Just back from a validation trip to Brisbane
Jul 11th 2005, 8:12 pm
#1
Forum Regular
Thread Starter
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 76
Just back from a validation trip to Brisbane
Hi, I have not posted for about 6 mths, being a supersticious fool, I did not want to tempt fate whilst I was selling my property. I got an buyer but her own house sale fell through at the last minute,I have taken the decision not to remarket it and to hold on to my buyer in the hope she can sell hers. This prompted a rethink of our plans, so we decided to put off moving until feb 2006 hence our need to validate our visa in June. We had one way tickets booked with singapore airlines, but found it was a lot cheaper to buy a return with malaysian than to buy a return from OZ to UK. We got a £250 refund for £1300 of tickets.......
lesson 1,
book transferable flight tkts or wait until the money from your house sale is in your bank account.
Malaysian were fine, good food, lovely service, one big disapointment for me, as someone who gets bored on aflight to spain was the film selection was rubbish. No new movies, a selection of junk like Miss congeniality ect ect
We stopped off at KL there and back for 5 nights in total, staying at the Renaissance. the hotel was good, but cant recomend the beef bacon or chicken sausage at breakfast.
Apparantly in July and August a million visitors come from the middle east to KL. the city was full of western dressed arab guys in shorts, sandals, hawaian shirts,sunglasses on top of their etc but with wives covered head to toe in black burkas with only a tiny slit to see out of ( we came back the day before the bombs, but it did strike me as extremely hypocritical to watch the men leaving their wives struggling with loads of kids on one breakfast table while the men sat on another on their own oblivioius to them)
KL was a nice break for a couple of days, there are plenty of bars to frequent, the humidity is unbelievable so walking around is difficult. Be warned the traffic is a nightmare at rush hour. We were bored on the return trip, and just wanted to get home asap after leaving OZ.
We landed in Brisbane airport, queued up for 30 minutes and got out req'd stamp in our passports, a bit of an anti-climax actually, after 2 years of stressful planning and waiting, but there you go!
We stayed at springhill mews in Spring Hill , I bed apartment with extra sofa bed/ all facilities, inc pool £250 a week, only 7 minutes walk into town centre
I can recomend it www.springhillmews.com.au
It was my first trip to OZ and it was everything I expected it to be, the people we met were really friendly and helpful. We had 3 weeks to look around the suburbs to sus out where to live on our return, and more importantly for me to try out all the pubs.
suburbs
I done all my research before I went out so I knew which areas were out of our league, our budget was aprox $500k
west chermside
beautiful houses and area but poor transport links into the cbd
Manly /wynumm
This was where I fancied, most of it is wonderful and my dream was to have a boat, but we decided it was too quiet for us and too far from the City as we want to spend a lot of time there enjoying whats on offer (a definate place for us to move to in the future though)
Kenmore/graceville/fig tree pocket
Nice properties and area, but didnt tick all our boxes
Bardon/ ashgrove
really nice, unfortunatly the nicest property was too expensive, lots of wooden queenslander type houses, which looks great when in good condition, unfortunatly, about one in ten of them are delapidated, some with loads of old bangers on the drives , (dont fancy Onslow as a neighbour)
The Gap
this was to be my 2nd choice after Manly/wynumm based on my research at home, mainly because it had affordable modern property, a very good express bus sevice every 10 mins.
Some of the areas were ditto as one above, but the scenery of the mountains is lovely, the area has a nice village atmosphere, its close enough for town and other entertainment areas ect and has a good shoppinp mall.
In the vicinity it also has rugby, soccer and crickets clubs for my son to play for and me and my wife to lean on the bar hopefully making new friends.
we also toured all the other areas, scoured estate agents ect, done at least a 100 kerbside house visits, the brisbane 2005 UBD (a to z) was invaluable .
3 days before we were do to leave' I found a property in The Gap on real estate.com in a internet cafe, rang up the agent visited it the next day, loved the house and the area, put in an offer and told the agent I was going to put an offer on another property in the morning (fib), had it accepted that night.
