Home Sweet Home Part 2

When we arrived to live in Queensland, I guess we thought it would be pretty simple to get the house thing sorted out. We had the land, we had picked the house. We just had some little issues to sort through.

But during the 18 hours or so of driving to get to Brisbane, we fell to talking, and we thought about some issues. We didn't like the master bedroom being downstairs while the other bedrooms were upstairs. We thought the kids' rooms were simply too large, and would encourage "anti-family" behaviour. We actually didn't like the design of our room all that much. There was probably just a bit too much house on our block of land. And did we really need a two spare bedrooms AND a separate study? We decided that before we actually signed up, we would at least have a look at some alternative designs.

Well, we kind of did look, but in reality we didn't stray too far away. Mainly this was becuase there were so many features of the house that we did like, and we hardly wanted to start again. The same basic design from Jennings that we wanted to build came in about five or six varieties - all with slight variations in floor plans. And as we looked through it all, we suddenly realised that the 415 was actually nearly perfect - addressing all the issues we had with the 470, and retaining nearly all the good features.

So, we ended up not looking anywhere else, but going back to Jennings and asking them to resubmit their plans to us based on the 415 instead. Then we got down to the practicalities, and realised that our fridge and freezer would not fit side by side in the kitchen, so we had better put a power point in the laundry for the freezer. Then again, did we really want to make the decision, after finally getting a decent sized laundry for the first time in our marriage to put a freezer in it? What if... and pretty soon we found ourselves wanting to redesign the entire kitchen. Our consultant warned us that this would get very expensive - but we suddenly realised we had seen the kitchen of our dreams in another house in the same display centre. What if we picked up the kitchen from one place and simply superimposed it into our house? Then all we had to do was simply extend the fridge area (where there was now space), change the stove for a wall oven and cooktop, and... yes, you're right. It wasn't actually all that simple... but pretty soon we had a design we liked.

So now we were close, but I found myself getting into pedantic detail about downpipes, powerpoints, gas and power and water for our outdoor areas, move a door here, remove a wall there, and so on and so on, until the entire thing was whirring around in my head at night and starting to seem silly. But finally, it did all come together, and we were ready to sign. On Monday night, we leafed our way through the pages of the contract and plans, carefully signing each. And by the time we got through it all, we were absolutely blown away by how wonderful it was all looking. Yes - it had been a fair bit of mucking around but in the end we were wrapped with the results. We signed the last page and then cheered! It was done! We were on the way!

What happens now? Well, the first few days have seen only a couple of things happen. Our plans have been lodged with council, and with the Stocklands Covenants Department. I am not sure which is scarier! There are plenty of council requirements, but they look in reasonable shape. The Covenants thing is even more complicated. Building in Augustine Heights means you have to ensure your house complies with their rules - and there is a not-insubstantial book that explains them all. Some of the rules are very simple - for example; roofs must be made of tiles or colourbond. Some are more complicated - such as the area of windows that you must have facing the street. Others are more controversial. When Shell's sister heard about the fact that we could not leave our house as exposed brick - she declared the entire process rediculous! There are covenants about landscaping, fencing, car storage, sheds, water tank locations, retaining wall design, driveway surfacing and so on - the list goes on. In all, the covenants have probably required us to add on at least $20,000 worth of stuff to our house we may not have thought about doing. This would be upsetting for some people, but it actually does not worry us terribly much. The result of the covenants being applied to the whole estate is that the housing is uniformly excellent in standard. The rules do not limit creativity in design, so there is still a great variety of interesting places, but it does mean that every place has been carefully thought about and designed. When you drive into the suburb, you are struck by how nice it all looks. So - we were happy enough to comply - but now our designs need to be certified by them. In reality it ought to present few problems. Jennings have done a lot of houses in the suburb, and they surely know what they are up to. I guess we'll find out in the next few weeks!

Ahead of us stretches the months of building, but we are excited to be on the way.

Home Sweet Home

So many aspects of our move to Queensland have gone remarkably smoothly and well, that it has got to the point that anything that didn't just drop into place sort of seemed - out of place - if you know what I mean? In reality, one of the few things that hasn't gone to plan is issue of purchasing a house. Which - as you could imagine - is not a trivial thing.

