In around 2000 I became rather fed up with my truck business and typically for me I made a rather rash change. The time was right though as the management had changed within the company I contracted to and there was going to be no real prospect of growth for me into the foreseeable future (I don't do standing still), so I sold the business. At the time the stock markets were doing well and like so many I fulfilled a life long passion and became a market trader I did ok for some time, but then the tech wreck wreaked havoc in the world markets and I had to find something else to do.....

Our parents visited us in Western Australia quite a few times over the years and at one time we thought Jackie’s mum and her husband might emigrate. But to be honest that had been rather unlikely and they never did get further than sending away for the application forms. We are not exactly sure how many times Jackie’s mum visited us in Australia but it’s somewhere between 12 and 15 times. My mum and dad took almost 10 years to make their first visit and then visited twice more after that. My sister visited us in the first few years and Jackie's brother tagged along with his mum a couple of times.

Jackie continued with the disability services organisation. She moved around with in the company and was promoted. It was a good job with reasonable wages a company car and plenty of responsibility which she thrives on. She had approximately 90 people working for her, so there was always something going on. Later she was treated as a  something of a trouble shooter and was put in charge of various departments to reorganise and make them solvent once more.

Rather amazingly I found work as a freelance insurance assessor. How that came about is I suppose down to networking, as ever it’s not what you know but who you know. I had a good grounding in computers though, mainly in software but I am also pretty good on the hardware side. A friend of a friend was a freelance assessor and he was being fed a lot of computer claims from the various companies He didn’t really have the technical experience to do the claims so asked me to join him. I didn’t really like claims assessing very much but it was a quid. There is a fair amount of stress involved in telling someone that it is clearly evident that some one has shorted their computer out messing with it. or that they are not going to get the brand new top of the range computer they would like just because their 5 year old (once top of the range) computer had died. That’s not how most insurance policies work. Some people take that well but others take it rather personally. It was something I had no real control over but took the blame for.

We had now lived in Henley brook on our small acreage for about 10 years and were getting itchy feet. We had spent a lot of time over the years looking at show homes trying to work out what house would suit us. We initially put a deposit on a large block in Morgan Fields. but then realised that we just couldn’t go back to suburbia. So instead bought 5 acres in Bullsbrook.  So having the block we were going to need a house.

The choice of homes to build in Western Australia is mind boggling. Every house in every suburb is different. They are all pretty much built to a theme of concrete slab, double brick walls and a Colourbond or tile roof. The number of different floor plans is amazing though and after we had looked at just 20 we were totally confused, let alone the 60+ we eventually did look at. In the end we chose Summit homes as our builder and picked a house design called the Delaware. The Delaware was in fact the first house we had looked at many months earlier. We changed it a bit (made it larger) but it mostly it stayed the same. 

When you build a house in WA after you have chosen the floor plan, you choose the bricks, roof, tiles, taps, power point positions, electrical fittings and so much more. The experience has driven many a couple to divorce and many more to mental break down, but we walked in to the show room went “we will have that one that one that one…….” And the deed was done. In the end we didn’t really regret any of the choices either.

My partner in the insurance business also had a lot of property risk survey work. This is were you visit an established business and write a report on the business operations, condition of the building, security and fire equipment and any potential risks that might result in a claim. I initially did just a few of these surveys and took to them like a duck to water. Then many more came my way, they are pretty easy to do really and it paid well. In the end I gave up the assessing and did that full time.

At that time (pre boom) it took about 9 months to build a house. It apparently now (2008) takes a lot longer. But even nine months was an eternity for us. We visited the block almost daily hoping to see progress. The build didn’t start well as the initial excavations hit rock in a big way and we blew the budget hiring 20 ton rock breaker to dig down far enough to install a sand pad.  The Concrete pad, walls and roof go up very quickly. But the fitting out takes so long. Eventually we moved in in December later that year and Jackie’s mum and her husband arrived from the UK 3 days later. The move had been a huge job and we were exhausted. So their visit wasn’t great planning really, as we had no internal floor coverings (just concrete) and no patio outside so every one walked the sand in. We did get them to help decorate the place though, which was a new experience for them both.

I had a very large workshop/shed built, what a space that was, excellent for my woodworking hobby etc. The house had great views over the hills and we enjoyed watching the kangaroos hopping in the paddocks. The house was too far away from the mains supply to get water so as is normal in the country in Australia we caught the rain water. That’s fine in the winter but you need a pretty big tank to last  you through the summer. Our 150,000 ltr tank was just enough for both of us, the two dogs, the sheep and chickens and for some garden watering. Towards the end of summer you are praying for rain. You don’t take baths in the hot months just showers.

We lived in the Bullsbrook house for just 2 years. It was a nice house but the heat up on the hills surrounding Perth is incredible in the summer. I’ve known it so hot that the tank water warmed up and you were getting hot water out of the cold tap. 43 deg+ daily for 2 weeks or more is no joke. Everything suffered in the heat, both of us the dogs, the cats and if the easterly wind blew, the little bit of garden we had would be roasted in no time. Worse still I couldn’t go in my shed after 9 am in the morning most days as it was like an oven in there I measured 58 deg C once. In the spring autumn and winter it wasn’t so bad it even got frosty in the winter. What we hadn’t realised about the block we had bought was  that it was mostly rock  Making creating any type of garden very hard and even mowing the paddocks was a bit of an adventure.

We decided to make the “tree/sea change” and move to Albany. The house sold quickly. One of the many things that Western Australia does have right, is the system of house purchase/sale. Once you sign on the dotted line to purchase a house and have your offer accepted by the vendor you effectively own the house. If you drop out of the deal you will loose your deposit and possibly be sued by the vendor. Likewise as a purchaser the seller can not pull out without serious legal implications and it almost never happens. All that makes things much more certain and there is no gazumping. It meant that we always found buying and selling property an easy and usually quick experience.

Once the house sold we had to look for an Albany Property. Albany is on the south coast of Western Australia some 500 kilometers away from Perth. It is a straight journey taking roughly 5 hours from Perth and we got to know that road very well as we searched for a new place. We were looking for a small farm, close to the coast and not terribly far from the town of Albany. In the end we found one roughly half way between Albany and Denmark in an area called Young’s sidings or Lowlands. The farm was 60 acres with a small house in need of some TLC and updating.
 

Pt7 The last year or two