Two weeks into our Australian adventure and we have managed to have our application for a house approved! I didn’t realise what a huge relief this would be, and what a weight would be lifted from my shoulders! We have dragged the children through about 30 houses, some awesome, some pretty skanky! In fact, one of the houses yesterday, we walked into and it was a total mess! The builders had been in fixing the decking apparently! It looked like they had been in and trashed the joint. The agent turned the lights on, and yes it was grim! He then went upstairs, ran back down white as a ghost, and hurried us into the basement car park! We made our excuses and left. Both Lisa (relocation agent) and I were gutted to not have found out what was so frightening upstairs! We guessed it was a dead builder! We’ll never know!!!

 
House hunting here is so bizarre! You can arrange a private viewing of a property, but the agent generally thinks “well, if I’m there, I’ll make it an open house”, so they stick a board outside advertising an open viewing! This means there are 30 people elbowing each other out of the way into the bathroom ( usually with terrifying gold taps and Pepto-Bismol pink tiles) then shoving you out of the kitchen ( the most 70’s kitchen you have ever seen with mini net curtains to boot) all because “if you like it you need to sign NOW!!!!!” Apparently the rentals in Sydney run on 1% availability or something!! It was stressful to say the least. I found myself sweating, and shaking, running around the house shouting “Tim, I like it, I like it, get a form quiiiiiiick get a bloody form!!, Poppy get daddy, get a bloody form!”  Even if I didn’t really like it, I had to beat the other stressed out British family with screaming kids!! 

  
Poor Monty gave up about 9 houses in! I was flaking a bit too! We started viewings at 10:00 and got home at 17:30! 

Hey, it wasnt all bad! We got a McDonald’s take out coffee mid morning (mainly for a loo break), then a delicious Mexican box of delight for lunch, and even met this little fella in the last house we viewed… 

Who cares how stressful the house hunting is, when you break for lunch at Cronella beach and the kids get to chase the cockatiels! Life is good!!  

Here’s to our next adventure! Making our house a home, getting our darling girl into school, and meeting the locals!! Wish us luck!! I hope Sylvania is ready for The Wilson gang and all our enthusiasm to make this work! (I must get a t shirt with “Who wants to be my friend?” on the front!)

Safe to say, I think we are loving Australia!!