Step One - Take Two

We're making another pilgrimage to Sydney this weekend to try and find a new home. Actually at this point we're probably also going to keep an eye out for anything that looks like it might be a half-decent place to squat. We have a friend in Brisbane who has just begun 'squatting' in chambers as he launches his career as a barrister - what a shame he's not in Sydney so the six of us could squat with him! I'm sure barristers chambers are a pretty nice place to crash.

We're more prepared this time. None of this taking applications with us to inspections - that's for amateurs. This time we're applying in advance and will use inspection to sweet talk agents. Here's hoping this approach is more successful. Oh, and I'll make sure I take a suitable container along for the ride in case Mr Puddleduck needs to pee again.

What are we leaving behind?

This is where we're leaving. The nation's capital. This building is both my office and Puddleduck's second home. She's grown from a tiny little banshee with screams capable of causing the marble walls to shake to a confident, happy toddler behind this grand facade. The security guards know her and the cafeteria staff have her babycino waiting for her at morning tea time - or at least they did before the contract changed providers, but that's a whole other story (without a happy ending).

She was a foundation member of the Parliament House childcare centre and has truly blossomed there. From the hungry banshee (I'd visit every two hours to breastfeed her) who spent sitting weeks in daycare and non-sitting weeks in the office with me to the running, jumping, leaping chatterbox who now spends four days a week with her daycare friends, she's grown up considering it her own personal playground.

Mr Puddleduck and I are both North Queenslanders through and through so the seasons completely enchant us. In Canberra it is uncanny the way the leaves turn orange smack bang on the first day of March heralding the arrival of autumn and while winter threatens all through May it's not until 1 June that it settles in.

Then there's our house. Over the five years we've lived there it's evolved into a real expression of us and what we love. Bookshelves galore, wooden floors, a wine cellar and a deck built with our own fair hands. Well, Mr Puddleduck's fair hands. Puddleduck and I offered our usual helpful suggestions and assumed 'site management' roles.

At the end of our street is a lake inhabited by all kinds of bird life and even on freezing cold winter mornings nothing gives Puddleduck greater pleasure than a walk to visit the swans and force feed them great chunks of bread. She positively dances with delight when the swans arrive with cygnets in tow.

Hmmmm. I'm beginning to wonder if we really hav taken leave of our senses to contemplate leaving all this behind?

Hoarder's horrors

It's not news to anyone who knows me that I hoard. Not in the newspapers stacked up piles all around the house sense, more in the "oh I can't throw this dress/teapot/book/pair of shoes out because it might be exactly what I'm looking for one day and besides it's really cute" way. So the arrival of a skip for our mammoth decluttering effort was met with mixed emotion.

Mr Puddleduck also greeted it with mixed emotion. Not because he doesn't like a good old-fashioned tidy out, but because he knew that the lion's share of the 'skipping' would rest with him. This is primarily his own fault as he is a little finicky (understatement of the year) when it comes to how things should be arranged in the skip. Essentially, he likes things stacked neatly whereas I adopt a more 'toss it over the side and leave it where it lands' approach. According to him my approach is simply not to be borne and therefore Mr Puddleduck is left in charge. With the odd helpful suggestion thrown in by Puddleduck and I from our peanut gallery of two.

Puddleduck greeted the arrival of the skip with unabashed glee. Until she saw some of her old and beaten up things being neatly arranged in there by Daddy. Then she launched a rescue mission (just in case there was any doubt she was her Mummy's daughter). Things went in, things came straight back out again. They went back in and with even more determination they were toddled right back out again. In the interests of family harmony and keeping his blood pressure within an acceptable range, Mr Puddleduck abandoned any further attempts until Puddleduck and I were safely packed off to swimming lessons. When we got home he thanked Puddleduck for getting me out of his hair - apparently my incessant toddling in and out of the skip rescuing her toys was terribly counterproductive!

Step One - an aside

It's a generally acknowledged fact that in order to get your own little slice of Sydney you have to part with a few vital organs even if you just plan on renting. However, it seems everyone who knows us thinks that this fact has completely passed us by. I can understand strangers or people with whom we have a passing acquaintance offering up the helpful phrase "Sydney's expensive" and even a personal anecdote about a sister's husband's cousin who lives there and rents a studio apartment for $3000 a day, in fact I almost appreciate their willingness to enlighten us should we be about to stumble into the Sydney real estate market without any forewarning.

But for those who know us and still feel the need to state the bleeding obvious ... why not tell us something useful such as 'sell your car because there's no way in the world you'll find a park within 5kms of your house even with resident's parking'? I mean we're on Domain daily sending potential properties back and forth - we've figured out that at least one of us is selling a kidney in Thailand for the bond.

I think the problem is everyone who knows us knows that we're not the slumming it types. Yet we're both totally on the same page with this move - we're happy for a total dive in the right location. It's a crying shame that no real estate agents with dives in the right area are remotely interested in responding to our emails or phone calls.

