Tjsmum

3 hours ago, ramot said:

On June 2nd 1975 we took our son to Ely East Midlands to hospital to have his tonsils out, it was snowing! We bought him home on Friday that week in a heatwave! 

@ramot that’s crazy, to have to 2 extremes in one week! 

3 hours ago, Toots said:

I remember snow at Easter and once in Stirling (Scotland) in June!!

@Toots Wow, snow in June?! I know it’s Scotland but still, snow in June, that’s crazy

14 hours ago, Bulya said:

14 hours ago, Bulya said:

Exactly!

@Bulya I know this is off topic but my grandfather in law shares the same name as your screen name, his favourite horse was called bullija pronounced bull e yah, everyone started calling him bullja instead of bill

15 hours ago, InnerVoice said:

I'm connected on Facebook with the lovely couple who bought our UK house and they posted a photo of our old back garden earlier - a good 6" snow by the looks of it!

@InnerVoice Where in the UK is this? 

15 hours ago, Tulip1 said:

It’s terrible weather throughout the UK at the moment.  I’m in the warmer parts (south east of England) and still it is bitter.  I’ve driven to work the last two days in heavy snow.  Next week is looking much better though.  Spring is surely on its way (I hope) 

I came from SW England! Never thought I’d come across someone near me! 
 

Yes! Everyone is praying spring arrives quickly back home, my great aunti and sister have had snow! I couldn’t believe it! Snow in March, but mum says they’ve had it in April too 

17 hours ago, Marisawright said:

Best bet is to contact some removalists and ask them for quotes.  No harm in it, there's never any obligation to actually book!    The problem with Tassie is that somewhere along the line, your stuff has to be loaded onto a ship, and it's the sea freight that costs all the extra money.

If you're renting, then I'd say country Victoria is a better bet than Tasmania, where I'm told rents have gone up drastically.  

I wonder what has caused the rise in rents in Tas? I think the price spike up here was when a lot of southerners moved north after lockdown finished as we didn’t have any cases, could it be the same for Tas? 
 

There is so much to consider, moving to either of these places and so much to figure out, we will get stuck in after our trip home.

3 hours ago, InnerVoice said:

Compared with northern Queensland, Tasmania is as dry as bone - at least the parts which are habitable. Devonport has about half the annual rainfall of Cairns, and Hobart a third. I do love the rain up here, but wish it didn't go on for so long!

I've only visited Tassie in February and March, and was reliably informed by forum members who live there that it does get very dry at this time of year. However, in my opinion it doesn't look much like the English countryside. The scenery is very similar to Victoria but more mountainous, so it's more impressive in that respect.

I'm no sure why you'd be concerned about lockdowns at this point in time - it's a done deal. Although there could be another pandemic of course, but I'd be far more concerned about floods and bushfires given Australia's extreme climate.

@InnerVoice That’s interesting, I’d thought with it being cooler it would be wetter, I did see the flooding not too long ago can’t remember where in Tas it was.

I’m one of those people that likes to be prepared, I like to think of all possibilities, there will come a time when we may have to have another lockdown , when we had our short lockdown no body really cared, we still had to do social distancing and masks but we continued to move around driving to other towns and the police were not there to enforce it, I guess it’s because we aren’t in the city, harder to keep eyes on everyone, so country Vic sounds good 

14 hours ago, Marisawright said:

Melbourne (the city) was in lockdown for a long time.  Not the whole of Victoria.   Victoria's borders with other states were closed -- but so were Tasmania's.  People in the rest of Victoria couldn't go to Melbourne but otherwise they just carried on with life as normal for most of it, same as Tassie. 

Besides, even when Melbourne (city) was in lockdown, we weren't barricaded in our houses!   Being in your own garden was always perfectly legal, all the way through.   And even at the height of it, we could go out for an hour each day and visit family.

That little house is very typical for country Victoria.   In fact there's a lot of houses like that even in Melbourne. 

Another consideration for country Victoria is that it will be a shorter, cheaper flight to visit your son.  It will also be cheaper to make the move.  I was stunned at how expensive it is to transport your stuff to Tassie, it's like shipping stuff back to the UK! It's because everything has to go on the boat. 

