First Open House of the New Year!

Today was the first advertised open house of the new year, and what a result, 25 people walked round for a sticky-beak!

Kitchen and looking down to the 'South Wing'

This was by far our best open house to date, and the buying season hasn't even kicked off yet!  It should all ramp up again after January 26th which is Australia Day.  We will see how Mr Real Estate goes with the follow ups next week.

We really want to get on board The Manly Ferry aka Caxton before the boating season kicks off; the idea is to get some practice in before it gets too crowded, we don't want to look like nobs do we?!!

Here are some pics of the house, when it is tidy and animal-free ...

Main Bedroom - not a bad view when you are in bed !

Big Deck !

Lounge looking out to deck

Sydney Harbour Bridge to Shut !!!!!!!

But only for the next 3 weekends from Friday 10.00pm through to Monday 5.00am. Massive news for Sydneysiders as the bridge is the main thouroughfare across the harbour, so we will be steering well clear of the city.

Bombo and Bridge

Its the first time that the bridge has shut since 1932, the reason for the closure is  so that they can carry out major resurfacing work and waterproofing. 

Also Known as "The  Coathanger"

 It has been closed before for the New Years Eve fireworks and other special occasions but only for a very short peroid of time.

 

Bridge with Manly Ferry, Cruise Ship, and a  Bulk Carrier going under Bridge  

The Caxton Handover

My brother and his other half are off to Stourport this weekend to meet Joe, Lesley and the boys and go through a handover with them.  Just wish we could be there, mind you they are going to video it!

We had a bit of a problem with the insurance as in they will not insure you unless you are a UK resident, although they couldn't tell me the reason why~ Not a problem though as we will put the boat in my brother's name, and we can use it with his permission down the track :-)

When the stoppages are finished in March, bruv and crew will move the boat closer to his home in Milton Keynes.  Any suggestions on safe secure marinas north of Milton Keynes would be appreciated!  Once it is there he will be able to use it whenever, having worked in the boating industry for the last 31 years you soon come to realise that the best way to ruin a nice boat is to let it sit idle on a marina.

Another thing we have to change is the name, but I think we will wait 'till we arrive over there to work out how to do it; we want it very simple as in THE MANLY FERRY and maybe a small Aussie flag or pic of the Manly Ferry.

Finally once again thanks to Lesley, Joe, Russell and Tracy who have made the whole exercise very simple for us; not sure its been so  simple for them !

The Buying of Caxton !

We made the decision to buy Caxton on Christmas Eve ... and no, we hadn't had a few !

I have been following the Caxton blog since its inception and have always been impressed by the look and the style of the boat.  I also really liked the stretch that was done on the bow, allowing for a hold to put in crap coal, wood etc and to keep a clean roof area.

Obviously reading the blog you get a good idea of the condition of the boat plus how fastidious the owners are in maintaining the said boat !

When Yarwood started its build I thought "hmmm I can see a cunning plan coming up"!  (Yarwood is the new boat being built by Caxton's current owners, for those not in the know !)

When I was over in the UK in July/August 2011, I arranged to go to Stourport and meet Lesley, Joe and the boys and, of course, to give Caxton the once over !  It was love at first sight !  I must admit I wasn't keen on portholes because I thought the boat would be dark inside but with two houdini hatches and two side hatches plus light coloured paintwork the interior is very bright and airy.  My other reservation was that Caxton had a cross-bed and the thought of dismantling and reassembling a bed every day had always put me off them.  However, when visiting Lesley and Joe, they gave me a quick demonstration on making and un-making the bed and, from memory, I think it took 2.5 minutes !  If I remember correctly, Lesley's words at the time were "if you can't spend 2.5 minutes out of a day, you have a big problem".  Plus of course in a cross-bed there is a lot more room (to accommodate 5 animals plus us !).  The boat is reverse layout - as in the galley is at the stern (rear), followed by the dining room / lounge, walk-through bathroom (large !) and the forward cabin and a very large foredeck (cratch) - just perfect !

We discussed the price at the time and I told Lesley and Joe that I would be very interested and would like first refusal.

Of course, the plan was always to sell the house first and hopefully we would have been in the UK a few weeks before Caxton became available but it was not to be as the housing market in Aus slowed down just as we put our house on the market !

So - back to Christmas Eve - we thought why don't we just buy it and leave it in the capable hands of my brother, Russell - who has hired out many a narrow boat over the years and knows how to handle them !

There were a couple more reasons for buying the boat now (1) we would have somewhere to move straight on to rather than burdening ourselves (and our animals) on relatives plus hiring or buying a car to travel around the country looking for a suitable boat (2) the currency rate is in our favour at the moment is fantastic, so it seemed the right thing to do.

We transferred the funds for the boat plus a few months living expenses (for when we do get there) - and rather than using the bank we used a company called Oz Forex.  We saved approx AUS $6000 (which is 3900 pounds!) by using this company rather than the banks !  We will certainly be using them in future to transfer money across when we need it - it was very, very simple.

