Rental Search Part Deux

So, we're back from our trip to Newcastle. The weather has been great and the drive down on thursday morning was nice. Roads here are so easy to drive on and there were stretches of highway more than a hundred kilometers long where the satnav had no directions to give. The car is good on the more open roads, great for overtaking on the hilly bits and not once did I have to put my foot all the way down.

We saw three places yesterday. The first one was in Warners Bay. That suburb wasn't really even on our radar until recently, but it was recommended and we're glad it was. It's on Lake Macquarie and a really nice setting. There's a path around the lake, lots of shade, picnic  benches. Great. The house was on a road just down from the lake and has all the rooms we need and extra storage space. The lounge is fairly small, as is the kitchen, but they're both functional. There are three bedrooms, the master has an en suite and walk-in wardrobe. There's another bathroom too. I was put off at first because the decorating is a bit shoddy (made me feel great about the stuff we did in York). It has a garden which is a good size but not in great condition. It's got a double garage too, so loads of car room.

We then saw a place in Bar Beach, which is a suburb just off one of the beaches. It was a no-no almost as soon as we walked in the door. Much smaller than the pictures had appeared and very dated.

Then later in the afternoon we saw another one in Warners Bay. On a road just down from the lake again, but further round. This one was in decent condition, but not particularly big. Didn't have a second bathroom though and the toilet was in the laundry, which was also where the back door was. Weird.

We stayed in a hotel overnight and were back out today. We had another walk around Warners Bay and sat just by the lake for a couple of hours which was really nice. We're very keen on the area. This afternoon we saw a house in Dudley. This one was more modern, a fairly recently built townhouse. Had a big living room, three decent bedrooms, two nicely fitted bathrooms and a good sized kitchen. A private balcony at the back and a very small yard at the front but no actual garden.  The area is totally different in terms of it being more residential and close to the beach rather than the lake.

At the moment we're torn between the first one in Warners Bay and the one in Dudley.  We like them both for different reasons.  We like Warners Bay for the space and the very nice area (lake, walks, shops etc), but we like the house at Dudley.  We think we're going to apply for both and see what happens.

We found a couple of others that we wanted to look round too, but we called the estate agent twice and both times they didn't call us back!  They also operate on a "inspection day" system rather than "by appointment" which has meant we've missed out on seeing more as if you can't go to the inspection, then tough!  We'll se what happens with those and we might make another trip next week.

This is all very frustrating, but exciting at the same time!

Busy bee... or am I?

The answer to the above question is that no, i'm not busy at all. Most days i've gone and gotten the food shopping for that evening dinner, but yesterday we had takeaway pizza (not bad, but we still haven't found any as good as Pizza Hut in the UK - Pizza Hut here is different, and not good at all), so i've got the lamb rump steaks I bought yesterday to cook.

I've got some episodes of Desperate Housewives to watch and i'm working my way through those, but I don't want to watch them too fast or i'll run out and have nothing to watch. What a conundrum. Daytime TV is as bad, if not worse, here than it is in the UK, so i've tried not to watch too much. The main annoyance is advert breaks. In the UK, everyone moans about ads. I did too. But believe me, it can be a lot worse. I have my Nintendo DS, which was spared from the burglary, but I've found i'm not particularly interested in it at the moment. There's the Xbox 360 (which I bought second hand a couple of weeks ago, cost saver), and i've got two games for that, but again, i'm trying not to finish them too quickly because I don't want to spend a load of money on more. I had a paperback novel, one of the Kathy Reichs books, but it was so good I finished it in a couple of days.

It's been suggested that I go out and explore or walk. And while it's a common suggestion, it's just not something i'm into. I'm happy to walk to get places, or if there's something specific I need. But i've never gotten my head around walking for the sake of it. It just seems pointless and vague. It's easier when Sarah is around because we chat while we walk, but on my own I just can't be bothered. I don't have an MP3 player anymore (my iPod Touch *was* a victim of the burglary), so i'd just be roaming the streets like a vagrant. Not my thing at all.

So that reads like one big boredom moan really and makes it sound worse than it is. On the plus side, i've been up when Sarah gets up for work chatting to folks online (in the evening UK time), getting up a little bit after she goes to work, going for the shopping a bit after that, then after I get back it's time for lunch. I dawdle in the afternoons and before you know it, Sarah's home.

In other news, we've been keeping an eye on domain.com.au and realestate.com.au because in a week or two we need to be driving down to Newcastle to view and hopefully get a rental property. We're hopeful of getting something in the area we're keen on (Merewether, for anyone that's interested) for around or under $400pw. When we get set up there I should be able to find work and i'll be posting about not having enough time in the day!