As for the weather, I lived in Sydney for over 30 years. When I moved down to Melbourne, I had to go out and buy woolly hats, gloves and scarves again, but it does still get hot in summer.   Ballarat and the surrounding villages are at high altitude so it's always a few degrees cooler/colder.  Same goes for the mountains on the Eastern side of Melbourne (Dandenong Ranges, but don't confuse them with Dandenong, which is a totally different place) -- however they are an easy commute to Melbourne city, so tend to be more expensive for housing.    

https://www.realestate.com.au/news/victoria-dominates-best-regional-towns-for-firsthome-buyers-me/

@Marisawright Thank you for clarifying the lockdown bits for me, 

I haven’t been able to find an estimate online for shipping container to Tas, but I did say to Hubby if we moved to Vic instead, that we could drive a hire truck down there with a family member and the family member could drive it back to FNQ.

Yes, affordable flights would be a must if everything went swimmingly with custody case, as my eldest sons father is looking to move down somewhere near Brisbane.

Thank you for the info regarding housing, we will never buy, it’s too costly sadly, we fought tooth and nail 3years ago yo get pre approval but that was back when you could get a decent house for $250k, we have come to terms with the fact that we will rent until retirement age and then we will become nomads 

29 minutes ago, Marisawright said:

Melbourne (the city) was in lockdown for a long time.  Not the whole of Victoria.   Victoria's borders with other states were closed -- but so were Tasmania's.  People in the rest of Victoria couldn't go to Melbourne but otherwise they just carried on with life as normal, same as Tassie. 

Besides, even when Melbourne (city) was in lockdown, we weren't barricaded in our houses!   Being in your own garden was always perfectly legal, all the way through.   And even at the height of it, we could go out for an hour each day and visit family.

That little house is very typical for country Victoria. 

@MarisawrightAh, my apologies I thought it was the entirety of Vic.

An hour wouldn’t be enough outside for me, 

Yes it’s those kind of houses I love! Can’t handle the carpet though, so unhygienic! But I’d put up with it….

i wonder where the safest places in country Vic would be, natural distasteful wise? And for Tas too

We have had cyclones come this way but it’s never been more than strong wind and rain

5 hours ago, Marisawright said:

Have you considered country Victoria?  It can still get hot in summer (but then it also gets hot in Tasmania) but we do have proper winters here.  Ballarat is famous for being cold!  The advantage of Victoria is that it's much more densely populated but there is still plenty of countryside and small country towns.  There wouldn't be the same concerns about lack of employment. 

@Marisawright I haven’t considered country Vic at this stage but I will look into it, the thing that makes me hesitant with Vic is how long they were in lockdown for, I can’t handle being stuck inside for too long, that’s why I like the idea of Tas, so I can be outside gardening.

Vic was in an unnecessarily long lockdown and it would drive me crackers if we had to go through one of them 

edit:::::: there seems to be more affordable housing in Vic and buildings to my liking, this below is an example:  I thought this kind of housing excised only in Tas 

8 hours ago, InnerVoice said:

I hear you. I guess you haven't been back to the UK since before the pandemic, so I hope that when you go back at the end of this year you'll get your fix for another 3 years 

England has a population of around 55 million people. Tasmania is roughly half the size of England and has half a million inhabitants - only 1% of its population. Outside the major towns Tassie is very sparsely populated with limited infrastructure, so if you're planning on living somewhere rural to save money on housing then just be prepared for that. We thought we might find that feeling of remoteness more of an issue than the cold winters, to be honest. Of course this is just my view after a couple of visits, as I know there are many on the forum who love living there. I think you should try and visit sooner than later though, before making too many long term plans.

Wouldn't your custody issue still exist if you moved to Tasmania, or are you waiting for your eldest to come of age before the move?

I forgot to mention I had been back home 6months before the pandemic and we went back again last September….

the one thing I didn’t realise is how rural, rural Tas is, there is a beautiful house in Gray on average, affordable but the population is less than 100, that’s a bit too rural for us.

I do prefer small towns though, we live in a small town at present and the limited infrastructure isn’t a bother.

Latrobe is still looking good at present.

I suppose the bits of home I’m looking for are the cold weather and the greener scenery.

unfortunatley custody will always be an issue with my son he’s only in high school, whilst he can stand on court and say where he wishes to be, but at the end of the day the courts will rule what’s best for the child, if they are blinded by his fathers lies they will want him to have some kind of time with his father and I think the judge would be more willing to grant majority custody if I was still in some part of Aus where flights to see his father several times a year equal one flight to the Uk every year.

