Two bob watch

Month 2 Two bob watch

A break was needed - with all the renovations at the country residence and the unfolding drama at the beachside apartment, the mobile home – Zingara -  was packed up and we headed to Mulwala – another border town with Yarrawonga along the Murray River.

Maria’s friend Ane has a holiday home which is lovingly referred to as Club Shed because basically it’s an eclectic mix of small fibro cottage with several caravans, belonging to a variety of relatives, all on a suburban house block. Whilst on the block the feel is rural, the moment you step out to the curb, you’re back in suburbia – we love Club Shed!

As the families grew, some relies bought their own bit of Mulwala and that is where we found ourselves on New Year’s Eve - Club Med (Ane’s brother’s place that is somewhat a little upmarket than Club Shed).

A huge roast dinner was put on for about 20 family members, with lots of bubbly, some dancing – well Don and Maria, sparklers (little kids were fascinated as they didn’t get the benefit of cracker night), karaoke (Ane’s nephew could do a rousing rendition of Jimmy Barnes) and party pop streamers added to the festivities of the night.

Back at Club Shed, gelato was whipped up, mango chicken salads tossed together and chicken nuggets that taste like well gourmet chicken nuggets disappeared like hot cakes, along with spending time at Paddy’s Bend, swimming in the Murray and following each evening with an iced Baileys or three.

The weather was extreme – in the low 40’s and the day it got to 45 found Maria positioned under the air con and was not moving.

The week at Mulwala certainly restored our flagging spirits – where we were actually pleasant to one another after the gruelling month of renovations.

Op shops in Mul were scrutinised and the day we shopped there was a 50% sale. Maria was so chuffed that she purchased a stainless-steel coffee plunger, reduced to $1.50 after the discount, for the days she wanted to feel “French”.

Don even managed to find some more items for the bus – metal fly screen which were reasonable priced rather than the exorbitant Sydney prices – another plus for country towns! This was placed on the side of the bus that didn’t have a screen and thus allowed us to open windows at night and have no mozzies flying in.

Whilst we are the subject of mozzies – they were relentless! Maria was bitten so much that she managed to make a make-shift fly screen for the back door and install net curtains to the sliding door of the bus to ward off the pesky insects!

Don also fitted a water filter to the water inlet, so water is now filtered right into to the water tank which pleased Maria no end as now she can drink her clean water!

Improvements to Zingara are always welcomed!

Is this giving the finger to Sydney??

On the way back to Albury a short stop at Rutherglen to have eat one of those world-famous pies at Parker’s Pies and this road sign took our fancy. It’s almost like raising the finger at Sydney!

Shortly after arriving back to Albury where a few more minor jobs were waiting, there was a bit of a raucous from next door.

Don was working out the front of the house on a small project and around 10 am a young redhead arrives and starts bellowing to the inhabitants of the house next door, to be given her daughter back who apparently was with her father on his access visit.

During the day the redhead kept up a steady stream of screaming abuse, crying hysterically, and threatening everyone in the house. Yet the house stayed quiet.

At times she would go quiet, sit on the step, mutter quietly to herself, then the raging and ranting would begin all over again.

As 2 pm approached Maria and Don had had enough - not only were profanities were being yelled, but the redhead was now threatening to kill them all.

Has anyone called the police Maria asked – Not sure says Don

Maria decides out of public duty to call the police and after apologising to them for troubling them proceeds to tell them that there is a very distressed young woman next door hurling abuse at the household, swearing and insisting on having her daughter returned. Not sure if anyone was home as there has been no sound coming from there.

Not a problem say the police, that’s what we are here for – we will send someone. And they did – within 20 mins with the paddy wagon Good says the redhead – they have my daughter - You need to get her out.

Good policing strategies were implemented by our boys in blue – one stayed with her, the other approached the house.

After about 10 minutes the policeman in the house emerges and the two of them proceed to talk to the redhead explaining that the dad has the right to spend time with his daughter. How would you like it if he turned up at your mother’s place carrying on like a two-bob watch? Asked the young police officer. The term made Maria and Don smile - would he even know what two-bob meant or is??

She really didn’t have an answer and consequently was given a lift home and peace reigned in the suburb again.