A lovely modern 4 bed brick bungalow with pool on 600 sqm $440,000
Next day I saw a solicitor and arranged for her to look after the sale on our behalf, settlement day is end of September. In the afternoon I arranged for the property manageress of the estate agents to look after the property in pour absense. She is arranging all the bills to bbe paid, gardening and pool maitenence ect as well as visiting the house and airing it once a fornight. The estimate for all my cost for 6 months was $1500 cheap as chips
It was an act of spontanaity, but all our gut instincts said go for it, it was also the first one all 3 of us agreed on, so why not, it will save a lot of pain trying to find digs when we get back in feb, especially with our cat joining us. The agent can arrange to have rental furniture put in for when we arrive, which will be useful as we can move straight in.
I must say after years of frustration in the UK in the Financial Industry it was great to find OZ such a can-do spirit, where nothing was too much trouble for them, I was very impressed.
My fingers are too tired now so I will feed back on my findings entertainment wise shortly, I know how important such info was for me on this site prior to seeing for myself.
lesson 1,
book transferable flight tkts or wait until the money from your house sale is in your bank account.
Malaysian were fine, good food, lovely service, one big disapointment for me, as someone who gets bored on aflight to spain was the film selection was rubbish. No new movies, a selection of junk like Miss congeniality ect ect
We stopped off at KL there and back for 5 nights in total, staying at the Renaissance. the hotel was good, but cant recomend the beef bacon or chicken sausage at breakfast.
Apparantly in July and August a million visitors come from the middle east to KL. the city was full of western dressed arab guys in shorts, sandals, hawaian shirts,sunglasses on top of their etc but with wives covered head to toe in black burkas with only a tiny slit to see out of ( we came back the day before the bombs, but it did strike me as extremely hypocritical to watch the men leaving their wives struggling with loads of kids on one breakfast table while the men sat on another on their own oblivioius to them)
KL was a nice break for a couple of days, there are plenty of bars to frequent, the humidity is unbelievable so walking around is difficult. Be warned the traffic is a nightmare at rush hour. We were bored on the return trip, and just wanted to get home asap after leaving OZ.
We landed in Brisbane airport, queued up for 30 minutes and got out req'd stamp in our passports, a bit of an anti-climax actually, after 2 years of stressful planning and waiting, but there you go!
We stayed at springhill mews in Spring Hill , I bed apartment with extra sofa bed/ all facilities, inc pool £250 a week, only 7 minutes walk into town centre
I can recomend it www.springhillmews.com.au
It was my first trip to OZ and it was everything I expected it to be, the people we met were really friendly and helpful. We had 3 weeks to look around the suburbs to sus out where to live on our return, and more importantly for me to try out all the pubs.
suburbs
I done all my research before I went out so I knew which areas were out of our league, our budget was aprox $500k
west chermside
beautiful houses and area but poor transport links into the cbd
Manly /wynumm
This was where I fancied, most of it is wonderful and my dream was to have a boat, but we decided it was too quiet for us and too far from the City as we want to spend a lot of time there enjoying whats on offer (a definate place for us to move to in the future though)
Kenmore/graceville/fig tree pocket
Nice properties and area, but didnt tick all our boxes
Bardon/ ashgrove
really nice, unfortunatly the nicest property was too expensive, lots of wooden queenslander type houses, which looks great when in good condition, unfortunatly, about one in ten of them are delapidated, some with loads of old bangers on the drives , (dont fancy Onslow as a neighbour)
The Gap
this was to be my 2nd choice after Manly/wynumm based on my research at home, mainly because it had affordable modern property, a very good express bus sevice every 10 mins.
Some of the areas were ditto as one above, but the scenery of the mountains is lovely, the area has a nice village atmosphere, its close enough for town and other entertainment areas ect and has a good shoppinp mall.
In the vicinity it also has rugby, soccer and crickets clubs for my son to play for and me and my wife to lean on the bar hopefully making new friends.
we also toured all the other areas, scoured estate agents ect, done at least a 100 kerbside house visits, the brisbane 2005 UBD (a to z) was invaluable .
