The Week That Was

Social Life.....

We went to see Meatloaf in concert ar the Sydney Entertainment Centre on Wednesday, really good concert even  though he missed a few notes, great backing band as well. He came on at 9.00 pm and finished at 11.45 pm! Friday night we took the dogs down to Manly and sat out side the Bavarian Beer Cafe for a couple of beers, Oktober fest and all that, followed by takeaway and home. Saturday we went down to the Steyne pub in Manly and watched Wales get beat by the Frogs :-(   Afterwards we went to  a very nice Thai restaurant and then home to watch Man Utd vs Liverpool. Today (Sunday)   we walked down to Manly to pick up the ute from the night before, then to Curl Curl beach where Curly sound waves was going off. Then we had lunch in freshwater and I am now sitting on the deck blogging in superb sunshine, El is is in a state of vegetation with the dogs. Later this afternoon we are off to the Manly 16ft skiff club for tea followed by the weekends main event....Australia vs NZ in the Rugby.

Elaine vegging out with the dogs

House.....

Another open day Saturday, with a good turnout and according to Mr Real Estate a couple of very interested parties, so we now wait for the offers to come flooding in.  We went and had a look a a couple of places ourselves on the weekend, just for market research reasons, and would have to say that there seem to be  more  positive vibes out there, bloody hope so.

Work....

Elaine has been restricted to working from home as her car is at the smash repairers having a new roof, bonnet and respray after an unknown TWAT carried out his dance moves on the roof and bonnet.

I have been really busy at work with no slowdown whatsoever in the marine spare parts industry.

Animals....

We removed the 1st tick of the season off Sam last night, joy o joy. The paralysis tick in Australia is deadly to dogs so you must check them often and thoroughly.   The rest are all very happy lying in the sun and chasing possums at night.

That's it so Go Aussies in the Rugby World Cup semi final and good luck to Casey Stoner in the Australian Moto GP.

Blogging Away

 

Continuing House Sale Saga

We had another open day last Saturday, but with a definitive price rather than auction or 'offers-over' options.  Out of that, we had one very interested couple, who are coming back for a second sticky beak.  We had three groups through on Saturday and no advertising in the paper for that weekend !  We are back to a few more glossy ads this weekend onward - so fingers crossed !!!  Elaine was in the garden this morning and spotted a car checking out the sign and the house for a long time ... who knows, he could be 'the one' - we only need one!!

At last there is better financial  news coming out of the states and Europe and the Aussie dollar is up again.

One of my work mates put his unit (flat) on the market on Saturday, he lives around the corner from us.  He had it on for offers over $560,000 dollars, It sold after 25 minutes for $590,000 !!! They are still in shock.

I really hope the house sells soon we want to blog about more exciting subjects rather than a bloody house sale.  I want to be whinging about hire boaters and speeding boats etc....Joke :).  I would like to aspire to the great heights of the Northern Pride and Caxton blogs with their positive and upbeat content.

Ah well .. back to work !  Highlight of this week ... we are going to see Meatloaf in concert tomorrow night ... will let you know how it goes !

Auction No Go :-(

No auction result I'm afraid. Real estate man came around the night before the auction and said that 3 people were going to the auction but only 1 was going to bid, he also said that her absolute top bid was going to be $165,000 less than we got offered back in April. That offer fell over because Jaffa the cat had failed his rabies jab so it would add another 1 month to the settlement date, the purchaser couldn't handle that and pulled out.
A very expensive cat!

So after a long deliberation (2 secs) we knocked back her crap offer, so there was no point going to auction.
So now we have gone straight for a sale price and will keep on advertising for a few weeks. If still no offers we will probably take it off the market until the prices sort themselves out. It really is quite strange because Australia is going very well compared to the rest of the world, mainly because our Chinese friends buy all our coal, iron ore and other such minerals as in copper zinc etc, so along as China is OK so are we.
But this hasn't stopped the housing market from being spooked, so it seems that all the buyers are looking for bargains and are trying to help the poor house vendors by taking it off their hands for a fraction of what its worth.


So are we bitter? A little, but as the canals have been around for 200 years I think they will wait a little longer for us to join them.


One person who was very happy was my boss, as we will probably be around for a bit longer.


We told Bombo about the nasty lady that was taking the piss, and what can I say, this is all that's left of her.........

Elaines Dodgy Knee

Elaine has spent the day in hospital getting her left knee sorted out, she will explain the technical details later.

She had the right knee sorted out about 6 months ago, so hopefully she will now be able to walk for miles on the towpath with no pain, you never know I might even get her to come snow skiing with me.

haha -  Elaine here - the day after !  Dunno about that ski-ing lark - just maybe along the towpaths in winter time (with the aid of our two 'mini-huskies').  I've been pretty dopey all day - so have been bludgin' around watching daytime tele - mostly on the sofa with my legs up!  The left knee has been a bit more involved than the right - it had gotten pretty bad as I think has been taking the load from my right knee all these years ! I blame Jane Fonda for the original injuries - which shows that I am talking a few years here !!

This op was also an ilio tibial band release plus removal of a plica and a general clean up - should be as good as new I hope !   I start physio tomorrow and will see the surgeon so will get the full story then !  Wasn't too good last night after the anaesthetic - made a dash for the loo in the laundry when Paul dropped me at the back door - didn't quite make it and - tune out here if you don't want the gory details - but managed to projectile over the laundry door before I could get it open !!  Yuk !  Pretty good today though all considered !!

