We have been in Australia for a month now, and so much has happened in that time, although a lot of it quite mundane. Despite coming to a first world country and having access to every technological advance, there seems to be a huge amount of red tape. Not quite to the point of forms in triplicate, but nearly.
Renting a house for instance, is quite different from in the UK. Viewings for each property take place during a 15 minute period usually on a saturday. So having spent a few days organising our itinery, we ended up having to rally drive around Sydney practically running into and out of houses.
Some of the houses we saw were amazing, they didn't seem to have had any maintence performed for about 10 years, with rotting wood, peeling paint, and wallpaper from the 50s.
Once you have seen somewhere you like, you have to put in an application, including getting referrees to sign the form. Of course there is a deadline for this, which seemed to be about 12 hours prior to the viewing (or that was just how it felt), and not knowing many people here didn't help.
After a couple of knock backs (why weren't we suitable tennants, have they met our children?), we managed to sneak in a Thursday viewing and pip another family to the post. Thank god, I don't think any of us were looking forward to another weekend of house viewing.
We have fallen on our feet, its much nicer than our house in Bristol. 3 bedroom house with a bit of character, but most importantly a granny annex, swimming pool and play area. The slight down side is we are occassionally right under the flight path of planes landing at kingsford Smith airport.
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