Andy spoke to our estate agent earlier.... although the couple that viewed our house on Saturday loved the house they felt that it was not big enough for them..... Makes me laugh that though when we know that they're currently living in a 1-bedroomed flat together and our house is a 3 bed-semi! But i guess people want what they want....
Anyway, Back to square one...
Only got till the end of the month with this agent......we'll see if we even get another viewer by then!

the cheese may be good but we have witnessed ill treatment of the cattle there, they were being beaten severely by a woman, the cafe staff thought this was hilarious stating its how she gets rid of her frustrations, will never buy any of their products again.

How could the cafe staff find that amusing? Says a lot about them as well i imagine

At least Australia has recently tried to do something about Alco-pops in an effort to curb binge drinking amongst young people,girls especially, by making such drinks much more expensive to buy.
So class is out as to the effectiveness,or otherwise, of this measure.
Peter

Hi Peter - at least Australia is being more pro-active about doing something about it.... But saying that they've just introduced a no-drinking ban on public transport over here....so we'll see if that works!

Anyway, hows the weather been for you guys - still nice for this time of year?
It's still lovely over here....although there's a nice breeze today (which is a relief as the sun's quite hot)...

My daughter loved Lizzie the sheep....asked if we can have some when we move to Tas - had to explain that we dont want acreage - and she will have to just see other sheep instead! The mean Mum i am!
I have to laugh - last year we thought we'd measured the square metres of our house and land correctly....and since we've been browsing through all the realestate.com.au properties etc - we'd set a sqm that we wanted a place above....
turns out we worked out our house and land completely wrong - and some of the places we thought might be not too much bigger than what we've got were possibly DOUBLE what we currently have (which is sort of what we'd like really - ie, twice as much living space).... Whoops!

Not good,I for one, am glad you felt able to tell us about it....thankyou
Peter (Oldgit)

Hello Cathy
Well it's a start banning booze on the buses so here's hoping.In Tassie that has been in operation for a while. On Redline buses the driver welcomes you aboard and says alcoholic drinks and drugs are banned from the bus anyone found in breach will be asked to leave the bus and maybe reported to the police.
Your weather sounds good.You know don't you that Tas is made up of micro-climates meaning the weather can be quite different a few Kms away. .So in my neck of the woods we had about 3C overnight,woke up to fog 5C at 9.30am sun came out at about 11.30 am burned off the fog and temp rose to 17C bright sunny afternoon.Autumn is well advanced now and winter starts in June.
Sorry about sending animal pics starting "can we have some too".Shall I stop sending animal pics to save you having to distract her from the idea.Not mean jjust being honest with her.
So you want a house in Tas the size of the Albert Hall in Launceston with a garden the size of Northern Territories
We had the budget today a budget for working families Wayne Swan the Federal Treasurer called it.I think it could help you and Andy a bit when you get here.Might make my private medical insurance premiums go upNo i am not rich it's a condition of my retirement Visa i have to have private medical insurance (not eligible for Medicare).Had an accident in the garage at home here in Tassie and ruptured myself down both sides. Had the tears operated on and repaired 3 weeks later no long waiting period.Would have cost about $7000.I had both sides done at the same time .I.m like a walking HomeBase inside now.Surgical mesh holding me togetherWired up inside with glorified chicken wireSo if my premiums go up i can't really complain.
Cheers Peter

Hi Peter, thanks for your very long reply... You must be getting as bad as me! I wont ask how long it took you to type!

Thats good that you have the no-alcohol rule etc on your buses too.

Yes, i'd read about the weather on tas a few times on different sites etc - and it is interesting how it can vary so much from one part of the Island to another. I do like changeable weather though... Dont think i could bear the thought of hot days for weeks or months on end...