Our plan on day 1 was ambitious (I can see that in retrospect). We were going to come up to Queensland for a week in early November, and among other things dedicate a few days to looking around to find our dream house, which we would secure on the basis of an early January settlement. We'd then come home, sell our Melbourne home at auction on 29th November, with a month settlement, and so we would have the money in time to settle on the Queensland place. Well - what could go wrong with that? The obvious danger was the mismatch of settlement periods, so I had a talk with the bank about obtaining bridging finance secured against our Melbourne house. They more than happily agreed to this, and so we found ourselves pre-approved for briding finance which would enable us to put in an offer on properties in Brisbane without worrying too much about the sale down in Melbourne.

Well the trip to Brisbane went ahead, and had been preceeded by a good deal of internet research so we had a series of favourite properties, and appointments with various agents to have a look. Our region of interest was defined by distance from the school we intended to send the kids to, and the road with the reputation as the worst peak hour traffic problem in Australia - the Ipswich Motorway. My view was that we needed to be on the same side of the Motorway as the school was - which meant we were looking in suburbs to the south. Redbank Plains, Bellbird Park, and Camira were therefore all under consideration. Other suburbs like Collingwood Park carried dire warnings from our Queensland family - and although I suspected they were being a little mellodramatic, we decided to stay away. And then there was the outer ring of suburbs slightly further away but still in the scope - Springfield, Springfield Lakes, Augustine Heights and Brookwater. Curiously, after looking at literally hundreds of houses on line, all our favourites turned out to be in the same suburb - Springfield Lakes. So compelling had these places looked, that we drove up the Newell Highway at the start of November almost convinced that we would be moving to Springfield Lakes.

Unfortunately, within 24 hours, that ideal seemed in tatters. We drove into Springfield Lakes for the first time on Sunday afternoon get get the lie of the land, and we were stunned by the tiny blocks, narrow streets, and congested lifestyle of the place. We drove about and found our preferred houses, all squished into the back-blocks of the area, and felt genuine concern about the lack of space. Although - to be fair - there were a few exceptions here and there - places with a bit more room, and our pre-trip absolute favourite house turned out to be one of them. So - maybe it was not a total loss. On the way back home, we drove into Augustine Heights, another suburb on our list. And surprisingly, it was a different world. Lots of space and plenty of land - a completely different feel. We immediately fell in love with Augustine Heights, which had the effect of being yet another nail in the coffin of Springfield Lakes, even before we had looked at a single house. In Augustine Heights was a display village, and we decided to have a look at one. The Jennings house we looked at was really lovely and we thought looked great. Next door was another ex-display house now for sale, and turned out to be handled by the same agent who was selling our favourite house in Springfield Lakes - so we could talk with her about this in the morning as well. Anyway, we headed back to Shell's sister's place amazed at how our entire thought processes had been turned around in 3 hours.

It gradually turned into a frustrating week. We never got to the point of loving Springfield Lakes, and the houses we had loved on the Internet were not quite as good in person. The various agents we talked with all had properties in Augustine Heights as well, and so we spent a lot of time shuffling between the suburbs and getting ideas. Soon, all our favourite houses were in Augustine Heights, and we even took the step of taking Shell's two sisters to our two favourites to see that they thought about picking between them. We were loving the area, and loving the houses, but just could not quite make one work for us. They were also a step more expensive than in Springfield Lakes, and that took us beyond our pre-approved limits. We dithered on.

Then came an absolute surprise. An agent we had written off, who had given us very little to consider when we had dedicated some time to him earlier in the week, rang me back and told me he had found "our house". Remarkably, it was back in Springfield Lakes. Reluctantly at first, we went and looked, but once there we could see no reason to do anything but love the place. It needed almost nothing done to it to make it ideal for us. And it was affordable. In the end we simply had to try to buy it. We made a good offer - which turned out to be quite a complicated thing to do - and then waited. We had planned to head back to Melbourne on Saturday afternoon, but as we got closer to lunch time, we still had not heard an answer. We range the agent to find out what was happening. First it seemed the owner was angling for more money. We could offer some more, but we did not want to offer as much as they were seeming to demand. Still the agent worked on. And in the end - the truth. The couple were not united about selling. One wanted to, the other did not. It is not a dispute where there is middle ground. In the end, after hours of debate, they took the house off the market and we lost our only hope.