So - that's it - we have bought a boat we can't use yet ! (But Russell is very happy with our purchase !)

I would like to thank Lesley and Joe for their never ending help and support (and all based on trust) and also Russell and Tracey for their help with making our dream possible !

We were hoping to get the name changed before we got there but we might wait until we get there to get some ideas.  Any suggestions welcome on how to turn NB Caxton into NB The Manly Ferry !

Caxton

The Manly Ferry (North Head)

NEWS FLASH !!!!!!!!!!

No, we haven't sold the house, but we are in the final stages of buying........................A NARROWBOAT!!!

Its too late tonight to go into the why, when and how etc; I will do a full blog tomorrow, but we are both stoked!

Mini Road Trip

As today was the last day of the Xmas/New Year hols we thought we would go for a mini 'road trip' up to Morpeth, which is a historic river port about a 2.5 hour drive north of Sydney. "River Port" ...  sorry, it's the closest we can get to a canal link !

I took the dogs for a walk around the block before we left so we wouldn't have to stop for wee breaks. Sam was so hot when we got back he climbed into a bowl of water that Elaine had left on the floor. The poor dogs really suffer in the heat, hence the reason to travel to the other side of the globe!

Sam in bowl of water

We took off up the F3 free-way and battled with the crap Aussie drivers; there was only one smash ... mind you it was on a clear blue sky day on a dead straight piece of motorway and he still ran up the arse of a big 4wd....I absolutely despair of their horrendous driving.  Moving on....you get a nice view of the Hawkesbury River as you head north.

Hawkesbury River

When we got to Morpeth the temperature had risen to 38 degrees!

Morpeth Post Office

We walked through the centre (there is only 1 main street) and had a look in some of the shops but it was so hot we thought we would head down to the river ...

Hunter River

We got down to the river but we couldn't really reach the water - apart from at the boat ramp - so it was there that poor old Sammy went in for another cool down ... (Bombo gets hot too but he doesn't like the water !)

Sam cooling off

The local pub was very quiet, in fact the whole town was pretty quiet; maybe most people had headed off to the beaches - which would have been a more sensible thing to do on such a hot day!

Morpeth Pub

There were a lot of lizards on the pavement, who were competing with the sparrows for tidbits of food ...

Lizard vs sparrow

The dogs were really interested in the lizards - even Sammy forgot about the heat for a while !

As you can see the roads are very wide in the country towns...

Morpeth high street

On the way back we went the long way round avoiding the free-way,  It is very green at the moment as they had a really wet December. We stopped for a pint and and nibbles at the Wollombi Pub before heading off home in the late afternoon.

Nice greenery 

Back to work tomorrow :-(

Christmas and Hopes for a New Year

We spent Christmas day at a friend's house with about 24 other Poms ...well, the parents are all Poms!
It was a great day with plenty of seafood, booze and a few stupid games.

This is a pic of yours truly and a couple of our friends ... Patty, who was hosting the Christmas do and Howard.  I worked with Howard at Vauxhall Motors Luton over 30 years ago!

Me Patty and Howard

This is Elaine with Patty and Sue ... I met both Patty and Sue when we first came to Oz in 1980/81

Sue Elaine and Patty

The buffet, plenty of prawns, salmon, ham, turkey and an assortment of salads...

Food

Playing celebrity head, I was Justin Bieber! We have a lot in common (!)

Celebrity Head

This is a pic of Ally and myself ... she has now gone on a big adventure to South America; I worked with Howard at Vauxhall but also I went to school in Luton with Ally's mum, Sue!

Ally and me

So, that was Christmas out of the way, next we had New Years Eve. We went to a Singaporean restaurant with some friends, then at about 11pm wandered down to the Harbour to watch the spectacular fireworks; we took some pics but they never do it justice.  I'm sure you all watched it on the box.  We watched the UK fireworks on the tele this morning - they were brilliant !  Today we are having a lazy day, I even went into the pool, which was bloody freezing still!  The weather hasn't been that hot so far this summer but today was a very nice 27 degrees - far from the heat we are used to every year.  After I have finished the blog we are going down the beach to finish off the day.

Frozen Nuts

So where do we go from here?   2011 was a bit of a dud on the narrowboat front, we had heaps of plans but it always came back to the same old problem, we must sell the house!  Right at the end of 2011 we made some pretty huge decisions on what we were going to do next to achieve the dream ... all I can say at the moment is that the wheels are now in motion - hopefully we should be on our way up to the Northern hemisphere in about spring time ... fingers and everything still crossed, mind you !

I now notice that the British Government has now changed the rules re bringing animals into the UK; the rabies quarantine period has gone from 6 months down to 3 weeks.  Had they done this 6 months ago the house would have been sold and we would have been chugging along by now. Funny ol' life !

Never mind as we have said many times before, we and all the animals are healthy and we live very well in a nice spot on the planet.  We are as ever optimistic, the big question is where will be spending next Christmas and the New Year?  We ere hoping for a nice little village pub with a sign outside saying......DOGS WELCOME  !