3 days before we were do to leave' I found a property in The Gap on real estate.com in a internet cafe, rang up the agent visited it the next day, loved the house and the area, put in an offer and told the agent I was going to put an offer on another property in the morning (fib), had it accepted that night.
A lovely modern 4 bed brick bungalow with pool on 600 sqm $440,000
Next day I saw a solicitor and arranged for her to look after the sale on our behalf, settlement day is end of September. In the afternoon I arranged for the property manageress of the estate agents to look after the property in pour absense. She is arranging all the bills to bbe paid, gardening and pool maitenence ect as well as visiting the house and airing it once a fornight. The estimate for all my cost for 6 months was $1500 cheap as chips
It was an act of spontanaity, but all our gut instincts said go for it, it was also the first one all 3 of us agreed on, so why not, it will save a lot of pain trying to find digs when we get back in feb, especially with our cat joining us. The agent can arrange to have rental furniture put in for when we arrive, which will be useful as we can move straight in.
I must say after years of frustration in the UK in the Financial Industry it was great to find OZ such a can-do spirit, where nothing was too much trouble for them, I was very impressed.
My fingers are too tired now so I will feed back on my findings entertainment wise shortly, I know how important such info was for me on this site prior to seeing for myself.
Jul 11th 2005, 8:19 pm
#2
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 1,511
Re: Just back from a validation trip to Brisbane
thankyou, will look forward to your next installment 
amanda
amanda
Jul 11th 2005, 8:36 pm
#3
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Jun 2004
Location: The Gold Coast
Posts: 3,069
Re: Just back from a validation trip to Brisbane
Originally Posted by coventrycelt
Hi, I have not posted for about 6 mths, being a supersticious fool, I did not want to tempt fate whilst I was selling my property. I got an buyer but her own house sale fell through at the last minute,I have taken the decision not to remarket it and to hold on to my buyer in the hope she can sell hers. This prompted a rethink of our plans, so we decided to put off moving until feb 2006 hence our need to validate our visa in June. We had one way tickets booked with singapore airlines, but found it was a lot cheaper to buy a return with malaysian than to buy a return from OZ to UK. We got a £250 refund for £1300 of tickets.......
lesson 1,
book transferable flight tkts or wait until the money from your house sale is in your bank account.
Malaysian were fine, good food, lovely service, one big disapointment for me, as someone who gets bored on aflight to spain was the film selection was rubbish. No new movies, a selection of junk like Miss congeniality ect ect
We stopped off at KL there and back for 5 nights in total, staying at the Renaissance. the hotel was good, but cant recomend the beef bacon or chicken sausage at breakfast.
Apparantly in July and August a million visitors come from the middle east to KL. the city was full of western dressed arab guys in shorts, sandals, hawaian shirts,sunglasses on top of their etc but with wives covered head to toe in black burkas with only a tiny slit to see out of ( we came back the day before the bombs, but it did strike me as extremely hypocritical to watch the men leaving their wives struggling with loads of kids on one breakfast table while the men sat on another on their own oblivioius to them)
KL was a nice break for a couple of days, there are plenty of bars to frequent, the humidity is unbelievable so walking around is difficult. Be warned the traffic is a nightmare at rush hour. We were bored on the return trip, and just wanted to get home asap after leaving OZ.
We landed in Brisbane airport, queued up for 30 minutes and got out req'd stamp in our passports, a bit of an anti-climax actually, after 2 years of stressful planning and waiting, but there you go!
We stayed at springhill mews in Spring Hill , I bed apartment with extra sofa bed/ all facilities, inc pool £250 a week, only 7 minutes walk into town centre
I can recomend it www.springhillmews.com.au
It was my first trip to OZ and it was everything I expected it to be, the people we met were really friendly and helpful. We had 3 weeks to look around the suburbs to sus out where to live on our return, and more importantly for me to try out all the pubs.
