Foreign Perspectives

This started out reasonably easy but the family have been adding requirements as the months have gone by, some directly from our experiences on our scouting trip a few months ago and some as we’ve collectively looked at properties online and thought some more about what we each need.

The basic requirement are for a house with three or more bedrooms, a few hectares of land, and costing up to A$1,000,000 (about £500,000). Prices will have changed by the time we’re actually moving, but we’re currently using that as a ball-park in our searches.

Location is always important and we’ve two slightly conflicting requirements with this because Wendy and I will essentially be retiring but the boys will be wanting jobs. Therefore it can’t be too far away from employment centres and in that respect we’re thinking of at most 30 minutes drive from either Launceston or Hobart. We all prefer Launceston but most properties in the recent searches are near Hobart.

As in our move to France, we’ll likely turn up with a massive load of stuff in boxes and therefore we want somewhere that we can store it all. That seems not to be an issue as almost all of the properties turning up in our searches come with assorted store rooms and even buildings.

Although three bedrooms is our minimum requirement, many of the properties that we’ve looked at come with four and a couple of bathrooms which is handy as that second bathroom was added as a requirement to avoid the morning rush.

Heating-wise, the houses generally come with “reverse-cycle airconditioning” (heat pumps) and many with log stoves. In a number of instances, the logs would be supplied by chopping down trees on the property itself. Quite a lot of the houses come with solar panels and in some cases enough to run everything, at least during the day (batteries are prohibitively expensive).

Recently, it has come to our attention that internet access isn’t a given in Australia so we’re specifically looking for that now (it’s called NBN there and comes in the usual cable, fibre, and satellite versions). On a related note, it turns out that TV also isn’t a given and some places that are well within our 30 minute range don’t have much, if any, TV reception (you can check this out at Digitalready). This isn’t a showstopper as there’s a subsidised satellite service (VAST) available in those areas, but something to consider. Incidentally, our French approach of just bringing the Sky box along won’t work as the Sky satellite doesn’t point anywhere near Australia so no FreeSat either. Other things that won’t work either are the various UK terrestrial channels via internet as they are region locked to the UK, although a VPN might get around that. On the TV front, we found that Australian terrestrial TV is almost entirely dire and has the feel of just a whole lot of shopping channels (even Wendy agrees with the dire verdict and she’s Australian!).

I’d also like a study/library which doesn’t seem to be an issue as most of the properties we’ve looked at come with a whole range of rooms outside the usual bedroom, living, kitchen, and bathroom categories.

Sounds daft, but in addition to the normal kitchen, it’s been suggested that a kind of ensuite kitchen for the various non-standard kitchen items would be handy (for the air fryer, popcorn machine, blender, etc.). That said, most of the kitchens are much larger than what we’re used to so this isn’t likely to be an issue. Junior #2 suggested a walk-in pantry as we’d be living “in the wilds” which sounds handy and we’d one in France, but we’re probably not going to be living “in the wilds” as such.

There’s also been some requests for things like space for chickens, vegetable garden, and similar but since we’re looking for a minimum of two hectares (four acres in old money), that doesn’t look like it’ll be an issue.

The water supply isn’t something we’d initially given much thought to. Turns out that most of the properties we’ve looked at are on town water. A little further out is tank water which means you’ve a big tank that the local authority fills up for you now and again for a fee. If you’re on tank water, I imagine that you’re also on a sceptic tank which they can pump out too, though you shouldn’t need them to do that if you’ve sized it properly.

We’ve been getting grocery deliveries for a few years now and that service is available from, mainly, Coles and Woolworths in Australia so long as you’re within their service distance (about 20/30 minutes drive from the nearest store). You can check out availability for that by popping in the postcode of the property that you’re looking at. Again, not a show stopper, but nice to know if it’s available before you move.

And that lot is after just a few months of taking the move seriously! I’m sure there’ll be more requirements arising over the time running up to 2027.

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