38 minutes ago, Toots said:

@InnerVoice Richmond a pretty town 26km north of Hobart, also has a bridge built by convict labour between 1823 and 1825 for movement of military, police and convicts on the way to Hobart and Port Arthur.

 

@Toots This picture is perfection! So beautiful and a lot like England I will look up Richmond, at first I thought this was the Richmond Sydney way 

Edit : I’ve just looked at rental prices in Richmond, looks like Latrobe is more affordable, bummer 

1 hour ago, InnerVoice said:

@Tjsmum I don't want to be the messenger who gets shot but I think you're living in denial here. Tasmania is lovely, but it's incomparable with the UK - except for the cooler weather.

If you feel that way you should think about returning to the UK rather than moving to Tassie. I had similar yearnings so l returned to the UK between 2008 and 2011. At first it was great but I found the winters very depressing, and so much had changed. Most of my friends had moved on, one way or another. In my opinion the country had really gone downhill compared with the 80s and 90s, but then we always see our glory days through rose-tinted spectacles! Instead of Tasmania why not return to the UK for a year (or maybe 18 months, so at least you get two summers and one winter over there) and see how you go? One of the few advantages of renting over home ownership is having that flexibility to be able to up sticks relatively easily. I'd been renting in Australia but I still owned a house in the UK which I'd been renting out, so moving back when I did was easy with a home to return to. I sold the place when I returned to Australia, so I've definitely burnt my bridges with the old country now!

Anyone who still refers to the UK as 'home' after 15 years in Australia is clearly homesick. I know there are many Poms who just can't settle here and my heart goes out to them. I still miss things about good old Blighty but now that all my family over there have passed on, I don't have any compulsion to return. Personally, I was going to retire anywhere other than Australia then it would probably be southern Europe because at least you'd have the combination of nicer weather, with a bit of culture

and sophistication thrown in.

@InnerVoice Thank you for your honest reply, How would you say that Tas is incomparable to the UK? 
 

You have hit the nail on the head there, I am homesick,  the heat exaggerates that but when we have cool and rainy weather the homesickness disappears.

I think I did mention in my OG post that moving home is not an option, I go home every 3 years for a months holiday and come the Third week I’ve had enough and can’t wait to come back to Aus (minus the hot weather). 
Like you had found when you went back for a few years the UK is not what it used to be, nothing like our childhood times, UK is a sinking ship IMO.

Moving back to the UK even for a short time isn’t simple for me, I have custody issues with my eldest and I refuse to leave him here with his father full time, I’d have to leave hubby here to work and getting settled temporarily with our youngest would be a massive headache for a temporary homesickness fix.

Australia truly is the land of milk and honey, even though times are getting tough here too, it’s no where near as bad as the UK.
We belong here, just not in the hot parts, “insert laugh here” 

29 minutes ago, Toots said:

I don't think the towns here are anything like towns in the Cotswolds.  Give them another 200 years and they may have acquired a bit more character.  

We had another cool windy day here.

@Toots Weather there sounds great! 
 

Im currently dripping sweat, waiting for the traffic to move , sigh! 

4 hours ago, InnerVoice said:

@Tjsmum we live in Cairns, and have been considering Tasmania as a retirement destination in the next couple of years. Finding work wouldn't be a necessity for me as I'm hoping to put my feet up, but my wife wants to keep going a while longer. (It's just the two of us)

Have you visited Tassie yet? We had a holiday/reconnaissance visit back in Jan/Feb this year and loved the island. We're undecided yet whether we'd move there yet, but I certainly wouldn't go just to escape the heat of FNQ as there are plenty of other places in Australia with a temperate climate, if that's the main reason for your move. You might be interested in reading my post regarding our trip, in particular our findings on page 5.

https://www.pomsinoz.com/topic/216384-retiring-in-tasmania/

We're also considering east coast towns from Coffs Harbour down to Newcastle, so that will be focus for our next trip. We've decided that wherever we go, we'll rent out our house in Cairns for a year and rent somewhere first, to see how it goes. I see that you're renting so that wouldn't be a consideration for you, although you might want to weigh up the pros and cons of shipping everything from Queensland to Tassie versus the cost of storage, until you decide it's the right move for you. Good luck! 

@InnerVoice I read your post before making my own,   I’m glad I’m not the only one from up this way complaining about the heat, 

We will be visiting Tas after we go back briefly to the UK to see my dad at the end of this year, he isn’t too well sadly.