It was a dark time - because it seemed like the week had been wasted. And yet, it seemed to me that we had been driving around the answer all week, but not acknowledging it. The first display house we looked at in Augustine Heights was beautiful - we had seen nothing better. Of course, we had disregarded it because we were looking for something established, not to build. But wouldn't it be worth a look? We drove back into Augustine Heights and again looked at the house. Yes - it was wonderful. Then we visited the land sales office. The lady was lovely, and happily gave us some information about the development. She then marked up a map and mentioned that certain blocks were on special this weekend. A builder had bought them on spec, failed to deliver, and had returned them. The developers wanted them gone! If she could sell them this weekend, there was a $50,000 discount on offer. Now - that sounded like a con! But, as we looked around, it did indeed seem like almost all land in the suburb was around $50k more than we were being offered this block for. Anyway, she said to us, just drive around and have a look and see if you fall in love with a particular block. Of course, that seemed rediculous as well! Land was land, and it seemed pretty vanilla in the development areas, even in Augustine Heights.

So we drove off, and to our great shock, came face to face with a block of land that we literally fell in love with. It was up on a hill, across the road from a beautiful park, and in a lovely section of the suburb. Beautiful.

We again delayed our departure, and spent Sunday trying to work out whether our dream land and our dream house would go together. Surprisingly, for quite some time it looked like they may not. It was surprising because we had become totally used to the idea that God was leading us through all this, and had closed all sorts of doors to bring us to this point. So - why would there now be a problem? It was this day that we got to know David, who would end up being very important in the entire process. His response was that the land was too steep and too small to hold such a big house. He had a point, I confess, and so I allowed him to talk us into considering an alternative block. But we didn't love that one, and in a sudden moment, I realised how we could do this and convince David to go along with our original plan.

By the end of the day, we had purchased the land, received our $50,000 discount, and asked David to get on with designing our house to go on it. We headed back to Melbourne early the next morning thinking we knew the answer. But there was still plenty to go on this journey...

Coming home

So we've moved to Queensland and settled ourselves in. Quite seriously, it is hard to believe how much has happened in the 48 days since we drove into the state. We've got a house to live in - in which we feel pretty comfortable, I am pretty involved with things at work, the kids have started school and are getting on well, we've found a church and are enjoying our time there, we've re-established the connections with Queensland family on a new footing, we're driving about in a new car, we've started to become familiar with and enjoy our new surroundings, and we are nearly ready to sign the contract on the construction of our "real" home. Could it really only be 7 weeks ago that we were still in Victoria and all these hurdles remained to be jumped?

But - having said that - something interesting and strange and unexpected occurred a few days ago. I was at work and needed to head out to the bank to do some things. Once the business of the outing was done, I intended to come straight back to work but found my carpark only allowed me to turn the other way - sending me off around a block I had not explored before. Never one to be overwhelmed by such things, I drove on and turned down another street and decided to genuinely seek out a different way back rather than U-turn at the quickest opportunity and get back onto safe ground. Sure enough, within a kilometre or so, I suspected I knew where my road would take me and not too much later it indeed delivered me to where I was expecting. I turned left and headed back towards the office from the opposite direction to which I usually approach, but with rapidly increasing familiarity found my way back to the end of our street.

And then it happened. I turned into the street - could see the office complex in the distance, and just like that, for the first time, I felt like I was coming home. I studied the emotion I was feeling with some alarm - could it be that after so many years of being a Victorian, I was suddenly a Queenslander? Well - not completely I suppose, but there was no doubt that I was suddenly sensing that this was my home - that this was where I was, and that this place in some sense now defined me...