Maria saw the inhabitants from the house emerge and asked are you ok – they said yes. Maria asked why didn’t you call the police, they said we did – several times. Oh says Maria  I told them there was a highly distressed woman yelling abuse. Oh they said, we didn’t think to say that. hmmm

In the meantime, Karen from Zelle paid us a visit and was amazed at the transformation of the place. She immediately found a tenant who just “loved” the place. Don and Maria were both pleased that all that hard work paid off.

Update on the beachside apartment - Apparently in the 70’s when the building was built they laid down a product called magnetise – a cork like product to help with soundproofing but if it gets wet it needs to be removed. All good however that is part of the building. Enter the strata people and there began another round of dealing with another real estate and another insurance company.

Maria contacts Nicole from the strata – not a problem she says but get two quotes and send to me and oh by the way we are closing for the Christmas/New Year break. But we were 600 kms away!

Nevertheless, we somehow managed to get quotes and at 8:55am on the day the office reopened the email was sent. 

A wardrobe that was built over the carpet had to be removed before new flooring laid, so we decided to pack up Zingara and head to Sydney to sort out the drama with the beachside apartment.

En route we stopped in Canberra to visit Maria’s son where we free camped for a couple of nights (read on the street). Don got a chance to exercise his excellent mediation skills.

So if you need some couple crises management/therapy or some direction in your life, Don is now taking his mobile business on the road, so feel free to contact Don.

During this Maria’s daughter calls in a distressed state – What’s the problem bella says Maria to her daughter. I’ve just had a call from the Tax office telling me I owned them a lot of money and they were…. Maria cut her off and said It’s a scam - we have all had that call. Oh says her daughter, but wasn’t entirely convinced. Really? Yes really Maria responds, What did you say to them? I started to cry and cry told them I had a disability (which she does) and I kept screaming where’s the documentation said her daughter. And what happened after that asked Maria. Well it went on for a bit, about 5 mins or so with me crying and screaming says her daughter and then they came back and said it was all ok I didn’t have to do anything, and they were terminating the call.

At present there is a Nigerian scamming team quickly being trained up on how to deal with very distressed, crying women.

Update – Turns out Maria’s daughter’s husband decided to have a bit of fun with the scammers. As the number was not private and an Aussie one at that, he called them back. The first time they tried to sell him prostitutes, but he decided to call again and be a little more prepared. This time he got the tax scam and they were telling him he was going to be sent to gaol. He kept telling them that he had already been to gaol, so how can it be he was going again – and he would have done it so seriously and sincerely – quite fun to listen too. This went on for some time until the scammers terminated the call – yet again.

The moral here is have fun with them and turn the tables on them.

From Canberra we headed to the beachside apartment to inspect the damage and remove the built-in wardrobe in readiness to lay the new floor. More calls to the strata revealed the quotes had been received and had been sent on to the insurance company. The saga continues . . .

We decided to continue our journey and had an idyllic stay at the Lane Cove National park where we had a chance to check in with nature, relax and de-stress and get a night of dancing in!

Maria hard at work

The heatwave was now coming to Sydney and we were both pleased that we had purchased that air conditioner. Maria was now back working (part time for TAFE) marking assessments and was glad to have a cool office to work from.

From there we decided to head to Bulli on the lovely south coast of NSW on the beach where the temperature would be much cooler and be by the water.

Can you spot the quirkiness?

The unfortunate positioning of the caravan park situated between a cemetery and the beach was a juxtaposition of the completely stationary with the itinerant travellers, or the dearly departed with the newly arrived.

Who can spot the quirkiness of the signs?

(Hint: No entry to the left and arrow pointing up to the right)

Washing – at some point needs to be done. As we had taken mostly old clothes where we had washed hundreds of time, image the surprise when the washing machine was opened, and somehow a colour had run thru! Ok ok we know to separate whites from coloureds, but these clothes were oldish and had been washed so often any running of colour would be gone. Maria hadn’t figured on the purple yoga pants bought in Thailand.

Maria now owns lilac shorts, undies and very purple bras……WHICH came in handy one particular humid day when the skin was so sticky with humidity and Maria put on a t-shirt back the front. As she peeled the t-shirt off her sticky hot skin she decided it was cooler to stay in her purple shorts and purple bra which looked more like a midriff top. It was soooo cool but more importantly colour co-odinated! No one knows us here anyway….