Once we are back here we will start making short holidays to tas, mainly during summer and winter, to the parts we are considering settling at, to see how the weather is.

I like your idea of leaving stuff in storage for a short period of time to see how we handle life in Tas….

The other driving factor for us wanting to move to Tas is because it’s most like home, the population of the towns we’ve looked at are nice and small, almost like being in the Cotswolds, whilst I do not truly feel at home until I am actually back home in the UK I have spent nearly 15years feeling like I’m in the wrong place, with Tas being more like home I believe I will feel more content.

Today has been another boiling hot day and the heat makes me miserable! 

12 hours ago, Skani said:

Yes, they are lovely if you can get a reliable supply of good wood and somewhere dry to store it.  We had one for 30 years in this house  (3 bedrooms and a quarter of the way up Mt. Welllington so sometimes snow in winter) and it kept the place really toasty.  But since I'm now widowed and getting a bit ancient    I have replaced it with a pellet heater.  I do miss the log burner though.  

Sounds so warm and cosy! 
Are you not able to get wood delivered? Or a family member to help with getting wood?

what is a pallet heater? 

1 hour ago, Bulya said:

You couldn’t pay me to live in Qld let alone Nth Qld.  As for the high hot water bill, is there no solar hot water??

We have suffered today! Hot all day, only for 15mins of rain and a bit of rumbles, sigh! 
 

No solar on our house we live in FN department of housing 

16 minutes ago, Toots said:

Continuing with the cost of electricity in Tasmania   ............................  according to this, Tasmania is cheaper than other states.  Who to believe???

https://www.premier.tas.gov.au/site_resources_2015/additional_releases/tasmanians-get-the-lowest-electricity-prices-but-only-scare-tactics-from-labor#:~:text=The independent Tasmanian Economic Regulator,regulated electricity prices in Australia.

Because all of Tasmania's electricity is produced by hydro power station, Tasmania is now 100 per cent self-sufficient in renewable energy and is the first state in Australia to be so.

That’s great that Tas power is produced via Hydro, way to go tassie! 
 

Our bill is so high hecause hubby has 3 15min boiling hot showers everyday, to help with his muscles it’s like walking into a sauna! 
I have tried to point it out on the electricity bill to him and it falls on deaf ears, I kind don’t blame him though, I often have boiling hot baths to soak my muscles, working hard physical jobs requires it….

Yes you are correct on the Cov Vac front for those jobs, I have seen some jobs advertised, simple jobs like cafe assistant and shopkeeper require the vax, I scratch my head and think why, then I see that the job is part of a franchise or big company that requires it, I am yet to see a simple job that doesn’t ask for it.

1 hour ago, Toots said:

 

Yes, that house is round the corner from us and the owners have been trying to sell it for best offer over $1,600,000.  Obviously no takers so they are renting it out in the meantime.  The owners have moved to a smaller place.  Good, decently priced rentals are like hen's teeth.  There is a bit of building going on plus more state housing is being built so hopefully that will make a bit of a difference.

The log burners for heating are quite common here.  Mind you the cost of good firewood is quite expensive unless you go foraging for it yourself.

It’s a beautiful house! I’d buy it if I could, oh one can dream……

The market for selling is tough right now, the main buyers are investors, my 4th cousin is currently trying to sell his place in Hobart, to no avail, so he too is renting it until it sells.

With skyrocketing interest rates, housing will only get more expensive until the govt starts building more social housing, they are now stopping the NRAS here, leaving thousands facing the possibility of homelessness becuase they can no longer afford the rent payments. 
 

The price of firewood has jumped up here as well, can’t save the pennies on any angle sadly. 

3 hours ago, Skani said:

With that sort of experience I don't think he will have trouble finding employment if you are living in a rural area.   One of the problems lately in  the Tasmanian rural sector has been the difficulty in finding accommodation:  the vacancies exist but housing is the problem.  However somewhere like Latrobe/Devonport will be easier than more remote areas like Smithton.  I 've heard road transport people here on radio say that finding truck drivers is a problem  so having an HR licence is a good start.

Hospitality has a similar problem here - so many residences have been converted into Airbnb's that staff  required for hospitality can't find accommodation.  So if you can land a house for yourselves I don't think you'd have trouble finding employment.

