We were quite lucky with selling our house. We had three different buyers with whom we negotiated and signed a selling contract. However the first two fell through because the contracts were conditional: the first people couldn't sell their house, and the second ones didn't manage to get a bank loan. The financial crisis that had hit the USA was showing its effects in Australia too. In Melbourne prices had dropped by about 8% in the first three months of 2008 (now, that is after an increase of 25% in 2007). According to Rod Force, our real estate agent from Nest Properties, the number of people looking for houses in the Hobart area had dropped by about 40% in the two months that our house was for sale, but prices weren't affected too much yet. However we ended up getting $388K, whereas the previous two contracts were both above $400k. We were willing to accept this price because it was getting close to our planned date of leaving Hobart. We could've kept the house and rented it out, but we didn't really want the hassles of that. We actually scheduled an auction to get cash buyers, but the house sold two days before. The buyers are a lovely young couple who fell in love with the house like we had. We were very happy to sell it to them - they'll appreciate and look after it.
Packing up in Hobart went pretty smoothly. We had booked Chris Bell&Bells, the same removalists that moved us from Melbourne to Hobart 18 months earlier. They were coming with a container that was then stored in Kingston (Tasmania) until we need it in Melbourne. This storage incidentally is quite economical: $35 per week, for a full container load! Packing was different from other times because we had to organise things in different categories: Stuff to put in storage, things to take to Melbourne in the car and things that were coming with us to Europe. And, despite the preparation, it still became a bit of a rush job in the end.
The removalists came on Friday May 30th, which was also Christopher's last day at the Taroona Primary School's Kinder. Friday and Saturday night we stayed in Motel 429 in Sandy Bay while we were doing the final cleaning up of the house. On Saturday we showed the new owners around the house, and introduced them to our wonderful neighbours Nino and Carmelina.
Saying goodbye to them was quite emotional, considering especially Nino's age and health. Afterwards we had pizza with our old rear-neighbours Stuart and Erica and their son Joe. We used to see each other every Tuesday so the kids could play: Joe is only 8 months younger than Christopher and they play quite well together. It gave Erica and Bernt some valuable adult conversation time too. They had moved to Kingston on Thursday before: Nino and Carmelina lost two sets of neighbours at the same time.
On Sunday we started driving north - two cars filled to the rim with stuff. We made a quick stop in Launceston to see Roger and Sarah, and saw their lovely house which they've just sold to move to Bruny Island. Funny that - we could've been very close (our house looked out to Bruny, and it's probably our favourite place in the world).
We had booked a little cabin in Sister's Beach. Our friends Lel and Martin in Hobart had recommended Boat Harbour, but the resort and motel there is being renovated. Sister's Beach is next to it and also very nice. On Monday we spent a bit of time on the beach there - beautiful and quite pleasant despite being the start of winter. In the afternoon we drove back to Devonport and the Don River Railway. This is quite a big operation, mostly run by volunteers, that has restored a large number of (steam and diesel) engines and carriages to preserve Tasmania's rail history. It's one of only a few places in Tassie where you can still take a passenger train ride: all commercial passenger services have ceased quite a while ago.
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