In the interim, we have both agreed to compromise on things. Mr Puddleduck no longer views a garage as essential and I no longer view a spare room as necessary and we've both concluded space is a luxury we can't afford. Whatever place we're fortunate enough to be accepted for is going to be treated as a hotel room - a place to crash. Sydney is going to be our house and the six of us are going to spend our days exploring its every crevice and then stumble home, exhausted, into our tiny little box called home. We can't wait!

Step One

Step one is find a house. I like that this one sounds so simple even if we all know it is anything but. Just saying it out loud does not cause me to start rocking back and forth and groaning in that way that other steps do (ie cleaning and decluttering our current house - truth be told I've not said that one out loud yet, just typing it makes me want to curl up into the fetal position and stay there until it is all over).

Yesterday was day one of the on the ground search - as opposed to the obsessive stalking of Domain designed to make me feel productive and organised. We left home at the crack of dawn with The Wiggles providing backing vocals for our trip. I confess I was absolutely dreading the drive as Puddleduck had been nothing short of monstrous in the car the day before and that trip only lasted about twenty minutes. However, she was an absolute trooper and made the pair of us look like road trip amateurs in comparison. In my defence she wasn't trying to be navigator for Mr Puddleduck. Enough said.

We had four properties we were really keen to inspect and just to make it all the more challenging the inspection times clashed. The Glebe property was open at the same time as the Paddington one and the Darlinghurst one was open at the same time as the Balmain one. Showing one of his occasional flashes of brilliance Mr Puddleduck had suggested we arrive early and scope them all out before deciding what ones to inspect and what ones to ditch. As opposed to my far more fatalistic approach which was to immediately force ourselves to choose favourites.

We started in Paddington and approved wholeheartedly of the outside of the property - a lovely green end terrace with a big patio. Beautiful. Off we headed to Darlinghurst where we also throughly approved of the outside of the property and the street it was in. Glebe was next on the list - the house there appeared to be big and well-loved from the pictures on Domain. We'll never know, however, as Google Maps completely failed us and we still haven't a clue where Charles St Glebe might be.

Having run out of time to make it across to Balmain before the Paddington open house we decided to head back to Paddington in plenty of time for that inspection. Just quietly we were a little pleased with ourselves and this eminently sensible plan of attack - we could find a park, fill out the applications forms and Mr Puddleduck could find somewhere to go to the toilet while I changed Puddleduck all without any need for a mad rush (the usual way we operate).

Simply brilliant theory and definitely deserving of the figurative pats on the back we gave ourselves. Shame it didn't hold up quite so well in practice. Actually, it didn't hold up at all. We left Paddington knowing exactly why Paddington-dwellers are so fit and skinny looking - they walk everywhere for fear of losing their car space - and with Mr Puddleduck still needing to go to the toilet.

On the bright side, we were on track for making the Darlinghurst inspection in plenty of time. Except that for some reason we decided to try to find the illusive Glebe house again. I know. I know, I know, I know.

Anyway, we did make it back in time - just. AND we made it back without either of us calling a family lawyer to book an appointment although it was a close run thing. On reflection, probably not as close as it was when I was trying to direct Mr Puddleduck around Paddington without Google Maps and simply relying on my innate sense of direction.

Now I know that the Sydney rental market is the stuff of legend. I know that properties are hard fought for but I did not expect the street to be swarming with quite so many potential tenants as it was. Bizarrely, we had no trouble finding a spot to park. It was even a legal carpark!

Mr Puddleduck was quite open to the potential of the property despite the fact that every spare nook and cranny had been converted into bedroom space for what seemed like close to two hundred dreadlocked existing tenants. I don't mean to imply he usually has no eye for potential, rather that he is not as romantically inclined as I am when it comes to houses and is used to nipping my romantic tendencies in the bud for all our sakes.

Getting the thumbs up from him I accosted the agent and put in our application. Accompanied by a wad of documents thicker than War and Peace. You know, proving we were who we said we were and that despite no rental history we weren't remotely dodgy and definitely people you'd want to rent to - the paper equivalent of a trustworthy and convincing smile. I threw in one of those smiles for good measure. Mr Puddleduck probably would have too if he hadn't been hopping up and down in his desperate need to pee.

We're moving

That's right, we're moving. To the Big Smoke. Faced with the reality of such a mammoth move I'm not entirely sure what possessed us. Ok, I'll be honest - what possessed me. I know what possessed my long suffering husband - the desire to see me happy and enthusiastic about work and not moping about threatening to do crazy things like become a stay at home mum. Not that that in and of itself is a crazy thing - what's crazy is me proposing to do it. It's a bit like Hulk Hogan proposing to take up ballet. Utterly deranged. I should clarify that this is not because of latent workaholic tendencies on my part - far from it - just that I am not stay at home material even if you ignore my frightening lack of domestic talents.

I digress. Mummy, Daddy, Puddleduck and her three fur-sisters (Daddy has them on notice though - any peeing on the couch between now and move day and they're getting sold with the house) are moving to Sydney. We've half made a list of everything that needs to be done between now and THE BIG DAY but frankly it frightened us almost to death so we've adopted a 'one step at a time' approach for now.