Our Real Estate guy is coming to see us tonight - not sure if he has any buyers for us for our auction on Thursday - so maybe we will just have to have the place up for sale for a while ... anyway - we will see what he has to tell us tonight - hopefully someone has come up with an amazing offer for us !  

That's me for now --- back to the tele :) Elaine x

Tourists For A Day

As today was a public holiday we thought we would be tourists for a day and go over to the city and have a walk around the Rocks area, which was the first part of Sydney to be inhabited by the white man over 200 years ago.

We started by walking over the harbour bridge ... you can walk over the arches of the bridge but that costs a lot of money plus you can't take the dogs with you!  (In actual fact you cannot take anything whatsoever with you just in case you drop it onto the roadway below)!

So along the free and dog-friendly walkway we went.

The bridge consists of, from left to right ... a cycleway, 2 railway tracks, 8 lanes of traffic and 1 walkway.

You get a fantastic view from the bridge deck.  You look east over the harbour, Circular Quay and, of course, the Opera House.

Just imagine this chap cruising along the the canals...now that's what I call a WAKE!  The bloggers would go into meltdown.

Looking back towards the city is Circular Quay and the Passenger Terminal for the cruise ships. The green and cream boats are the harbour ferries with the larger one being the Manly Ferry, which is classed as a outer harbour ferry. The cruise ship was the Volendam out of Rotterdam. I doubt if there are many cruise terminals in the world where the ships are moored right in the middle of the city. 

You get a nice view of the Opera House from the bridge

The Manly ferry sporting the Go Manly banner from yesterdays Grand Final, which of course Manly won, woohoo !!

We walked back across the bridge and down to the passenger terminal and checked out the Volendam - I think she is based down here for our summer, doing Pacific cruises. Nice looking ship.

We then headed off to walk under the bridge - there are always lots of groups walking over the top of the bridge - they are all tethered on to a continuous cable, so if you have suicidal tendencies forget the bridge climb, you are wasting your money. They also have to wear grey overalls so they blend into the bridge!

We stopped for an ice cream whilst Bombo rolled around in "Bat Shit" - he was in doggy ecstasy !

mmmmm deodorant!

Had to take some pics of the dogs and yours truly with interesting back grounds. 

I see no bridge!

Wot's that stickin' out of my ear !

 
 There was a nice tall ship passing under the bridge (it was built in 1922 in Denmark of danish oak frames.  Its original name was 'Svanen' and she traded as a grain carrier between Denmark and Greenland for the Tuborg beer company until 1969.  She was then purchased in 1969 as a private vessel and extensively refitted to make extensive ocean voyages and charters on Sydney harbour. She first came to Sydney in 1988 for the bicentennial...I think. She is now called Southern Swan).

We only spotted 2 brides today, mind you it is Monday, on a normal Sunday there are shed loads of brides grazing under the harbour bridge and its environs. A few years ago we counted them for a laugh, we got up to 17 groups all looking for that different special shot. Can't really blame them as it is easily the most beautiful harbour in the world! 

Nice day for a white wedding yea

Lastly we went right under the bridge - this is a pic. of the concrete bases and bearings that hold up the bridge - 4 altogether, 2 either side; the bridge weighs approx 60,000 tons.  The pylons either end are purely there for aesthetics.

Last bit of useless information.....Paul Hogan used to work as a rigger on the bridge!

Manly and all that Jazz

Its a long weekend this weekend, plus its the Manly Jazz Festival and today is the Rugby League grand final and it just so happens Manly is one of the teams. The Rugby League Grand final is one of Australia's premier sporting events so this weekend is huge in Manly.

One slight problem re the jazz festival was that last night and most of the morning there was a huge storm and torrential rain.
We had a late start for our walk down to Manly and breakfast,

The sea was angry that day my friends

The sea was rough and the beach deserted! Normally at this time of the day the beach and walkway is packed, with both locals and tourists.

It was blowing a bloody gale as we made our way along the deserted walkway.

Streamlined Sam

The dogs were looking very streamlined

Wot no tourists

El striding into the gale!

Once we got down there the stages were deserted but at least the rain had stopped.

The Corso palm trees had the Manly team colours wrapped around them

We spotted a lonely jazz man looking for somewhere to play.

We got to our regular Sunday breakfast cafe and the lonely jazz player met up with his mates

So we had a lovely breakfast being serenaded by the 4 piece jazz band

  

We walked back home past nearly deserted  cafes, such a shame they should be packed.  

We are now home and the weather has improved a lot, so we are about to have a few beers and watch the Grand Final

GO MANLY!!!!

Last Open House

We had the last open house today ahead of Thursdays auction, we had 8 groups go through which was a good number for the last one.

That was the good news! Bad news was that the house across the road went to. auction on Thursday night and SOLD but for a real crap price!! Apparently the vendors are really spooked with what's going on in the world and just wanted to cash up in case the real estate market crashes very shortly.

So today we went to an auction with a friend who wanted to buy an investment apartment, result....passed in but not far off the mark, Then this afternoon we went to a house that was being auctioned about 10 mins drive from us, not such a good post code but a nice area and it was a absolutely  fantastic fully renovated house, this place was just stunning....... result.....2 bidders and passed in at nowhere near the reserve! We left like a couple of stunned mullets came home and had a few beers, and decided to go out tonight and have a good few more.

So to next Thursday and we really haven't got a bloody clue on what will happen, what will be will be, could always be worse, we could live in some hell hole, chin up and all that.

Wish us luck!