Maryborough Delight

The past week has been busy as we set off on Tuesday for a flying trip north in order to undertake the next step in changing our gears to what will be retirement for hubbie and a slower pace for me.   I'm sure you've heard all about making sure your "ducks are all lined up" , and for us that meant getting our house in an area that will serve the next chapter of our lives ........ it happens it will be in Maryborough, Qld.  Leaving here while the moon was still up, we drove up doing a long 14 hour stint the first day getting from here to Dalby .......



We travelled pretty much the route shown above - Bundalong to Corowa, Lockhart, Temora, then meeting the Newell Hwy just on the outskirts of West Wyalong.  The water from the flooding at Forbes can still be seen up near the roadway which has km's of road getting repaired.........

Gold Mining along the hwy near Peak Hill area

and then a short 4 hr stint the following day........ ready  and waiting  for the pre settlement inspection, We waited at our favourite spot ........ the Maryborough Harbour has this great little place we found the last time we were up - perfect spot for taking some time out

too cute not to include!

with settlement on our future home the following day!  And here she is ...........

Isn't she lovely!  Built back in 1910 she has been well looked after by various families over those years.  I'm so happy to have the wonderful L shaped verandah ........

 

I can see me enjoying sitting out there with coffee and handiwork or a book to read, letter to write .........    Although it is a much smaller yard than what we have here in Bundalong,  ( the idea is to totally

reduce our mortgage down ,  to downsize the yard maintenance area a tad , and to be in a town where we don't have to drive 40kms to post a letter, or go to the bank, doctor etc etc.)..........Would you believe there is a small post office, patchwork shop and general store just down the corner of the street!!!  Apart from 4 bedrooms (so that one is my craft room since I have to leave my wonderful Bee Hive Cabin behind),   .......It has a fenced chook house area,

and a fenced vegie garden area separate to the rest of the yard! This means the girls can be let out from the chook area and not get into the vegie garden!!   I'm super happy to say that hubbie has decided the 6 chooks we currently have can come with us! Mary, Henrietta, Scarlet, Susie, Penny and Alice are all very happy to stay together in their little flock I'm sure!  Hopefully they will be able to pack up their suitcases soon! 

Oh how we would have loved to be able to stay, but alas, the following day we had to begin the 18 hr drive back down here. We were both very happy to stop over in Parkes for a much needed break.

Stopover in Parkes

  I took some cotton and  a crochet hook along with me and managed to crochet up some new dishcloths whilst sitting in the passenger seat. There were so many bumps in the road at times, crochet is the only thing manageable for me!

 We have put our Bundalong home on the market and we will stay here and continue working until it sells.  In the meantime we are beginning the Decluttering and packing up of non essentials.  And of course we only have till Wednesday of next week before Dad's unit has settlement go through.  The removalist is booked in for Tuesday afternoon to enable us to get it cleaned up. Dad will then spend the night at Bundalong with us and I will be flying up to Brisbane with Dad to get things sorted out for him at Janoah Gardens in Brisbane before flying back on the Friday (ready for work again on the Monday).   Naturally things keep busy and Dad has just had to have a remnant of a tooth removed yesterday (teeth that were removed 60 odd years ago!) ..... so this last week remains very busy.

Planning the Next Stage

Before we get into all the knitty and gritty - we best do the knitty, which hasn't been much - just a couple of beanies for birthdays ..... one orange one for young Layla  and an order for a minion beanie from my nephew in New Zealand finished off the 5 birthday beanies for the NZ crew (unfortunately I actually forgot to take a finished photo of it, so now I'm waiting for it to arrive so my sister can get a photo of it for me!

My brain feels exhausted at present with so much stuff that's been going on, especially this past week ...... but that's just how it is sometimes when you have

The Garden Dad did outside his Unit in Yarrawonga

several things in the planning stages that are beginning to move forward.  Dad's unit finally went unconditional on Friday afternoon at 1 minute past 5pm!!! So settlement for the sale on his Unit in Yarrawonga will be on 30th November  (yes, the one he moved into in April this year)
........ and the purchase of the Serviced apartment at Janoah Gardens in Brisbane will be happening at the same time.  With settlement so close, we have had to book the removalist who will collect his furniture on 29th Nov with delivery to Brisbane on 1st December.  I will be accompanying Dad up - we plan to fly out of Albury and get a direct flight to Brisbane on the 30th with me staying for just a couple of days to help get him unpacked before I fly back home on the 2nd ready for work after that weekend.

  So with Dad pretty much set, our planning for retirement has continued.  

Native Blue Banded Bee on our lavender

 Unless you already are mortgage free, or have a very healthy superannuation or other funds available - planning for retirement is a tricky business that takes time.  We began thinking about mortgages in serious terms a couple of years ago, and even with paying close to twice the amount we really need to each week, its still going to take another 6 and a bit years to pay off the mortgage here at this current rate. When we moved here 6 3/4yrs ago, we had thought the sale of the house in Townsville would have happened straight away and the price the agents had given us, meant that this house here would have been left with just a very small mortgage.  Unfortunately the Townsville place took 5 years to sell, had renters in that wrecked so much we had to replace carpets, fix gates and tiles etc, the housing market in Townsville crashed and then it finally sold for $50,000 less than what we paid for it - leaving us in quite a financial predicament, that has taken a lot of hard work to climb out of!   So now,  as one does, we get up, dust ourselves off and  get on with  planning out the next chapter ...........    

As you might remember from the previous post, we completed our secret squirrel business ....... and continued with negotiations when we got back.  We are now close to settlement on our investment house in Maryborough.......... very close, in fact settlement occurs on the 17th November (can you believe it's actually getting settlement before Dads unit - mostly because of all the mucking around initially and change of contract with Dad's unit which has drawn things out a bit)...........
And now with all of those 2 main pieces pretty much taken care of we have had to make another big decision.  Between now and April is the best time for selling houses in Bundalong as many people come up regularly from Melbourne during that time and it's become quite the place for them to have holiday houses ........ so yes, we've decided to put our house here up on the market and just see what happens, see where the market really is and get some feed back.  It would be lovely for Pete to be able to retire sooner rather than later, but that will all depend on when we sell here ......... so it's a wait and see here in Bundalong.   At least the garden is looking nice and the house and yard have changed quite a bit since we bought it on 26th March, 2010

And here it is now ............. with Solar, water tanks, gardens etc etc