suburbs
I done all my research before I went out so I knew which areas were out of our league, our budget was aprox $500k
west chermside
beautiful houses and area but poor transport links into the cbd
Manly /wynumm
This was where I fancied, most of it is wonderful and my dream was to have a boat, but we decided it was too quiet for us and too far from the City as we want to spend a lot of time there enjoying whats on offer (a definate place for us to move to in the future though)
Kenmore/graceville/fig tree pocket
Nice properties and area, but didnt tick all our boxes
Bardon/ ashgrove
really nice, unfortunatly the nicest property was too expensive, lots of wooden queenslander type houses, which looks great when in good condition, unfortunatly, about one in ten of them are delapidated, some with loads of old bangers on the drives , (dont fancy Onslow as a neighbour)
The Gap
this was to be my 2nd choice after Manly/wynumm based on my research at home, mainly because it had affordable modern property, a very good express bus sevice every 10 mins.
Some of the areas were ditto as one above, but the scenery of the mountains is lovely, the area has a nice village atmosphere, its close enough for town and other entertainment areas ect and has a good shoppinp mall.
In the vicinity it also has rugby, soccer and crickets clubs for my son to play for and me and my wife to lean on the bar hopefully making new friends.
we also toured all the other areas, scoured estate agents ect, done at least a 100 kerbside house visits, the brisbane 2005 UBD (a to z) was invaluable .
3 days before we were do to leave' I found a property in The Gap on real estate.com in a internet cafe, rang up the agent visited it the next day, loved the house and the area, put in an offer and told the agent I was going to put an offer on another property in the morning (fib), had it accepted that night.
A lovely modern 4 bed brick bungalow with pool on 600 sqm $440,000
Next day I saw a solicitor and arranged for her to look after the sale on our behalf, settlement day is end of September. In the afternoon I arranged for the property manageress of the estate agents to look after the property in pour absense. She is arranging all the bills to bbe paid, gardening and pool maitenence ect as well as visiting the house and airing it once a fornight. The estimate for all my cost for 6 months was $1500 cheap as chips
It was an act of spontanaity, but all our gut instincts said go for it, it was also the first one all 3 of us agreed on, so why not, it will save a lot of pain trying to find digs when we get back in feb, especially with our cat joining us. The agent can arrange to have rental furniture put in for when we arrive, which will be useful as we can move straight in.
I must say after years of frustration in the UK in the Financial Industry it was great to find OZ such a can-do spirit, where nothing was too much trouble for them, I was very impressed.
My fingers are too tired now so I will feed back on my findings entertainment wise shortly, I know how important such info was for me on this site prior to seeing for myself.
lesson 1,
book transferable flight tkts or wait until the money from your house sale is in your bank account.
Malaysian were fine, good food, lovely service, one big disapointment for me, as someone who gets bored on aflight to spain was the film selection was rubbish. No new movies, a selection of junk like Miss congeniality ect ect
We stopped off at KL there and back for 5 nights in total, staying at the Renaissance. the hotel was good, but cant recomend the beef bacon or chicken sausage at breakfast.
Apparantly in July and August a million visitors come from the middle east to KL. the city was full of western dressed arab guys in shorts, sandals, hawaian shirts,sunglasses on top of their etc but with wives covered head to toe in black burkas with only a tiny slit to see out of ( we came back the day before the bombs, but it did strike me as extremely hypocritical to watch the men leaving their wives struggling with loads of kids on one breakfast table while the men sat on another on their own oblivioius to them)
KL was a nice break for a couple of days, there are plenty of bars to frequent, the humidity is unbelievable so walking around is difficult. Be warned the traffic is a nightmare at rush hour. We were bored on the return trip, and just wanted to get home asap after leaving OZ.
We landed in Brisbane airport, queued up for 30 minutes and got out req'd stamp in our passports, a bit of an anti-climax actually, after 2 years of stressful planning and waiting, but there you go!
