- Strong, secure roof (an unfounded residual concern leftover from Rarotonga where some houses had there roofs held on with ropes over the top of the house secured as you would a tent!)
- 2 good sized bedrooms, the main with ensuite
- Study
- Decent sized living area
- Water-hole or bore-hole (remember the drought – how else will we water the veggies). Water-holes are quite common on rural properties here, but not all of them now have water
- Workshop with power for J’s woodworkCar port/garage
We also thought we should consider exposure to the elements. Tasmania is renowned for the wind, called the ‘Roaring 40s’ that blows in Sept/Oct. The channel, or western shores, where we would like to live are also very hilly and some houses don’t get any sun at all in the winter and we don’t want that. So we have now looked 4 houses in the following order:
189 Watsons Road, Kettering
Watsons Road is the most beautiful and picturesque road we have seen and we would love to buy a house on it. The view from the house and the outside of the house are beautiful, but inside the house is a mish mash of rooms around a central staircase. We’ve seen this house 3 times and discussed buying it, but the layout of the house was too much of a compromise. If they’ll just drop the price by $200K and we can knock it down and build the house we really we want!
We took this decision after I took Rowan the builder to look at the house, but more of Rowan later….
Presenting a house for sale is not a concept many Tasmanians grasp. This is the ‘craft room’!!!! The House Doctor would have had a field day!
40 Old Bernies Road, Margate
Beautifully renovated, but small. The owners are moving interstate and we could have had the 3 sheep and 4 chickens at no extra cost. OK, this almost swayed me!!!!
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=105191327&f=0&p=10&t=res&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&c=6017626&s=tas&snf=ras-hob&tm=1225243615
Manuka Road, Kettering
We both really liked the potential this house has. It’s on 5 acres and although there are other houses around it’s completely private and it has a view of the ocean! But it’s in a rain shadow which means that the ground is already dry and we both believe the drought will get worse over time. Add to this that all the properties we are looking at are not on town water which means that all the water you use is rain water that you collect in tanks. So you see being in rain shadow is not a good idea. If it hadn’t been I would have bought this property – I think we could have been really happy here.
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=105120880&f=0&p=10&t=res&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&c=34069298&s=tas&snf=ras-hob&tm=1225243242
48 Jamiesons Road, Margate
Really above our budget, but this is definitely a buyers market. The view was absolutely amazing, the house was dated, but just needed a little TLC. BUT you could hear the road noise from the road below. This is the main road for this area and is well used and we didn’t move to Australia to live on a main road so this one strikes out.
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=105260872&f=0&p=10&t=res&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&c=6017626&s=tas&snf=ras-hob&tm=1225243615
Bob the builder
(OK, he’s name’s actually Rowan, but Bob sounds better!!!)
I met Rowan at the Watsons Road house and after our discussion J and I decided not to put in an offer. Rowan builds houses and took me to 2 of the houses he has built and they’re amazing. They’re eco homes – properly insulated (some houses aren’t insulated at all), double glazed (really rare here), solar hot water heating, the sewerage system (yep – no town water, no town sewerage) works in a way that means you can water the garden with the output, which is amazing. The houses are completely solar passive, so you don’t really need heating or air conditioning at all. Of course they are more expensive to build, but really cheap to run. Sooooo, on Saturday I took J to meet Rowan and to see one of his houses and he’s hooked and although we are still interested in looking at houses our discussions lean towards when we build rather than when we buy. So I’ve been looking at plots and here are is our top choice, I’ll take Rowan to see what he thinks:
159 Woodbridge Hill Road
1.75 acres of slightly sloping block with an amazing sea view. The only problem is there is electric power lines to the house behind that dissect the plot, but after speaking to the owner they are moving the power lines and this would be included in the contract of sale.
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=2539780&f=0&p=10&t=lan&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&c=92070420&s=tas&snf=ras-hob&tm=1225241730
By the way it’s easy to tell here where a house or plot of land is on a road. If it’s on the right hand side it will have an even number and on the left it will have an odd number. The number itself denotes how far up the road it is, so 159 is on the left 1.59km up the road – simple!
To give you an idea of what we might build (only smaller!), here’s a house Rowan has built that is for sale.
God, I love this kitchen. Less of an island unit, more of a continent!!!
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=104934613&f=0&p=10&t=res&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&c=80944519&s=tas&snf=ras-hob&tm=1225244681
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