Maria is starting to think Don is accident prone. As Zingara was being packed up to go to the next exotic location, Maria was doing the “lock down” of the bus. The lock down is similar to what a Flight Attendant does prior to landing where all drawers, cupboards, overhead lockers are secured and checked, window shades drawn up – well the bus needs the windows closed and curtains drawn, but you get the drift.

Maria was just finishing washing up some breakfast dishes prior to storing for lock down and had left the cutting board to the right of the kitchen sink – where there is little room - balancing on the edge with the electric kettle sitting on it, with hot water still in it as she wanted to rinse out the water bottle with the hot water. Don decided to do his “old man” trick of putting his hand on the side of the kitchen bench to support himself as he lowers himself to the stairs. In doing this the chopping board upturns, the kettle ricochets in the stairwell, water is splashed on kitchen cupboards, stairwell and doors and Don who was last heard shouting similar expletives when he drilled in to his thumb.

On top of this we have now been invited to a wedding to a dear friend of ours on the 1 Feb, so we have decided to tour around the wedding site. One of the best things about this adventure is that nothing is written in concrete and we can be as flexible as we like!

Stayed tuned to see what adventures and where we will be next time….

Month one - the adventure begins....

The excitement was building in that last week of November as we packed up the beachside apartment to start our adventure around Oz. We were madly packing – what we will take, what will stay behind, what will we donate, trying to get the apartment rented – furnished, unfurnished.

In the mist of all of this we also purchased a home in the Albury Wodonga region for reasons which will explain another time – perhaps it was the knives – the property came with a set of knives. As the property was almost derelict we thought it would be fun to spend a couple of weeks “doing it up” before heading off. A lick of paint, some new floor coverings and good to go.

Albury at a glance

We knew it needed a new kitchen and lo and behold our hairdresser had a very expensive one that he would sell very cheaply to us. It had been in his garage for – well let’s say the cobwebs and thick layer of dust…..

Ok to get it down to Albury we had to hire a one way only trailer. So, many phone calls getting this organised because hiring a one-way trailer means you cannot get one close to home, but you had to drive to the wild wild west of Sydney to collect it. Never mind, Maria needed to see her mum and sister prior to departing and trailer collection was nearby, so it fitted.

Don gets sick – a whole 24 hours he is out of action. Too ill to do anything, so Maria had to forge ahead with the packing.

We finally got a great tenant who wanted a furnished apartment, so we waved goodbye to the beachside apartment – heading off in the mobile home (Zingara) which had the one way hire trailer with the expensive kitchen attached and the BMW towing the trailer of tools required to “do up” the new home at the country residence, we set off.

What an adventure!

We arrive at the real estate agent to collect the keys – Rudy from Rudy Yonson Real Estate presents us with not only the keys but also a cold bottle of bubbly – love doing business with country people.

Hmm renovating, extending a home whilst living in it is a true test of relationships. Let’s say tensions ran high - very high - as walls were sanded, paint splatted on walls(a little blood too), trims glossed, kitchen pulled out and new one in, kitchen blinds bought, rubbish sent to tip, cut back the overrun front garden, tempers frayed, quotes for new roof, painting of exterior (or will we clad it?), arborist to cut back branches, trees and bushes, windows cleaned, new floor coverings, oven degreased - seriously do people really live like this? As one task was completed, three more were found – was this ever going to end?

Paint colours were discussed and as much as Don had heard that white is too stark for walls, what did Maria come back with? Not just white, but Vivid white. Don shook his head.

The country property comes with a very large block – handy if you want to agist a couple of horses or run a few head of sheep, but otherwise it needs mowing. Borrowing her son-in-law’s mower and finding it’s out of petrol, Maria proceeds to fill it.

It wouldn’t start, so Don had to step in, then causally asking Maria, so where did you actually put the petrol, then realisation dawning that she had poured petrol where the oil was to go. (Sorry Phil)

Although Maria had been mowing lawns since she was 12, it was always two-stroke – she had never come across a mower where oil and petrol were separate. To fix this problem before heading out to buy son-in-law a new one, the mower was turned over, petrol poured out and time was spent looking for oil and more petrol and after a few frantic hours, the mower worked, and Phil really didn’t need to know about it.