I can empathise with the reasons for wanting to move.  I landed in Tasmania (Hobart) as a child because my English mother couldn't stand the heat and humidity of the north coast of NSW - so not even as extreme as far NQ.  Even my Australian father found the climate there - where he had grown up - difficult after several years in the UK.

We have quite a few "climate refugees" from Queensland.  A friend of ours visited a mate of his near Mole Creek (out the back of Deloraine) and said every property on the road, except his mate's, had been bought by expat Queenslanders.

Yes, Tasmanian homes have electric heating - usually called " heat pumps" here but generally known as reverse cycle air conditions - but many, especially in rural areas, have wood burners instead of/as well as.  

if push came to shove for work, hubby would drive at least an hour.

Yes, sadly housing crisis has affected all of Australia.

The problem for us, Is do these jobs require vaccination?

A lot of the jobs I’ve seen advertised require vaccination and this puts me out of work, luckily here there is a niche for unvaccinated workers. 
 

Hubby is vaccinated against Covid and I am not, due to several family members falling victim to vaccine injuries I wish to remain unvaccinated. 

I love that term “climate refugees” ill Run with that, it’s rather surprising how many Queenslanders are down there, but I don’t blame them, this is heat is disgusting 

3 hours ago, Toots said:

There used to be a Target in Devonport but it closed.  There is a large Target in Launceston and another one in Burnie  We really could do with an Aldi but Aldi doesn't exist here.  

The electricity bill is fairly low for us as we have solar panels but I know a family of 3 who just received their bill and it was $250.  They have no solar panels and we don't need air-con on the north coast.  Of course the bill rises in winter due to heating the house.  Some privately owned houses have radiators like the UK homes but very rare in rentals. At the moment a decent rental is pretty hard to find and rents aren't cheap either.  You get what you pay for.  Most rentals have a heat pump but the insulation on some of the rentals is just about useless.

2 bedroom rentals available in Latrobe just as an example.

https://www.realestate.com.au/rent/with-2-bedrooms-in-latrobe,+tas+7307/list-1

 

That electricity bill is $500 less than our bill! Our bill is constantly $750 no matter what the season.

Sadly the rental crisis affects everywhere in Australia

I do have to say though after looking at that link you sent me I’m rather mind blown as to how a unit is between 400-500$ a week! 
I thought it was expensive up here! 
 

I did like the look of this place, but it’s way out of our budget and of course not in Latrobe,  

My 4th cousin just recently moved back to Perth from Hobart and he had a combustion heater, he said that worked a dream. 

9 hours ago, Toots said:

In Devonport there is a Coles, Woolies, Kmart, Harvey Norman, Bunnings, lots of small shops, cinema, butcher, greengrocer etc.  For BigW you'd have to go to Hobart.  Don't know why there isn't one in the north.

@Toots I did a quick search on google maps to see where the big stores were located, i to was wondering why there isn’t a big w up the north, could atleast have one in Launceston.

We can survive on Kmart and if push come to shove as much as I don’t like online shopping I can always do big w online.

How have you found the electricity bill difference? We don’t have aircon so our bill is affordable at present but Tasmanian homes have heaters/radiators like UK homes do, don’t they? 

4 minutes ago, Toots said:

Latrobe is very nice.  Good school, shops, and a hospital.

@Toots Yes, it’s very similar to where we live on the Atherton tablelands, we are not fussed on city life, and are used to driving an hour to Cairns to do the big ticket shopping, but we also don’t want to live in the sticks….

Latrobe seems to tick all the boxes at current, Devonport is a 15min drive away, the only thing Devonport doesn’t seem to have is a Big w, we can make do with Kmart..

Can you please tell me what shops you have in Devonport other than what I have mentioned, I know there is a coles there, that will be our main food shop.

@Toots Thank you for the cost info, we are planning on travelling the same as you, we will drive both cars and the camper trailer in tow. 
 

We are looking at taking the majority of our small 2bdrm house with us, cats included ‍ 

Our moving budget will be 10k, hoping to put no more than 3quarters of that into shopping costs.

We are liking the looks of Latrobe, or anywhere north of there that has affordable rental houses, 

5 minutes ago, Marisawright said:

@Tjsmum, best bet would be to look for jobs first.  You can fly down for interviews.

@MarisawrightThanks for your reply 

We Wil have around 2 months worth of savings to keep us afloat until we find work, flying down for job interviews isn’t convenient for me, as I work long hours and run the household ,, I’d be seeking interviews via Skype or teams.