So it’s a year to the day since settlement on the house. It’s passed so fast that Michael Schumacher would have had trouble keeping up with it. I can remember how hideous the house buying process was - made a million times worse by the fact that I was in Victoria trying to negotiate on a Queensland property. Well. The house is nearly there - 300% better than we found it - and it’s exciting to think that as of today we can sell (even though we don’t know how - do you have to tell the bank?) and head back down to Melbourne. Hopefully that should happen sometime before September, but we shall see.

I can’t believe I’ve survived a year! We are still cooking on our camp stove with one gas ring (as the hundred or so dollars needed to hook up our cooktop has always been needed more elsewhere), we have only just this week discovered fishing at the end of our street and we still loathe the ShutUpAndStopIts next door. When we’ve signed the contracts to sell I’m going to scream at them to SHUT THE F!@#ING GATE every morning without fail. I miss our friends, I miss the band, I miss cool pubs and cafes with crappy couchs and people who don’t think Coopers is a weird beer. Poor M probably misses all that stuff more than me - he hasn’t been back to Melbourne since we left!

Things I Have Learnt:
- Everyone here has either a four wheel drive, a big and irredeemably stupid dog or both
- If the owner of the said 4WD is male, then seven times out of ten they will have the physique of a steamed dim sim
- The steamed dim sims, eight times out of ten (if they’re below 50) will inevitably possess a white-trash too-long goatee, short hair tricked up with the occasional mullet
- People are friendlier here
- People here are incapable of saying ‘I don’t know’. For example: “Where would be the best place to buy gumboots?” Even though they have absolutely no idea and have never even touched on the vague cosmic qualities of this question, they will instantly say “Awww mate, what you need to do is go down to the place on the corner of such and such street. They’ll help you out.” This is a lie. But they sound so knowing. It took us about seven months to figure out that any local that sounds like they know what they’re talking about probably knows less than we do
- FourX tastes like wee. The wee of someone who drinks a lot of water. No state can become the ‘Smart State’ when their beer is closer to urine than hops.
- I have been able to string out ‘working from home’ and score an overseas trip…I definitely owe my boss some blood money and have promised to return to work in Melbourne once the house is sold
- M and I are good work partners; after inital struggles with funds we have sorted out the crap and discovered that it’s nice to have a project that we’re both investing a lot of work in
- Having space is exciting, but an acre is barely enough. In the house adjoining ours in Melbourne I could hear our neighbour clear his throat every morning. Here, I can hear the guy over the road clear his throat, and every dog for miles

OK. I got carried away. It’s been a year of wild, exciting DIY poverty stricken adventure. We lived the past week on $50. The phone bill is due, as is the house insurance, car rego and RACV renewal - it’s an ongoing juggling act - but it’s provided a waaaaay more exciting life for the past year, and has ensured that we’ll have the funds (touch wood) to actually have some choices as to what we do next.

And there endeth the monologue. Tomorrow I’ll be back to talking about mudcrabs and the new ‘friends’ that are making moving south more and more attractive.