What a strange thing. What a surprise. It was particularly a surprise for me because I had lived interstate before - for almost 7 years I had a Sydney address. And there was an aspect to which I had never quite felt at home in Sydney. A part of the issue - I supposed - was that for the vast majority of my time in Sydney, I retained regular trips back to Melbourne for work and family purposes. These trips - generally more frequently than monthly - were usually of 6 days duration or thereabouts, and in retrospect probably meant I retained a Victorian connection despite living the majority of my time in another state. It also meant I had a Melbourne address for certain correspondence. And indeed, some organisations did continue to contact me via my Melbourne address for the entire time I was in Sydney. It would seem like a part of me did not ever make the move. But this Queensland move seems so much more definite than that.

Indeed - 48 days in another state without a visit back - had I done that before? Without detailed records, it was hard to believe that there was not at least once in those 7 years that I did not stay out of Victoria for 48 days or more. But it could be that it didn't happen. Even if I had stayed out of Victoria for longer than that - it was a job of constant movement and travel, so it would have been impossible one suspects that I would have stayed in Sydney for that many days consecutively. Of course, in thinking about it, our 1974 trip around Australia involved being out of Victoria for 64 consecutive days, but that might be regarded as different because we were most definitely on holidays, and indeed hardly ever spent two days in the same place. So - could it be that this was the greatest number of consecutive days I have ever stayed in a place outside of Victoria? Really - it could be. Already!

It's subtle, it's hard to grapple with - but suddenly I am feeling like I am home here. It's a funny feeling...

No other story

There can be no other story than to say how terrible the news from my home state of Victoria is in the face of the worst natural disaster in Australian history - the February bush fires.

I had seen the weather report for Saturday that Melbourne was expecting another day in the mid-40's (an extraordinary temperature, but a mark already a couple of times this summer). We proceeded with our plans without giving it a lot of thought - having a lovely day at Mapleton, and ending up with a McCallum family tradition of having an ice-cream at the Big Pineapple. Our first hint of trouble was on the news coming home, that both the Princes and South Gippsland Hwys were cut by fire. Two thoughts immediately struck - firstly that this means the areas of Sale and Lakes Entrance were completely cut off, and secondly that it would have to be a pretty big fire to cut both these roads which are 50 km or so apart. Upon getting home and finishing tea, we decided to ring my parents to see how they were getting on. And they had more news. It had got to 46.2 - an all time record in Melbourne, and that there were a lot of fires. Mum sent so far as saying that she had clear memories of Victoria's two worst fire days in 1939 and 1983 and throught these were worse than both. How devestatingly correct she turned out to be.

Then came our time of frustration. There was hardly a mention of Victorian fires on the 60 second news breaks of Saturday night on Queensland television. If they had time for natural disaster stories, they parochially covered the Queensland floods. So - come Sunday morning, it came as a huge shock when our pastor announced he would be praying for the families of the 35 victims killed in the flames. He did that - but no more. At home, we struggled for news. The TV stations pushed on with golf and surf life saving and cricket, with only the cricket having anything to say about the fires. Our best source of information was the news service on the mobile phone, through which we first heard about Marysville and Kinglake and the ever-rising toll. Finally - at around 4:30pm, Channel 7 changed programming and crossed to a news service focussing on the fires. Other stations caught on. By 6:00, there was no other story.

As of now, the disaster continues to unfold. The death toll rises regularly - they now say 173 but expect it to get worse. They've been saying "expect it to get worse" for days now. The fires are still burning. Fires this well established can barely be controlled, let alone extinguished, but anything other than heavy rain. And it has not rained heavily in Victoria this year so far. The story grows more terrible by the moment - there is no way to simply describe it. But - there are plenty of news services out there doing their best - I won't compete with them.

