january jones, vehicular form

 
next important task on our list - get a car. Must we publish to the world my array of chins? 

we'd been keeping an eye out on the interwebs while in berlin, seeing what would be a reasonable deal for us. we need a wagon for all the shit we carry around - i'm partial to discarded logs on the side of the road amongst other potential sculptural materials - and something reliable for a weekly trip back and forth to melbourne, not to mention, general awesome shit that tends to take our fancy, such as gigantic secondhand armchairs and hat stands. 

our budget was basically confined to whatever spare change we had leftover in our pockets. so we scraped together a couple of handfuls of euro cents and realised we were kinda fucked, to be frank. but, i'm not one to let a lack of finance stand in the way of a necessity, so credit card options were put into the background as last resort and we set about scrounging around for cash underneath couch cushions, hidden in boxes and god only knows where.

 this is pretty much every last cent we own, plus some extra we don't technically own, ready to trade it all for a car.

we've got one week to survive on the james family freezer food (hello super mystery casserole items!) until my next scholarship installment, which should keep us alive for another week.

it's 'seat of the pants' stuff for us on this adventure!

We were so nervous about carrying around this cash, that we opted to withdraw it from the Toorak Road  bank rather than Prahran, lest we get jumped by a junkie or desperate pensioner on our way out. If anyone is wondering if there is such a thing as a bank with no lines, it is in fact, the Toorak Road Commonwealth bank, where staff to customer ratio is 5:1 and the amount of space is about 7 times the size of our flat in Berlin. The place is filled with arm chairs and muffled silence. 

anyway, as far as cars go, we pretty much settled on an old subaru, maybe a camry. and by old, i mean like late 80s models, maybe early 90s if we were lucky. we narrowed the search down to a couple of cars and set off to do some test drives.

we drove a sooby (subaru) out in braybrook way, which was ok, but had about 330 000kms on it. which is actually pretty good, considering it was over 22 years old. it seemed all right and atleast confirmed that soobies were ok to drive.

but then we stumbled on a 1990 sooby, with half as many kms and it drove like a dream. it seemed remarkably well priced for what it was, even if it was at the slightly higher end of our $2-3k limit. so after we both checked it out, we snapped her up!

so there it is!! She so fine! We've named her sweet-ass Betty (hence Kent's longwinded confusing title - I expect no less). We have managed to convince ourselves that our slightly odd car-salesman (well, aren't they all?) keeps a sack of white hair and lint in his desk drawer so that he can sprinkle it throughout the cars he sells, to legitimise "aaaw yeah, little old lady owner, barely drove it." Needless to say, the clumps of hair are an issue. 

It's funny coz my first car was a white station wagon, lucy's first car was a white station wagon, and now our first car together is also a white station wagon. weird, no?! Maybe we just like white station wagons. Well, that, and the fact that they seem to represent the dorkiest cars in existence, thus the most reliable and affordable.

Home Sweet Home

(apologies if this post doubles up - blogger has been playing up lately)

after some research, we narrowed down the hunt for a home to Kyneton, Castlemaine, Daylesford.

all but the latter were on a train line into the city. but what daylesford lacked in trains, it compensated with beauty and 'vibe'. Amazing trees, hills, gorgeous houses ... num num num!

we should also point out, that in the back of our minds, we are planning to open a shop/gallery in the future, and this bears some weight on the type of town we wish to live in.

in a nutshell, here's where we got to, after our first visit to just kyneton and castlemaine (daylesford comes later):
 - kyneton seemed very nice.
Wow, that is a tiny nutshell Kent. 
 - castlemaine seemed a little less so.

now, we're casting very wide generalities here, based on an hour or so in each town, and some minor interactions with the locals. Yeah, you can tell we totally did our research. 

 - kyneton had a nice strip of cafes, restaurants, and shops
 - castlemaine was more of a grid layout, older style town, more stock-standard shops
 - kyneton had a younger vibe, i don't know how i can explain this properly, other than the type of shops    and the people we noticed. Maybe not so much a younger vibe, but perhaps a more creative and gourmet and luxurious vibe? Can you have a gourmet vibe? In terms of a small town, particularly along the Piper Street line, it did feel very indulgent. 
 - castlemaine seemed more of a working, old fashioned town (amazing buildings ... drooly drool.)
 - kyneton food and coffee was lovely and expensive but also lovely
 - castlemaine charged us $27.50 for a couple of boscastle pies and three sheets of lettuce, which pissed us off no end. Castlemaine, that was your big mistake. 

there were more houses available in kyneton, but the quality was rougher. And they never seemed to be available when we wanted to look at them, realtors seemed to forget to ever ring us back, or houses advertised were already taken by the time we got on the phone - it felt just like Melbourne!
castlemaine appeared better in that regard, but there was only one in our range. I think we also felt very uncomfortable at the inspection, where about six other prospective tenants milled about, cackling about Jeneane's pasta bake from last week, and that terrible taffeta thingo that Sheree wore to Fazzo's wedding.  They all looked perplexed at us huddled in the corner, in all of our towny fear. We were quite surprised at the limited amount of houses and the extreme competition. 

now, we're going to be making this assessment only on the available rental properties in one very limited timeframe - early May. so, we're dealing really with what's on the market at that time, and luck is going to play a big hand here, we realise.

Anyhoo, we trundled off to an inspection in Daylesford a couple of days later, a street that we had previously had an amazing spa experience in last year. Anyway, as we're driving down the street, we start thinking that the place we are going to view will be really close to the massage studio.  We had possibly the loveliest realtor show us around (A very new experience for us - Melbourne rental realtors, in a word are ... ****s.) this old house. The entire place has been refurbished, so what appears to be a wee shack is actually a gorgeous, light, bright, airy, re-carpeted, re-floorboarded, re-bathroomed house of joy. AND IT'S OURS!!! 