Maria did take to the first week of living out of Zingara and made meals and baked bread, but as more and more work was done and more and more jobs were found, this all went by the wayside as the workload increased and all that was longed for was a hot shower and collapse into bed.

One week ran into two, two into three, dancing was something we began to dream of as we were so exhausted, and bed beckoned more so than the dance floor. We did however manage to get out one night to dance – at the local Commercial Club. The band played good music – though each time the lead singer announced her next song, her Australian drawl made us cringe. The dancers on the floor were partner dancing – great that’s what we do, but they had this funny way of dancing around in a circle and beware if anyone got in their way – they just barrelled thru – they had right of way. Don and I would find a bit of floor to do our slot dancing and they would circle around and pretty much push us out of the way – Don created some clever moves as he saw them head for us and steered us both to another part of the dance floor that they hadn’t invaded.

In those three weeks of renovating there was little time to well… spruce oneself up. Maria had decided to grow out her hair thinking become a silver foxette would be a fun thing to do, however as it grew she wasn’t sure if she could cope with this colour. Add to it fine dust from sanding, paint from the walls, trim and kitchen cupboards and the hair became an interesting colour.

The hat

As there was precious time left for luxuries like colouring hair – Maria bought a stockman’s hat. This was bought with great excitement as Maria usually finds it hard to buy hats that fit – they are always too large, but this one fitted like a glove. This hat is country brown (appropriate for this lifestyle) with a brown leopard print scarf tied around it. This has now become her new signature look and she has strutted the look whilst navigating the aisle at Bunnings.

A week after leaving the beachside apartment a frantic call from one of the neighbours one morning telling us that there was water pouring out of the apartment. Long story short the hot water had burst – probably the night before and the tenant had been away – and consequently water had been gushing out from the hot water overnight at least. 

The prognosis was that when the real estate agent went to investigate the water had reached every room and the carpet was a soggy mess. Hence the round of large exhaust fans to dry it out – apparently before being ripped out as it’s too heavy to lift. It was noted as the remains of the soggy mess of a carpet was eventually hauled over the third-floor balcony that Maria never really liked that carpet. So began a round of talks with insurance companies, the tenant the real estate and the flooring company.

Two weeks after leaving the beachside apartment, Don was drilling into a piece of timber – something he has done thousands of time before, but for unknown reasons, this time slipped and drilled into his thumbnail. There was a loud expletive (or six) but the comical thing was that although blood was pouring from his thumbnail, he was still waving the drill in the other hand. Bandages to stem the blood, a rest and he was back on the job.

That afternoon he set out in the BMW to collect more supplies (not sure if it was for the house or us) when a loud thud was heard. Checking that nothing had been run over, it was soon discovered that the power steering pump had gone.  The to do list was mounting.

Most tend to lose weight when renovating, the case is the opposite for us – eating lots of comfort food and drinking copious amounts of alcohol to numb everything from the growing tensions to the aching bones – renovating was rapidly turning out to be not such a good idea ☹

Then there was the issue of not being heard – Maria felt Don wasn’t listening to her and Don felt Maria wasn’t listening to him, but miraculously with all this no listening going on, the house was starting to take shape. The vivid white was not too vivid after all and blended well with the charcoal grey carpet and roller blinds.

An upside to all this is that Maria is getting to spend a bit of time with her two G-kids who love her home-made gelato and the YouTube video of “baby shark” which apparently only works on Nonna’s phone. There are a few videos in circulation with Maria and g-kids playing out the actions and singing away.

So, four weeks into our trip around Oz and we are still in picturesque Albury/Wodonga with the prospect of returning to Sydney as there are some complications with the beachside apartment and now looks like we must return to Sydney. Apparently to lay new flooring, a built-in wardrobe must be dismantled, then new floor laid and then wardrobe rebuilt.

Though we have only seen the inside of Bunnings and the house, we are hopefully we will come to a stage where it will be fine enough to rent it out (oh and Karen from Zelle Real Estate presented us with a box of chocolates for engaging them to rent out the home – love dealing with country people) and begin the journey.

Stayed tuned for next month to see where we are or rather more importantly if we still together 😉 ……

Dancing decals to remind us to dance!