Personally the story hits hard, although we have not heard of any direct connections we have with people who have suffered major losses or death. To that extent - we know many have suffered far more. But for us... Marysville is a town I have enjoyed since being a boy, and had many weekends there. it was one place I introduced to Shelley where she immediately fell in love with it as much as I had. We have had a couple of lovely romantic weekends at guest houses in the town and loved our time there. It's... gone. Kinglake is an area I knew little about until I worked at BUV and was responsible for the property at Gum Creek. The property was a camp site - both formal and informal - for people over the years. Almost 400 hectares of natural bush and a few buildings scattered through. But it was run down and would cost too much to fix up. Ultimately I sold the property to a young guy keen to establish a wildlife sanctuary. Today, I know nothing of the fate of the property or the guy, but I suspect it is burnt out and the young bloke's dream at least is shattered. I rationalise this - imagine if I had allowed it to be converted back to a campsite and had a couple of hundred people tucked away in the bush around the property...

I am also desperately concerned about the churches and people all over Victoria that I had so much to do with up until two months ago. And to date I am not aware of major losses. One report said two Baptist churches had been burned, but I have not had that substantiated yet. Last time I spoke with the Insurance Manager he was not aware of any. All over the state, our churches are staging posts and places of refuge for the bushfire effort. We can only pray and hope this continues to go well.

And the bottom line? The fires are still burning. It's not over yet. We pray for relief. We pray for an end to it.

My former colleagues are busy making preparation to assist. They are running an appeal - see details on www.buv.com.au if you can help. May there be some light in this the darkest hour.

School's In

Probably the most significant day yet of our time in Queensland occurred yesterday, when all three kids started school. For Ben it was the first day ever - but if he had any nerves or misgivings, they were not on show for us to spot! Nathan too seemed to be full steam ahead - bring it on. Stephanie was probably the most nervous, but even she was looking forward to getting back into the environment where she had other girls to play with and mental stimulation as well.

That leaves Mum and Dad. I think Shelley in particular was taken by how big of a day this was - that after nearly 10 years since Nathan was born, she was for the first time going to have all the children off her hands for hours at a time on a daily basis. I decided to take some time off work and go along with the family to make sure it all went well.

At home - each of the kids got themselves dressed up in their smart new uniforms, then presented themselves to me to get my adoring encouragement. They did look great! Camera out, it was photos of each child individually, just the boys, turn this way, turn that way, stop screwing your face up, and in the end a few nice photos of our first day. Then it was photos of them picking up their lunch, walking out the front, putting their bags in the car, ready to go off... ok, I was a little taken by the whole thing!

Off we drove. It's a strange trip to school - because there are four distinctive ways you could drive there and it was extremely difficult to predict which one might be the fastest or the best. I chose the longest of the routes which also was mostly on the motorway network so going at higher speeds. It worked reasonably well - but it will be weeks, I suspect, before we know which one is really the best.

Scenes on the road outside the school were chaotic. And even inside the gate there were parents with cameras clinging to tiny children everywhere and no-one seems really convinced of where they were supposed to be or what happened next. We had decided I would take Nathan and Stephanie to settle them in their classes, and Shelley would look after Ben. Fortunately, the class rooms for the two bigger ones were only a few rooms apart. After some thought, I decided to take Nathan to his class first, and after he had met his teacher and given me a quick kiss, he was off to sit in his seat, meet his guide for the day, and basically start to settle in. Stephie was really good right up until the point we got to the door of her class room and suddenly she felt a little hesitant. Most of the kids were already there, sitting on the floor, and looking very at home. She clung hard to my hand for a few moments, but then her teacher noticed her arrival, came over, and with a few words encouraged her along. After a few moments, I was confident to leave her as well and the two of them were done.

It then took me quite a while to find where Shelley and Ben had got to. The school has a bit of a maze-like quality, and with certain doors closed and locked (why I don't really know) it was more complicated than usual. But, after a few minutes, I found them - Ben off playing and exploring his new world, and Mummy still talking with the teacher and going through details of the preparations made to deal with Ben's allergies. After several more photos, we were done. We finally made it away and back to the car. It was amazing how the school yard had taken on a more peaceful quality in the 30 minutes we had been there! We found the car and explored another of the possible routes to school as an alternative route home.

Over dinner that night, the stories came flooding out of the children about their first day. Everything positive, everything exciting. It's only the start, but it could hardly have been much better. And that makes all sorts of things easier for us all...