pob

Thats a nice idea.

Funny. But I don't fancy driving my Golf back to Germany.

Leaving Australia

We are making plans to move back and we obviously need a car. We purchased an older Golf it's about 20 years old, nothing seriously wrong with it. We got it thinking that we would only use it a few months, maybe a year and get something newer. We never got around to buying that new car and have just driven around the old golf. It's tatty, got plenty of dings, a few scratches. But it runs great, starts on the button and gets us from A to B. The thing is we need a car until the end of our stay, so what should we do with it? Selling it is a hassle here, I REALLY hate all the haggling!!! Sell it for scrap? And then pay for an Uber to the airport? Just park it at the airport and forget about it??? Gumtree? Ebay? What do we do with a 20 year old cheap car? Any suggestions?

That is the kind of place I like to visit! I know it would not work for their tourist board, but that makes me want to go there.

@Toots I'm in Sydney NSW. From what I hear everything sounds quite nice in Tasmania. I should go out of my way to visit one day! @Marisawright We used to live in America. The healthcare system is quite disgusting! Everything is clean and nice and the care is very good. But people die due to lack of healthcare. Did you ever go into Wallmart? They usually have a greeter, a older person smiling and saying hello, lots of amusing badges on their waistcoat. I always wondered why you would have that job in your 80's? They have the job so they can get part of their healthcare/copay paid for. Being a surly kind of person I usually nodded or grunted hello and went about my business in the store, but after finding out why they have that job, I always smile and greet them nicely, pay them a compliment, try and make their day a little easier. The best place I had healthcare was the Netherlands, I paid my ZAO fee every month and everything was free after that. Fantastic hospitals and doctors. I have nothing bad to say about their system. But I am sure it is better somewhere else, but that is the best I have seen and used.

I would guess a lot of people compare Australia with where ever they come from. Lots of people join poms in oz for information, even down to their favorite variety of potato chip. It's a comparison, what do you prefer Twisties or Wotsits? Twisties win it for me, but neither are good for you. Ive lived in a few places and one of the things that really upsets me is the lack of or restrictive healthcare. I personally believe that healthcare should be free to all. I think it is a basic human right to free healthcare. After all, why pay your taxes if you don't get something back from it. Charging people for an ambulance and then what ever they do in the ambulance is added onto the bill, is wrong in my opinion. But that is just my opinion. I am clumsy though! Always breaking bones, getting cuts and what not.

Every time we see the doctor it costs us $100! When my wife needed pain medication she was denied it and told that pain is only a state of mind by the doctors. What she needed was a couple of days on morphine due to her injuries, what she got was a couple of paracetamol instead. In the hospital there was over flowing bins of bandages with puss and blood on them. I asked nursing staff if they would like me to remove the needles in my wife's arm because the way they were doing it was causing her pain and injury. Yes the NHS is far from perfect. But you do not need to pay to see a doctor do you. You would be given pain medication if you had shattered your leg and were constantly crying and the only time you stopped crying was when you passed out due to pain levels, which is dangerous.

I lived in Cornwall 20 years ago, Newquay, St Austell. Don't suppose you know a guy called Jason Lockett do you? Into his music. Summer is horrible full of tourists, but as soon as the kids go back to school and it is great. I would even enjoy the bad weather, I used to head to a pub called the walkabout and watch the storms through their big glass windows. You would feel the whole building shake!!! We lived in Australia ten years ago and returned a year ago. It's changed so much over the past ten years. I also have changed so much over the past ten years. It was always insular, now more so. There is a lack of foreign goods here. I'm not talking about mushy peas or prawn cocktail crisps, you can still get those if that's what floats your boat . It's other stuff like Quality Italian olive oil, I went to grab a bottle of Evian from the supermarket and only then realized hat there was only Australian water, the list goes on. The quality of day to day food items seems to have dropped. The Australians as a nation seem to be more nationalistic, there seems to be less foreign goods. We have been told that when covid hit this happened and it has stayed that way. My wife got sick and I saw how the healthcare system worked. It was then we realised that Australia as a country would fail us if we ever got sick here. When opportunity arises, we will leave. Would you like to swap places?

Why not try Bangkok? Take the family to Thai boxing one evening, it's great fun! The next night book a nice restaurant and go to a fancy bar. I like to wander the markets during the day.

Don't let the removal guys unpack your chest of drawers, pack it full of socks, t shirts, bed linen. They will say they have to, because your socks might damage the chest of draws. Then throw a pair of socks at it and examine the damage.

I'm a ping pong pom. I realize I don't belong anywhere really! Traveled too much, lived out of suitcases for too long. But we have decided not to stay, Mrs Pob had a little accident and I don't know if it was a particularly bad hospital or if the care is just bad here. But we made our decision not to retire here and get old. It's not the kind of country that you want to get sick in. It will be fun for a year or two in the sun, but we will eventually move on. I had given up and accepted England as my home, then the chance to go back to Australia was sprung on us and we took it based on our memories. It's funny how you remember things, or misremember things.

Toilet paper, toothpaste, shaving cream, gravy browning.

Sorry Parley I was asking about Christmas not my spelling. You probably have found in life that some people do not spell as well as others. It's kind of rude to point that out

Christmas didn't feel the same this year. The sun was out for a start, how wonderfull! Hawian shirts were worn instead of wooly jumpers. We still ate turkey, but it didn't feel right, the paxo that we purchased especially for me, didn't agreee with me. I'm thinking sticky rice and a baked fish with aromatics next year, a nice citrus salad too, Hawian shirts again, I seem to have become VERY attached to mine. We had a few drinks in the house, but these is no pub near by. Beer and whisky didn't feel right in the heat either, but a glass of St Germain hit the spot nicely. How do you guys celebrate? Do you keep the old traditions or have you started new ones?