Please dont stop sending any photo's - i enjoy seeing them as much as anyone else probably, and anyway it's nice to see things that make up a part of someone you're chatting to's life...
We are going to let Eden have pets - they just wont be as big as sheep!
We would love a couple of dogs when we eventually settle somewhere and some little pets that her and Jared can look after themselves as i think that's an important life lesson for kids to be responsible for feeding/cleaning out
and caring for some animals. We had loads of pets when i was a child - so its strange really that we've never had any ourselves....although we have always gone on holiday a lot - so it saved any worry of having people look after pets for us.
We dont want a large property (well Andy might disagree - so perhaps i should re-phrase that to "i" dont want a large property! ). We'd be happy with a 3bedroomed (4 would be lovely) place - but just extra living space - ie, a bigger kitchen, living room, dining room than what we have now would be great....dont want too many extra rooms - after all they all need cleaning! Andy loves gardening and is keen to grow veggies etc - and i like arts&crafts so if i'm not going to be working initially i'd love something like a studio (or a glorified spare shed!) where i could get back into it.
We would both love to live as near to the sea as possible as well - and properties tend to be smaller plot wise than inland properties anyway then...

Your accident sounds awful. Maybe i shouldn't ask what you were doing to sustain such an injury? I imagine it was terribly painful - are you still in pain because of it? I really hope not...

Maybe we should rename you the bionic oldgit!

So how long have you lived in Tassie for ? did you come over on a retirement visa? i've read before that people often need private medical cover etc as a condition to the visa...
What are people's general opinion of medicare in tas anyway? does it really suffice - or is it better in people's opinion to have additional cover anyway?
Over here anything i've ever had done has been on the NHS - but i have had BUPA cover for myself for years - and since having the kids for Andy and them as well. It's subsidised by my company - although i have recently thought about stopping the cover to save a bit of money before the move....but am now paranoid that if i do we might need it! I wanted it really incase anything ever happened and there was a long waiting time on the NHS to get something sorted...

Anyway, i think i've just beaten the length of your message - so i cant say anything now! Bye for now...
chat soon. take care
Cathy

we were quite upset about it and if that was in front of the customers well? my partner has lived in farming country all his life and said he had never seen animals treat that way.

travelbug I am sure you are aware of the $7k first home owners grant but if the property you are buying is under $350 then you can claim up to $4k in duty concessions too we didnt know this existed it was a nice surprise!

http://www.treasury.tas.gov.au/domin...257145000815D3

Hi Possums, that is terrible if the staff were indifferent to the fact that the animals were being ill-treated by someone...I'm not surprised that it angered you and your OH.
I have often seen animals being mis-treated in other parts of the world, i guess it's a sad fact of life that some people see animals as just a commodity - in the Dominican Republic once i caused a scene outside our hotel when a horse and carriage was brought over to take some of us to the beach - and i blatantly refused to get in - as the temperature was over 100degrees, this horse was panting like nothing i'd seen before - and was obviously undernourished and just plain old knackered from the heat and from ferrying holidaymakers around all day.... But all the other holiday makers did was give me that "what's she having a whinge for - its only a horse look" I remember it did make me mad... and my boyfriend at the time had a moan about me being embarrassing and causing a scene - like i gave a ####!!!!! about that!

Thanks for the info about the 1st home buyers grant, i did know about that - but was unaware that there were additional amounts you could also possibly claim....i guess that's one thing to look forward to eventually...

At the moment, we feel a bit negative about the house selling situation over here....and are now worrying incase we cant sell the house... especially if prices continue to drop and drop. We have until March 2012 to become residents - but there's no way we want to still be here in a year or so's time for many reasons..... Starting to regret not selling as soon as we got our visa's last April now - but hindsight is a wonderful thing is it not!

Hi Cathy

Hope you get some good news with the house selling soon
I thought getting the visa was bad enough, but selling your home, especially in the current climate, is just the pits

Our buyer is still waiting for his mortgage offer, apparently everything else is done, I'm getting rather twitchy, that something is going to go wrong at the last minute. But there is just nothing I can do, except carry on as if we are going to exchange and complete soon, putting the children's beds on Ebay later, so they will just be on mattress's soon!

Sam

Thanks Sam
I'm sure everything's going to be ok with your buyer.....After all - he'll be missing out on a bargain if the sale falls through for him - its probably paperwork etc that's holding stuff up - i think all the lenders are being far more thorough than they have been previously about people's finances. I really hope you hear something very soon though so you can finalise all your moving plans....and i hope he agrees to the time you need in between exchanging and completing.
I think there is going to be a lot of people validating visa's now because they cant sell - and even more possibly missing out on actually emigrating as i cannot see that this situation is going to improve in the very near future - it's bound to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better.....and we cannot afford to wait the normal 4-5 years before things pick up again...by then our visa's would have expired anyway and there's no way we would apply again and go through all that again...
I am very glad in a way that we did validate ours last year....otherwise if we'd have waited and just tried to sell the house this year in time to validate by Mar2008 we could have come unstuck...
Part of me wishes that we could rent our house out as they go for about
£1,100 per month in rent and those prices aren't dropping like the house values... But we need the money from the sale of the house to finance our move and living costs for a few months and dont fancy borrowing more money against the house to do that... and anyway, if we did we would still need to sell at some point down the line so would only be delaying the inevitable!

