Pearls of Wisdom—Moving
Timeline of decisions and action taken to make a move to another state of Australia. I have prepared as much as possible to make the transition as smooth as possible.
Pearls of wisdom from this piece
Travel can broarden broaden your perspective particularly when done alone.
Tell people your plans, so they can readjust their thoughts/plans.
Take action.
Research as much as possible.
At some stage, you have to take a leap of faith that things will work out.
I moved to Darwin in 1995 in part to satisfy something that I was seeking since I was a child, a constant summer. I told my parents as a 7 or 8 year old that I wanted a place in the northern and southern hemisphere, so I could get a constant summer. At the age of 15, I realised that Darwin had a near constant temperature of 33 degrees year round. It was 11 years later when I finally made the move.
Fast forward to 2013, when I became committed to a wonderful gentleman who had a dream of travelling around Australia on a motor bike since he was 20 years old. Now in his 40's with no major commitments, he told me about his plan, before we became committed. I thought to myself, "What right do I have to tell him not to go when he has been wanting it for so long." He went around most of Australia in November 2014 to February 2015. I caught up with him twice. Once for a weekend where his mother's side was having a reunion. The other time was for three weeks where I was on the back of his motor bike from Melbourne to Brisbane. For me, it was a time of stiff legs and needing to park near the curbs to give me a little bit of assistance in getting on the back of the bike. We are living to tell the tale.
In September 2014, I purchased a 2 bedroom unit in Darwin CBD, after my mother passed away and leaving my sister and I the place where she lived. I didn't want to live in the town where I grew up. My brother knew this and had bought my share of the place. This gave me a deposit for the place in Darwin.
When my partner returned to Darwin he started expressing an interest in growing our own food and generating our own power. This is not achievable in the Darwin unit. We then went looking around Darwin to find a place that met our criteria. We looked up to 100km from Darwin. The job opportunities that far from Darwin are quite limited, along with still living in the same climate zone, which for me, is becoming testing at times.
The search was on. The area had to have job prospects, warm climate although cooler than Darwin (I have lived in Darwin 20 plus and my partner 30 plus years), be able to grow different fruits and vegetables, roads to enjoy riding on, and hills which we could build an underground house on/in. We will be setting it up so we can be mostly self sufficient in our retirement.
We found that the area around Bundaberg, Childers, Gin Gin, Queensland ticked the boxes that we had. Bundaberg is 4 hours north of Brisbane. The climate is milder see the comparison.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_039025.shtml
Childers averages
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_014015.shtml
Darwin averages
Within that area, they currently grow 40 different fruits and vegetables. There is an equilateral triangle between Bundaberg near the coast, Gin Gin inland to the north and Childers inland to the south, the distance is around 50 km. The area around Gin Gin and Childers is much more hilly and offers better topography for the underground house. I have already checked with the local council to see if we could build this style of house. They are willing to let us do the underground house. Jobs are available there. Over the years both of us have built up a number of hands on skills that can be useful in a wide range of situations.
In October 2016 both of us went to Bundaberg for a week to look around. We started looking around the areas to see what areas suited our wishes. We identified one area and we decided that I should go down again to look at properties. I looked at vacant land. There is one very helpful real estate agent who had also lived in the Territory. He offered me advice that the initial area we liked was flood prone. Underground house and flooding—don't make for a good combination.
We got our first NO when we went to the bank to purchase the land. At that stage, there were no contracts in place. We could see where the NO came from. The unit in Darwin had dropped in value; and for the land, we would still need to build something on it to live in.
Our second trip together was in May 2017 and was for two weeks. This was uncharacteristic of me to take time off during the school term. My position revolves around the school term cycles. The time was chosen by my partner who also works with the same company but in a different area, school term means little to him in his work. We booked our annual leave in January and as it turned out my role had changed after I booked the leave. I was still involved in the school term cycles, but my position could be replaced by someone else. This was the start of disentangling myself from work.
We stopped, we talked, we explored, for the second trip. We found the hidden gems within the landscape. We have fine tuned where we would like to live. I know that my current motor bike will not be suited to the potential distances that I need to travel to get to work. During this trip, we travelled 1 ½ hours away from Bundaberg to a motor bike shop which has a wider choice than the shops in Darwin. There were a couple of bikes that would suit my needs. One we did a fair bit of research on, the other we didn't. Imagine buying a new set of shoes with no prior knowledge of what syles fit your foot. That is what it is like for motor cyclist. The one we did all the research on turned out to be big and bulky for me. This is the one that suits me
(photo of Booma). It is still in Queensland waiting for me to move there.
We are getting itchy feet for the move. But wait, how can we afford it. I looked at bank site and started to crunch some numbers. We could not afford to buy in Bundaberg unless I sell in Darwin. The cord has to be cut connecting me with the place that I chose to move to all those years ago. Now, another quality choice has been made after 18 months of thought.
In mid June I got a real estate agent involved and he gave an appraisal of the place in Darwin. It will be on the market by early September 2017. Since June we have been getting rid of stuff, packing and cleaning. I work full time and part of my job is cleaning for 4 weeks the cleaning was for 40 hours now it has been reduced to 25 hours of cleaning as my school term role has recommenced. Darwin has also had two consecutive weekends of 3 days in the weekend. These longer weekends were where I did most of the cleaning of the unit. I did push myself hard, it took around 9 weeks to do the unit. A few weekends I was told not to do anything, as I was burning the candle at both ends.
The unit itself was built in the 1980's. It is solid and in need of renovations. I have had little problem with living with it the way it is. This has made the job of getting it ready for sale a bit easier as I don't want to impose my style of interior design on another person. Let them do it up to their liking, not mine.
June also saw me tell the management of where both of us work that at some stage we will be moving. We are happy working there, it is a lifestyle move that is making us leave the Territory. The next day I tried to resign from one of my roles—they have no one willing to take over that role, so I am still doing it. During the week (6 to 13 August) a co worker asked me about doing a different role in the organisation. I told that person that at some stage I would be leaving and that management know. I feel comfortable and confident that this person will be able to do the work that I am currently doing.
Where do I go from here? It will be more of a waiting game. We may have the situation where one of us gets a job in Bundaberg and the other stays in Darwin until the unit is sold. We may both move down there and I rent out the unit. The unit may be sold soon after being put on the market, and we move within a month. It is also a time to start saying our goodbye to our friends.
8 ) infinity happiness