We stayed at springhill mews in Spring Hill , I bed apartment with extra sofa bed/ all facilities, inc pool £250 a week, only 7 minutes walk into town centre
I can recomend it www.springhillmews.com.au
It was my first trip to OZ and it was everything I expected it to be, the people we met were really friendly and helpful. We had 3 weeks to look around the suburbs to sus out where to live on our return, and more importantly for me to try out all the pubs.
suburbs
I done all my research before I went out so I knew which areas were out of our league, our budget was aprox $500k
west chermside
beautiful houses and area but poor transport links into the cbd
Manly /wynumm
This was where I fancied, most of it is wonderful and my dream was to have a boat, but we decided it was too quiet for us and too far from the City as we want to spend a lot of time there enjoying whats on offer (a definate place for us to move to in the future though)
Kenmore/graceville/fig tree pocket
Nice properties and area, but didnt tick all our boxes
Bardon/ ashgrove
really nice, unfortunatly the nicest property was too expensive, lots of wooden queenslander type houses, which looks great when in good condition, unfortunatly, about one in ten of them are delapidated, some with loads of old bangers on the drives , (dont fancy Onslow as a neighbour)
The Gap
this was to be my 2nd choice after Manly/wynumm based on my research at home, mainly because it had affordable modern property, a very good express bus sevice every 10 mins.
Some of the areas were ditto as one above, but the scenery of the mountains is lovely, the area has a nice village atmosphere, its close enough for town and other entertainment areas ect and has a good shoppinp mall.
In the vicinity it also has rugby, soccer and crickets clubs for my son to play for and me and my wife to lean on the bar hopefully making new friends.
we also toured all the other areas, scoured estate agents ect, done at least a 100 kerbside house visits, the brisbane 2005 UBD (a to z) was invaluable .
3 days before we were do to leave' I found a property in The Gap on real estate.com in a internet cafe, rang up the agent visited it the next day, loved the house and the area, put in an offer and told the agent I was going to put an offer on another property in the morning (fib), had it accepted that night.
A lovely modern 4 bed brick bungalow with pool on 600 sqm $440,000
Next day I saw a solicitor and arranged for her to look after the sale on our behalf, settlement day is end of September. In the afternoon I arranged for the property manageress of the estate agents to look after the property in pour absense. She is arranging all the bills to bbe paid, gardening and pool maitenence ect as well as visiting the house and airing it once a fornight. The estimate for all my cost for 6 months was $1500 cheap as chips
It was an act of spontanaity, but all our gut instincts said go for it, it was also the first one all 3 of us agreed on, so why not, it will save a lot of pain trying to find digs when we get back in feb, especially with our cat joining us. The agent can arrange to have rental furniture put in for when we arrive, which will be useful as we can move straight in.
I must say after years of frustration in the UK in the Financial Industry it was great to find OZ such a can-do spirit, where nothing was too much trouble for them, I was very impressed.
My fingers are too tired now so I will feed back on my findings entertainment wise shortly, I know how important such info was for me on this site prior to seeing for myself.
Wow, that was a busy trip.
When I went on my validation trip I spent most of the time on the beach or shopping
. I wish that I had spent some time looking around suburbs etc. but hadn't been on here much prior to our trip. If I had I think I might have done things differently. Never mind, we needed a holiday 
It's good that you found your ideal home when you were there. It pays to do some research. I am still in a quandry as to where want to be. I change my mind every week
.Good luck with everything and keep us posted.
Tracey
Jul 11th 2005, 10:04 pm
#4
Rocket Scientist
Joined: Aug 2003
Location: Dreamland AKA Brisbane which is a different country to the UK
Posts: 6,911
Re: Just back from a validation trip to Brisbane
Hi CC, interesting reading your summaries of different suburbs. Glad you ended up with a house you love, The Gap is a very nice area, congratulations .
.
Jul 12th 2005, 11:09 am
#5
Forum Regular
Thread Starter
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 76
Re: Just back from a validation trip to Brisbane
Thanks for your replies ladies, Tracey, if the weather was better, i would have been on the beach as well, but luckily we went in winter, which saves us house-hunting during the hot weather in Feb, I suppose.
Bear in mind I only did whistlestop tours of the area's, so they are only opinions on what I saw at the time.
Bear in mind I only did whistlestop tours of the area's, so they are only opinions on what I saw at the time.
Jul 12th 2005, 11:16 am
#6
G'day Mate
Joined: May 2004
Location: London for now, Australia soon.