Sorry, couldn't hold it in any longer. We totally got the house. Stoked!


I should note that we did look at another house later that afternoon, that should have been better - it was bigger, more facilities, modern. 

But Kent and I are pretty sure someone was murdered there or something - some really bad juju going on there. So by the time we had mentally moved all of our furniture into the Queensberry house, and were developing tics and regular heart palpitations, we finally found out yesterday that the place is ours. 

The whole renting experience has been so different from Melbourne for us - the realtor showed us the place like she was selling it, not like we were privileged to set foot into it. this has to be the single best experience with a real estate agent ever. she was so friendly, helpful and open to all our queries - even open to considering changes to the state of the house and the price! unheard of in melbourne. She then called us a few hours later to see how we were going making a decision, and had already told the landlords all about us. We were in! 

Unlike other places we've looked at and lived in, this place feels more like a home than any other - it is so stripped back, with no personal affects, that we really can make it our own. Don't you hate it when you move into a place and they think that you LIKE the lace curtains and that sparkly pink hippo figurine? I mean seriously - I think most investment property owners really must treat these places like a tip for unwanted christmas gifts. 


such a buzz. it's funny, we had a feeling about this place for a variety of reasons. the fact that it's next door to the day spa we went to last year, the place where we had the single most amazingly relaxed and joyous experience of the countryside ever, was just one factor. also, when we drove up to look at the house, there was a giant eagle flying directly above the house - it was so huge that the 2 magpies who were trying to swoop it and annoy it away from their territory were mere specks, like dragonflies hovering around a bear. i'm a bit partial to natural omens, in the way of homeric tales and ancient mythologies, so this was some sort of sign to my mind.

another type of traveling

And, Melbourne rents smack us down once again. 

Just coz we're back in Melbourne town, doesn't mean the adventure is over! We're currently having a 'holiday' at Chatau de Jamez - e.g. house sitting for my folks while they galavant amongst the Scottish Highlands. Their place is truly amazing - wow I wish I could have a place like this! Perfectly reno-d, smack in the heart of South Yarra (awesome coffee but a 14 second walk away). These guys have taste, and they have also set us the challenge of eating our way through the pantry so they can 'start afresh' when they return. All I can say, is that is a whoooole lotta condiments. Mum and Dad have only lived in South Yarra for about 4 years, however I still seem to discover items that passed their use-by date in 2002. 

Here is some fancy images from a fancy magazine where their courtyard was featured. If you look veeeery closely, there is a little sploodge of red in the distance, where we created a bespoke mural for their wall. I would feel bad about stealing images without crediting them, but seeing as the photographer quite happily sampled our artwork in several of his/her shots, sans credit, I'm not losing sleep over it. 


But as you can see, we seem to be continuing to score some pretty sweet accommodation. 

so - we're changing tack here, in more ways than one.

back from our wonderful european jaunt, refreshed, stimulated, motivated (soothing water fountains and luxury pillows helped) and ready to pursue life with vigour and focus, some new things are on the horizon. Oh are they ever!

when we left to go on our honeymoon, we were expecting to come back to melbourne, after our 3 months of experiencing the northern hemisphere, and find a place in the inner northern suburbs to live. This was an awesome, no fail plan. we wanted a house of some description, maybe a backyard, but something with enough room to work in, given that we both work at home. for those that don't know, we're both artists, and we also work freelance doing editing and proofreading work, and for one semester a year, i teach art history at uni. lucy managed a clothing store for a while, when we lived on the southside of the river, but we're now looking to prepare to develop our own enterprise.

we were expecting to live in coburg, maybe thornbury or northcote. most of our friends live northside and there's a strong artistic/creative vibe in that area. but after keeping track of the rental market on the internet, while in berlin, our hearts plummeted as it became super obvious that weren't going to be able to afford anything close to the sort of house we needed. we could stretch it, financially, but we'd be living by the skin of our teeth. In case you guys haven't noticed, Kent and I like our creature comforts. It has taken us 3 months of personal reflection to admit to this, but now we can quite confidently say that we prefer 'light and bright' over 'dingy shit box'. 

I confess, it never actually occurred to me that houses were going for THIS much in Northcote these days - by about March, we had given up when they soared well past $400, and sought the 2-3 bedroom option for $400 in Coburg. Sigh. 

somehow, without knowing how, we got to talking about living outside of melbourne. (I'll tell you how, 100 screaming children and a television set next door that only came on after midnight on volume 78 - I don't think volumes even go that high, but it tried.) we started to think that even if we did secure a place in coburg, we'd be commuting 30 - 50 mins to the city. if we wanted to go southside, which is where my uni is, it'd be an hour at least! so if we were going to travel nearly an hour, on average, why not make it 90 minutes and live on a proper houseblock, in a 3 bedroom house (equalling one studio each in which to work from - mmm!), with fresh air and parrots in the trees?

we started to look at houses that were about 90 mins drive, in towns along train lines. this lead us to castlemaine and kyneton, where 3 bedroom houses were $100 cheaper than coburg houses, per week. over a year, that's about $5000 - the price of a basic second hand car. we'd lost our car just before our wedding, when a complete douche bag ran a red light and totalled it. so we need a car, as a well as a house anyway. So really - how about this being the best plan ever? 

Hello, is that more bedrooms, more backyard and about a third of the rent? I think it might be! 

after many hours of discussions, thinking about what we wanted out of our next few years, this option became more and more attractive, particularly as developments in running our own business are coming underway. Not to mention the large property sizes, awesome surrounds and low rent. HELLO! 

when we got back to melbourne we took off, up the calder highway, to check out the area ...