Good luck with selling the kids beds on ebay - that's something we're not planning on shipping over ourselves....I'm sure the kids will be just as comfortable on the mattresses. Me and Andy were in Tesco's at the weekend and noticed that they sell single airbeds for £7 each - we were joking as to whether we should buy a couple and take them with us when we move to use in our rental place in tas until we bought new beds!

Cathy

Hi

You're right about our buyer, as he's getting the house for £27,500 less than we had orginally asked, he's getting a good bargain! I'm sure it will all be OK, its just you hear of so many people whose buyers let them down at the last minute, that I can't help but worry (especially as "worrier" is my middle name)

Have just dismantled my son's wardrobe, another thing not coming with us, and put his clothes in my daughters, thinking there would be plenty of room - anyway, the rail has now broken and pulled out a big hole in the side as well
Her wardobe is also not coming, so it doesn't really matter but now I've got 2 loads of clothes and no where to put them, don't think they are going to be very happy with me when they get home from school

Still looking at flight possibilities, we might just take the 20kgs and you can also carry 7kg each as cabin baggage, so that might just be OK. Would make it easier for flying over to Tas, and also if we did take the full 40kgs each, good ness knows how we would carry them all and find a hire car big enough - would have to hire a small bus

Sam

Hi Sam, that doesnt sound good about the wardrobes! You wont be popular later when they get home! I think we're taking our kids ones with us - good job as when Andy puts flat packed furniture together he also glues in all the fittings for extra support - so not sure i'd be able to dismantle anything without completely wrecking something myself..

your buyer certainly has got himself a bargain! that is a lot of money off the original asking price...

I have a question that you might be able to answer......what do you do with your stuff that's coming with you when the shippers come in. I've heard that you have to leave them to get on with packing etc - and not get in their way....so do you leave stickers/signs on stuff saying "do not pack" - because we'll be leaving one of our sofa's, beds and possibly a couple of other things - but we also will need to put some kitchenware we'd need until we actually moved into say one of the kitchen cupboards and then i guess all the clothes / personal bits etc would have to be sorted out and put somewhere they wont touch them... You see - you say you're a worrier - but as you can see i'm worrying about things that aint even happening yet!
I just remember reading on this site about people that have received their containers with their bins full of rubbish inside where the packers literally packed everything in sight!

I think you'd be better off with the 20kgs each - 40kgs each is such a lot of luggage when there's 4 of you.... Especially as well as you'll be in holiday accomodation for the 1st couple of weeks - you'll be struggling to find somewhere to put the cases if you had 8 or more of them!
Have you decided what shippers you want to use yet? What did they say about addresses in Tas? do you give them your holiday accomodation initially when you book them - and then ring them to give them your rental address once it's known?

Cathy

Ah, I see I have a fellow worrier

Removals - we are going to put stickers with a big red cross on everything we do not want packed!
The removal company have said we have to remain in the house anyway, so I shall be watching them carefully. I think I will put the suitcases etc in the attic, just to make sure they do not get accidentally packed. In the kitchen I'll try and put everything we are keeping at the house, like spare crockery etc in one cupboard (with a very big red cross on the door!).
We have quite a few pieces of furniture that are not coming, so I will have to make extra sure they do not get packed. I have also read on here that they pack everything they see, I thikn it was Ian and Helena that found a pile of old newspapers had been packed carefully

As far as the addresses in Tas are concerned, we have just stipulated a 30 mile radius around Hobart and I guess I will contact the UK office once we are in Tas and give them our details and then take it from there. Nothing is straightforward is it?

If we don't get much time between exchange and completion, I have just realised the packers may have to come in the Whitsun week, that will be fun with the children off as well

Sam