Moving to Tasmania

Instead of sending emails to our friends and family we're using this web log. I'll be updating it regulary, so you can see what we're up to.
The following few entries chronicle our move from Melbourne to Hobart in Tasmania (Australia) in January 2007 (click on the links on the right).

Enjoy!

Bernt, Doris, Christopher and Annabelle

Packing up in Melbourne

The start of 2007 was pretty busy for us: we had a house to pack, and more so, I was finally going to sort through 15 years of collected 'stuff'. For some reason somebody didn't allow me to move it for a fourth time in four years... and heaps got thrown out. For instance, after I was done with the full 4-drawer filing cabinet everything fit in about half a drawer: almost 90% went to the recycling!

We allowed ourselves enough time, and got things pretty much done in time. And we needed to: in previous moves we had the flexibility of moving lots of stuff in cars but this time everything needed to be ready on January 17 for the removalists. Doris again did a fantastic job packing all of our day-to-day stuff, and I focused mostly on my junk... We ended up with one third of the garage full of organised and labeled boxes.

Doris and the kids stayed at Doris' parents place the night before and the day of the move.

Two removalists came with a truck and a 40m3 container. We used Chris Bell and Bells, a Tasmanian company (well-known in Tassie) that quoted us half the price (about $3000 for pack-yourself, door-to-door) of what two bigger companies quoted! And they did a great job: everything was packed very tightly in the container (it ended up being about 32 cubic meters) and apart from a few minor scratches, we didn't have any damage or breakages. It was a hard job for them too: it was 37 degrees! They were lucky though: it wasn't very sunny so the container didn't get too hot, as opposed to the day before when it was also a few degrees hotter...

We then spend from Thursday until Sunday night at Doris' parents place which was very comfortable and pleasant. The kids liked it too - only the first night Christopher wanted to go 'home'. Having these few days was really good - it allowed us to take it easy after a tiring two weeks, we could still say goodbye to a few people in a relaxed way, and even see Casino Royale in Gold Class (for non-Australians: a very luxurious movie theatre!)

Sunday nights in Melbourne were a bit of a tradition for us: Doris' siblings with partners and children would come to Anthony and Elizabeth's (their parents place) for a wonderful authentic Vietnamese meal - if there's any Melburnian thing we'll miss it is those meals and the company! So we had a last great supper there and it was time to say goodbye to Doris' family and to Melbourne!

Taking the boat to Tassie

We were booked on 'The Spirit of Tasmania' - one of the two ferries (by the same name) that sail back-and-forth between Melbourne and Devonport in northern Tasmania.
The Spirit left at 9pm, and we were there well in time: Doris in her car with Christopher and Annabelle, and lots of stuff, and me with the whole station wagon also packed to the rim. We paid a bit more money to get a cabin with a porthole, so Christopher (and we!) could look outside and see the ocean. Christopher was very excited about his trip on the big red ferry.

We woke up around 6am with the sun shining outside and a first sight of land - Tasmania, our new home! From now on we'll be Tasmanian, also know as Tasmaniacs, Taswegians and some other derogatory names that I've forgotten...
It's like every time we come to Tasmania the weather is gorgeous, and Devonport was no exception.

After breakfast at McDonalds (yip, they're everywhere) we drove south towards Hobart. On the way we stopped at Terry and Jean Wither's place to say hello, and for them to meet everybody really, except Bernt. Was a lovely break, as was the picnic in Campbell Town.

Annabelle doesn't like driving very much so we needed a few stops. We got to Hobart around 3pm, picked up the keys from the real-estate agent that had been managing the Lease for us, and drove straight to our new home.

Arriving in Hobart

The house was in great condition - our tenant had done a good job. Unpacking the cars was a big job: the house is up on a hill, and we don't have proper car parking close to the house, so it's a pretty long walk, 8 meters up. One of the things that will happen soon is that we'll be putting a proper driveway in.

