We found a rental property a suburb north from where we are currently staying with my sister, and are getting ready to move in. Our household goods are waiting in storage, and will be delivered by the removal company tomorrow. We were supposed to have the delivery last Thursday while the kids were in daycare, but due to illness in the family, it was postponed until after the weekend.

It’s a huge house with 4 bedrooms & 2 bathrooms, huge open plan living, dining & kitchen area, double garage & ducted air con(yay).

We have a 6 month lease initially, and hopefully if the landlord likes us, we can extend for a further 6 months.

Here are a few pics.

We went & looked at a rental property yesterday which looked alright on the website it was advertised on. We looked all through the property & then had some questions for the agent who was supposed to be looking after the property.

It was like talking to a brick layer about plumbing; every question we had she said “I don’t know, ask the owner”. Is it not their job as the property manager to know about the property they are dealing with??

How are you supposed to look at a property for 5 minutes and then make a decision without getting further information. There are certain things that you cannot know just by viewing something, and if the agent doesn’t know, then who the heck does.

Anyway in the end that property wasn’t suitable for our family. So we’ll keep looking.

Have you had any bad experiences with renting through land agents? Use the comments section below to leave our thoughts.

We are staying with my sister and Brother-in-law temporarily while we look for our own place. At least this way we don’t have to pay big bucks for accommodation and be in a hurry to find a house quickly. It’s interesting because they have 3 kids, so with our 2, we have 5 kids in the house, 3 of which are under 3 years. We also have to find a car from somewhere, but my brother-in-law is good at that & is a mechanic, so he is helping us out.

I have to find work, but the job prospects here are endless compared to what is on the Gold Coast, plus I have a few leads already which makes things much easier.

So here we are, back in Perth settling in slowly, but as the post title says, it’s good to be home.

We were prepared more the packers this time. In previous moves, the boys simply turn up and start packing things up that are there; not necessarily organized into groups & rooms.

This time was different. We had partially packed stuff ourselves. Everything was in it’s appropriate room and in an organized fashion. We also still had stuff in boxes from our previous move, so that made things a bit easier also.

So our stuff is in a container ready for it’s journey. I’m told that the container is 3/4 full, and needs to be fulled with another small consignment; then it travels by road to Sydney, and then by rail, across the Nullabor to Western Australia. The whole journey should take about 10 days (once it leaves the Brisbane depot).

Our journey continues here in QLD for a couple more days. We have to clean our now empty house, tie up a few loose ends, and then drive to Brisbane on Wednesday to catch our flight.

It’s interesting that all this goes on, and the young kids don’t have a clue.

We see the Australian flag big and small being flown from everything and anything, people dress up and buy things with Australian colours and some people even get a tattoo for the day.

For me, the 26th of January marks another memorable occasion. I arrived in Australia as a migrant, to become a permanent resident back on January 25th 2001.

Now even though it was on the 25th, Australia Day marks the anniversary that we moved from NZ.

Also, even though Jo & I spent a year in NZ, I still say we have come home to Australia, and this is home. So Australia Day 2010 marks 8 years of residency in Australia, and I look forward to many more.

We have stairs in our house and little Caleb who is now 14 months and is almost walking, loves to crawl up the stairs and get into mischief (as little boys do), so we went out and bought a stair/door barrier with a little gate that is supposed to keep kids out.

It does the job of keeping them out, but is also makes for grumpy children who can no longer go where they want. Chloe, who is coming up 3 in May, is at the stage where she loves to open & close doors. She gets quite upset when she cannot open and close this gate and go in and out, so while the barrier does it’s job, it creates other problems. It’s frustrating and I feel like I can’t win!!

While we’re on the topic of keeping little fingers out; in our bedroom upstairs we have a VCR and Austar decoder which at present, are sitting on a little table just above floor level, and of course the kids love to reach up (not that they have to) and look at pretty lights and push buttons and pull cables out; also very frustrating.

Yesterday while we were at our local Salvo’s Shop donating some stuff I found an enclosed TV/video cabinet with glass doors. Perfect size for the bedroom. It’s too small to put our TV on, but the VRC, DVD & Austar will fit inside quite nicely, and it only cost me $18.00.

I love my kids dearly, but the really frustrate me sometimes.

For me, the last few years have been a journey of finding home. I was born, and grew up in New Zealand. I have some wonderful memories of growing up in my hometown and spending family holiday’s at our family batch, and then during my teen years having a wonderful group of friends who were always doing things together.

Then in 2002 we said goodbye to our home in NZ and moved over to Perth, Western Australia to start a new home there. After being in Perth for 7 years, meeting my lovely bride & bringing our eldest child into the world, we decided to go back to NZ, which I thought was home, continue life where I left off there. But things were different.

Life there was not the same as when I grew up, my old friends had moved on, work was not the same as before, even though I was doing the same thing. Everything was different and I did not like it.

So we decided to leave NZ and come back to Australia, but we did not think, at the time, that we wanted to go back to Perth, so we came here to the Gold Coast to give that a go, after all it is Australia where we felt more like home and are definitely glad to be on Oz soil.

But something’s still not quite right here. We don’t know anyone here, we don’t have any family here, it’s been very difficult trying to find work here (I’m still looking), and we haven’t been able to find a church.

So where’s “home”? I think for us, home is where family is; where the support and love of friends is; it’s where you feel comfortable.

I thought home was where I grew up, but after trying to re-plant in the old soil, I was reminded why I left in the first place.

So what about you? What does the word “home” mean for you?