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.