We made the downstairs area of the house our bedroom for the next week: our furniture wouldn't arrive until the following Monday, so we had time to do some maintenance and painting of the house. This was all upstairs, so we'd minimise the fumes especially for the kids downstairs.

It really was a week of luxurious camping: on air mattresses, but with heating, hot running water and other comforts, so quite fun, and the kids seemed to enjoy it too! The only inconvenience (if you can call it that) was having to get ice every day to keep the eski cool...

When we bought the house in July 2005 it had been freshly painted, but not really to our liking. Every room had a different motif - lime green in the lounge room (yuck), bright yellow (not everybody's taste, but we like it) in the bathroom, dark blue in Christopher’s room, rosy pink in our bedroom, and about 4 or 5 other colours in different areas. So we bought a large quantity of 'cowardly custard' paint (a nice yellowish, off-white colour) and attacked those colours. In most rooms we left a 'feature wall' in the original colour, and in the lounge room we made a new feature wall of darkish-bright red. We had a good time doing it, and Christopher even helped.

And, we're very happy with the results!

Having a week to do this gave us also plenty of time to explore our new hometown, do some sightseeing and shopping etc.

We visited Neno and Carmelina - our new neighbours that we'd met quite a few times before – Christopher calls Neno ‘Nemo’! They're a lovely elderly (Italian) couple. They've lived here since the houses were built, and Neno actually built his own house all himself - including excavating the rocks under the house... took him a few years! He's got a magnificent terraced vegie garden behind their house: we've had too many lettuces to eat already! Speaking of fresh produce: one of the great features of our house is a beautiful peach tree in the front, next to the driveway. When we arrived it got to the end of the season for the peaches, but we still had about two weeks of loads of beautiful peaches from our own tree. And there are also an apple and a pear tree, and their fruit will ripen in the next few weeks!

Our other neighbours that own the land behind us, further up the hill, are Benn and Michelle. We'd met Benn a few times around the house, and just went for dinner to their place to meet Michelle properly too. Their house is gorgeous, and we thought we had a good view - well being higher up on the hill theirs is even better: uninterrupted 200 degree view of the river, just magnificent! In March Benn and Michelle are leaving for Amsterdam to celebrate their daughter's 30th birthday, who lives there. They're both retiring and will leave for about a year to travel the world starting the middle of this year.

Settling In

The container that we packed in Melbourne on Jan 17 was delivered to our home on Jan 29. These containers are pretty high, and on top of a fairly high truck the combination was high enough to take out Benn and Michelle's telephone wire which overhangs our driveway... so they didn't have telephone for a day. However, I called the telephone company right away and they were there within a few hours. Only because the truck still had to leave again the technician didn't want to fix it that day.

The two removalists had a pretty tough job to do. They claimed it was the worst house they'd ever delivered to. Seems like a bit of an exaggeration to us - we've seen houses on steeper driveways, with further to walk. Anyway, they were both strong as an ox, and just carried complete Billy bookshelves from Ikea by themselves all the way up! They had it done in about four hours, and then our job started... unpacking it all! But not before they almost took out our neighbours trees backing out of our driveway onto Channel Highway. It really isn't the most convenient access to the house...

Of course we hadn't lived in the house yet since we did our renovations in late 2005, especially putting the new kitchen in, and really, the work we did then couldn't have been better. The kitchen is very practical, and everything is still in perfect condition - credit to Liz, the previous tenant, but also to Bruce who installed it all. He did a fantastic job. We also opened the kitchen up by removing most of the wall between the kitchen and lounge room, and that works great too. While we're in the kitchen, it's easy to keep an eye on the kids, and we can enjoy the great views from there and the dining table too.
We were a bit concerned about having enough storage in the house, but especially in the kitchen it's working out great. However there aren't any built-in robes (apart from a linen cabinet in the hallway), so we've ordered two custom-made wardrobes for the master bedroom and Christopher's room. So until they get delivered (in two weeks' time) our clothes are still in bags and suitcases on the floor.