Sorry, I should have said I am in Sydney. I keep forgetting different States have different laws. We got the keys yesterday and the owner was wanting to book viewings twice a week for the next 18 months. This seems unreasonable to me as I like my privacy. Just moving on isn't really an option as it has taken us over two months to find a house to rent. We were supposed to move in today with an overlap of our temporary accomodation by a few days. Our 40ft container of goods arrives in a week. We have purchased a new sofa, arm chairs and a bed, how am I going to fit all of that into a one bedroom air B&B when we need a four bed house with a garage. Air B&B costs about four times what a house does to rent. If the owner was honest and had told us this BEFORE we signed the contracts we would never have rented the place. Finding out that the owner is selling three hours before you get the keys is not really my idea of being fair and honest.

We thought we found a place to rent, signed the contracts, paid the deposit, phew thats a weight off our mind. It seems like the landlord has other ideas and now wants to sell the property. All this bewteen him signing the contract and before we have picked up the keys. I think we now need legal advice, so can someone reccomed a good tenant lawyer?

I have found a used car I woudl like to buy, I have negotiated the price and I am about to transfer the funds for the car to the sellers account. What do I do next? Is there a yearly safety test like an MOT? There are different coloured slips, pink, blue, green slips, what do they all mean? Being in Sydney what do I have to do when I buy the car and what do I have to do every year? I have been reading about compulsary insurance and non-compulsary. Have I got it right in thinking that the compulsary insurance only covers people and not cars or anything else that is on the road? If someone with only compulsary insurance runs into the back of your car and I am hurt they cover the hospital bills and loss of my earnings, but what about the cars/lamposts or anything else that could be damaged by a car? Do you have to then take the person to court yourself to get them to repair your car? I was told the compulsary insurance stays with the car when you buy it? Is that true for the Greeno? Is Rego like road tax? Everythings name seems to get shortened and given a O or a Y on the end, which doesn't help much unless you are familiar with the local slang terms. Sorry, I'm sure this gets asked a lot.

PSS won't know how long you have owned the buggy, even if it is in it's original box. Everything you own is more than six months old, isn't it. The man who wore the suit gave you the quote is not the gorilla in a gravy stained tshirt who packs your box and puts it in a moving truck.

Then you need to talk to pet air and get a time line in place for all the check ups and shots. They are good with giving you a time line to follow. It's a six month wait from the first rabies shot. The theory is that England isn't rabies free any more as a rabid rat could run down the channel tunnel from France and infect the whole country.

They also kept sending us emails asking us to pay for a outside consultant vet at a cost of about $500 per visit for the elderly dog. When all he needed was a quiet area with his sister and he would have been fine. But they ignored this and kept him locked up in general population. @Toots You have to pay all the fees in advance before you pick the dogs up. When you approach the Quarentine station there are big grey prison walls, in Rooty Hill everything was just contained by chain link fences. This isn't a better system.

We used pet air and they did their job very well. The quarentine in Melbourne are a bunch of idiots though! My 30kg healthy dog was skin and bones after ten days in quarentine! We wrote them emails about how to best care for the dogs but you could tell they were not reading them. Thay tell you that they wash the dogs every three days, this is a lie, my dogs both stank upon release and one dog was poorly due to the stress caused and had dried blood on his back legs that was not cleaned off. The blood was crusted to his body. They kept him seperated from his sister when we sent several emails asking for them to be kept together, there were stickers on his crate as well and pet air informed them. This was all ignored. We recieved an email several days after they were released saying that all our emails went into their spam folder because we were not useing an Australian email address. The quarentine was easier on the dogs when they had the quarentine in Rooty Hill Sydney. At least they let you visit them, bring them treats and listen to your advice on how to care for your dogs. The dog is slowly putting weight back on, he won't sleep on his dog bed any more though and sneaks into the bedroom and into bed with my wife and I and sleeps over my legs. Some nights he has nightmares, I give him a cuddle.

I was also concerned about outstanding finance on the bike? When you get a loan on a new car or bike is the loan attached to the vehicle or is it attached to the person? Or even their home? Does anybody know how to check for this?

There is a wait on new bikes, but I don't think it is like cars at the moment. There are a lot more computer chips on a new car than there are on a motorcycle, lots more sensors and what not. I was just wondering what his deal was? And if that is just the market and how it operates. He mentioned other people who were interested in the bike and where they were from, so I remembered the names of some of the places and googled them, is it common to get a vehicle transported around the country? Would someone buy a used vehicle sight unseen? All the "other" buyers were from ACT and Victoria and the bike is North of Sydney. I know this was the get in quick now before the other guy gets it ploy. Oh well, I will keep on looking. Thanks for the advice.

I'm trying to understand the market in Australia. I went to look at a motorcycle a few days ago, it was only a year old and few thousand k's on it. The thing is the guy selling it wanted just about the same amount as he paid for it, even though it was him who had the pleasure of riding it off the showroom floor, he had the brand new brake pads, chain, tyres etc etc. I could kind of tell that he is not getting that much interest from trying to sell it, yet he didn't want to move that much from his price. I wonder if it was because we are obviously new to the country? Or if he really believed his bike was worth that much? In the end I decided not to buy the bike, it didn't feel right. I'm really not in the mood to haggle at the moment and told him this and just asked what his best price is. He didn't move from his advertised price. So I guess that I will adding fifteen hundred dollars to my bike fund and buying new from a dealer, it seems like a better deal to me.