Posts: 419
Re: Just back from a validation trip to Brisbane
Hello All,
Im back after a nice and warm holiday in Portugal.
Thanks for the info which for me is essential since Brisbane is my favourite choice, been there (Hols), loved it and long to return plus have a few friends over so adaptation wouldn't be so hard, if i had no one would be worse i think. Loved the place where i stayed ( friends house ) in Brookfield!
Regards
Im back after a nice and warm holiday in Portugal.
Thanks for the info which for me is essential since Brisbane is my favourite choice, been there (Hols), loved it and long to return plus have a few friends over so adaptation wouldn't be so hard, if i had no one would be worse i think. Loved the place where i stayed ( friends house ) in Brookfield!
Regards
Jul 12th 2005, 11:35 am
#7
Forum Regular
Joined: Jun 2005
Location: under the stairs
Posts: 119
Re: Just back from a validation trip to Brisbane
Hi cc
thanks for all the info going on a scouting trip tp brisbane in march
will look out for any more info
peter
thanks for all the info going on a scouting trip tp brisbane in march
will look out for any more info
peter
Jul 12th 2005, 12:03 pm
#8
Forum Regular
Joined: Jan 2005
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 64
Re: Just back from a validation trip to Brisbane
Hi,
invaluable information. Thank you very much for time spent to post this.
I have couple of questions:
1) Did you hire a car and drove yourself?
2) Did you find 3 weeks stay long or just enough?
Looking forward to your next posting.
I am making my validation trip in December 2005.
Thanks
Sebastian
invaluable information. Thank you very much for time spent to post this.
I have couple of questions:
1) Did you hire a car and drove yourself?
2) Did you find 3 weeks stay long or just enough?
Looking forward to your next posting.
I am making my validation trip in December 2005.
Thanks
Sebastian
Jul 12th 2005, 7:15 pm
#9
Forum Regular
Thread Starter
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 76
Re: Just back from a validation trip to Brisbane
[QUOTE=Sebastian]Hi,
Hi Seb, yes I hired a car from east coast car rentals , the cheapest I could find. because we were arriving at night I got a taxi, and picked the car up from their town office next day. We had a toyota corolla which was fine, luckily I had my son who turned out to be a good map reader, buy the big telephone book sized a-to-z. Our taxi driver was a newbie from SA, he was using a tomtom nav system which he swears by. I was going to buy one from Harvey Normans the next day for £400 but it was a bank holiday. Never got round to it once I found out I had brought my own navigator. I will def buy one on my return though, because I'm sure he wont always want to sit in the car everytime I go out. The system covers the whole of Oz so I will definitely get some use out of it. If I had needed to use the wife for nav, we would have just ended up arguing all the time. The brisbane roads are very well signposted though!
NB make sure you take the car back to the airport though, its dead easy the car park is in front of departures and you just deposit the key in the companys letter box at the entrance.
Hi Seb, yes I hired a car from east coast car rentals , the cheapest I could find. because we were arriving at night I got a taxi, and picked the car up from their town office next day. We had a toyota corolla which was fine, luckily I had my son who turned out to be a good map reader, buy the big telephone book sized a-to-z. Our taxi driver was a newbie from SA, he was using a tomtom nav system which he swears by. I was going to buy one from Harvey Normans the next day for £400 but it was a bank holiday. Never got round to it once I found out I had brought my own navigator. I will def buy one on my return though, because I'm sure he wont always want to sit in the car everytime I go out. The system covers the whole of Oz so I will definitely get some use out of it. If I had needed to use the wife for nav, we would have just ended up arguing all the time. The brisbane roads are very well signposted though!
NB make sure you take the car back to the airport though, its dead easy the car park is in front of departures and you just deposit the key in the companys letter box at the entrance.
Jul 13th 2005, 6:15 am
#10
Forum Regular
Joined: Jan 2005
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 64
Re: Just back from a validation trip to Brisbane
[QUOTE=coventrycelt][QUOTE=Sebastian]Hi,
Thanks for all the information.
Sebastian
Thanks for all the information.
Sebastian