The downstairs area has a large room that is a play area for the kids - Christopher's train table is setup there. Then there's a separate area that has become my office. It also has a complete bathroom, so guests can have pretty much a private area. Upstairs is pretty much standard: there are three bedrooms, a bathroom and the kitchen/lounge room, with a laundry off to the side. Not too big, but perfect for us now.

I mentioned the driveway that we're putting in. It will provide parking for two cars closer to the house, but you'd still need to go up two flights of stairs to get to the living area. We'll have to cut into the hill a fair bit to put the driveway in, so there'll be retaining walls etc. to be built.
It is being designed in such a way that at a later stage we can built a garage with a second storey on top, which would become an extension of the lower level. I envision that would house a master bedroom and bathroom with (tinted) floor-to-ceiling windows next to the bath. I can just see ourselves having a relaxing bath, with a drink, looking out over the river...
On top of this floor we would have a large deck, as an extension of our current front balcony, and possibly extend the lounge room a bit too.
Now all of this is very much pie-in-the-sky: it'll only happen if we want to stay here of course, but we are taking the possibility into account by putting additional strength into the foundation of the work we're doing now. The design for this is practically finished, and we'll hopefully start the actual work in the next few weeks.
A funny aside here - this is going to be a pretty major excavation and construction job - they're talking 20-25 truckloads of material to be carted off, close to two loads of concrete to be poured, and 3 meter high retaining walls. When I called the council to see how we should go about getting a permit, the person responsible for permits called me back and said we didn't need one, since everything was on our own land, and as long as we met Australian building standards... Anybody we've spoken to about this is surprised, but the guy was very adamant, and he didn't need to give me this in writing! So that saves us the delay and cost of having to go through council. Luckily we've got a reputable engineering company to design it all and do the structural and strength calculations, so we shouldn't have any problems. And they'll inspect the work, so any possible future building work will have the foundation documented properly.

Why Tasmania

So here we are, living on an island, in a town where neither of us has a job and we don't know too many people. What have we done? That's the comment or the underlying tone from a lot of people we speak to. Most people incidentally call it 'brave'...
Well, sofar it absolutely feels like the right choice. Instead of living in suburbia in Melbourne, with a view of your neighbour's kitchen or fence, we now look out over the southern ocean (with about 5000km to go til you hit land at Antarctica). The air is a lot cleaner, it's beautiful to walk around here, the people really are very friendly, and seem more genuine or authentic too.

The general lifestyle seems more in tune with what we value these days: an emphasis on life, and enjoying life, and less on the rat-race of our western 'civilisation'. I put this in quotes, because it reminds me of an email I got from my brother in law who asked how we were progressing with our move to the 'edge of civilisation'. I actually don't find what we live in a very civilised society. Just look at what a few millennia of 'civilisation' has brought us: we're raping this planet (and each other, if we're not killing each other in wars with dubious motivations). If we don't act soon and drastically, in a few decades a large percentage of the world's population in low-lying areas won't have a home because of rising sea levels - Hobart being one of those areas (luckily our house is 40-50 meter above sea level: ours might become waterfront property ;). We're burning fossil fuels at a rate that is unsustainable, and worse, will deplete the resource for the plastics we use everywhere. We are eating poisoned foods, and we're wondering why there's such a large incidence of unexplainable diseases and afflictions. Our living environment has been polluted by thousands of chemicals that our bodies didn't have to deal with 200 years ago!

And this is what 200 years of progress in our industrial western civilisation has given us. Of course I'm not saying we didn't make real progress in those years, and I personally continuously take advantage of the comforts we've obtained - sometimes too much actually. But I am questioning the motivation behind many of our so-called improvements. And that motivation, especially in the last few decades, has simply been profits, money. We wouldn't have to have hunger in the world if we all became vegetarian or ate meat in moderation: it takes as much resources to grow 1kg of beef as it does to grow 50kgs of tomatoes!
But the gigantic and powerful meat industry would loose their huge current profits if we all suddenly stopped eating meat. And of course you can't make decent money selling food to third world countries...
And we'd possibly get safer and cheaper medicines if more scientific research was done into developing natural remedies. But they can't be patented, so of course the pharmaceutical industries aren't interested in going down that path.

