melbourne, then a connecting flight from Melbourne to Brisbane.
The airport was VERY busy with 5 flights all departing within 10-15 minutes of each other. It was also drizzly rain, so everything slowed down a bit. We ended up leaving 20 minutes late, but the pilot assured us he should be able to make up some time. I was pleased to hear that as we only had just over an hour between our expected arrival time and the departure of our connecting flight.
We asked the flight steward if he could find out what gate we would arrive at and which gate we were leaving from. Luckily we were only two gates across, so we did not need to rush too much at all.
The Melb-Bris flight was uneventful and we arrived, got the shuttle bus to the car park and set off home. We had a good run and arrived home around 8:00pm.
The next few days were a blur of busy work and waiting for all the contracts to turn unconditional. Everything is now good to go and we settle on the land on the 24th of May and then the house on the 31st. Exciting times indeed.
In the next post, you will see lots of photos of the new house 🙂
Today is an exciting day. We may hear that the sale of the land is unconditional, we are viewing the house we hope to buy and all being well signing a new contract for sale.
We met the agents at the new house at 10:00. The house is as good as we thought it would be. The views are much the same as our original block and the house is actually quite similar to what we were planning on building.
The agents were more than happy to allow us to spend as much time as we wanted. I took lots of photos, measured rooms and marked features on the floor plan. We have already had a building inspection done and were told of a couple of very minor problems that we looked at and are satisfied that they are indeed…minor.
We still had not heard whether or not the land has gone unconditional, so we cannot update the purchase contract quite yet.
We returned to the hotel and made some lunch. Just after lunch we got the frustrating news that the buyer needs a 7 day extension for their bank to complete approval 🙁
… and so we wait …
The rest of the afternoon we spent looking around at some other properties I had seen online, but none come up nearly as perfect as the one we have decided on.
We left the hotel early to put the car into the secure parking at the airport. From there it is a short bus trip to the terminal.
We checked our suitcases in and headed for the Virgin Lounge for breakfast. Our flight left slightly late at 9:50 and arrived in Hobart at 1:05. We landed to a drizzly day but not overly cold. We collected out hire car and headed to the Shoreline hotel which will be our home for the next 4 days.
We rang the real estate agent to arrange a viewing of the house for 10:00 tomorrow.
A quick shop at Woolworths and we were happy for a quiet evening watching TV.