I am convinced we have all the technology, know-how, intelligence, ability and money to end world hunger in a few years' time, and have nobody in the world living in substandard conditions (although of course not everybody will be able to do this: typing on a laptop on a balcony outside on a beautiful Hobart night...)
The only thing that is missing is our willingness. Our interests in our western society lie with ourselves, our profits, our comforts. We waste ridiculous amounts of money and energy competing with each other, and in multiple ways: from competition for better job positions, through competition for the consumer's dollars, to literally killing each other in our wars.

So what does all this have to do with us moving to Hobart. Well, almost automatically in the routine of day-to-day life you don't have time to think about these things. And if you do it is easy to either close your eyes and say 'it will be fine during my lifetime', or say 'it's too big a problem for me to do anything about'. But what about our children, and didn't we get this world on loan from them? What are we leaving behind for them?
If we're going to change any of this, the next generation (so our children) will play a major role in that.
By partially withdrawing ourselves from the big rat race and exposing our children to different values and different ways of being, we think we help to bring about the transformation of consciousness in the world that I think we need. The problem is too big for any one of us to solve. But by teaching our children teamwork and not competition, the importance of group well-being over individual well-being etc, our children's modus-operandi will be one that will benefit the world, and not just themselves. Hence our interest in a Steiner education.

Living where we are will automatically make us more present in our day-to-day lives to values that will benefit the world. Being closer to nature, among friendly, authentic people, in a place where seemingly making money isn't the only objective to life.
And finally, we like this place!

Living in Hobart

So what are we going to be doing to earn a living? Firstly Doris will have her registration with the Tasmanian pharmacy board organised fairly soon, and will start looking for locum work. I will continue with the VoIP (internet telephony) and computer support work business I started in Melbourne, and I've also become enthused about another business opportunity related to work I did in the past. I'll start with investigating the viability of that venture and writing a business plan, besides looking after Christopher and Annabelle while Doris is working.

Speaking of Christopher and Annabelle. They both seem to have adjusted really well to our new home. Annabelle especially is just herself - but what else can you expect from an eight-month old. She's very cute and is very close to crawling - she's been frustrated with not being able to get around for a while now, but just hasn't figured out how to move her four limbs in a coordinated manner... She eats really well, and is the ideal baby: rarely upset, and sleeps every night from about 7:30 until 7 the next morning!

Christopher is doing well too, and is becoming such a big boy. He's 3 years and 3 months old now, and talks heaps. He loves his Thomas and friends engines, and helping us do things. He does miss the trains in Melbourne, and friends and family there, just like we are (the friends and family that is - we could do without the trains!). But for such a drastic move, we really can't complain about how he's adapted. Soon he'll start going to playgroups and we'll take him to swimming lessons now that the first term of school has started (today actually). He does miss playing with other children, which will be remedied that way soon. Today we had a BBQ at beautiful Sandy Bay Beach, and he had a ball running around the playground with other kids he'd just met.

Doris too is loving it. When she answered the phone a few weeks ago and spoke with my brother Gerben for a while, he commented afterwards to me that he hadn't heard Doris that happy before. As I said - we both feel this is the right move for us.

Now that most of the unpacking is done and we're getting settled we'll start getting more sociable - contacting people we know here and doing more outdoor things. We were talking about getting in contact with some Dutch people, to possibly start a Dutch playgroup so Christopher and Annabelle continue to get exposed to the Dutch language, and not even ten minutes later we walked passed a table with 6 Dutch people who were doing just that... meeting once a month to keep their links with their roots intact. They generously invited me to come along to their get-togethers, so I'll happily do that! It's not quite a playgroup, but there is a lady there with an 18-month old boy.

OK, so much for now. There'll be more soon!