Moving House? How Did That Happen?

What's the collective noun for a group of estate agents? Well, whatever it is, I just had one tramping through my house.

Yes, after seven years in Karana Downs – the forgotten suburb of western Brisbane – I'm selling up and moving on. At least, I think I am. There is so much uncertainty about how much to ask, whether anyone will make an offer, whether the people I want to buy from will accept my offer, whether the timing will be right, and so on, that it seems just as likely to me that I'll still be here next year as that I'll actually sell up and move. Which could be OK because the last three times I moved house, Ivowed never to do it again.

So, if I seem a little distracted over the next few weeks, it could be because I'm juggling the 8,000 things I need to do with my obligations to you, dear Reader.

Y'know, it funny. Ten days ago I didn't know I'd be moving soon. Wifie and I have vaguely thought about it – especially since I retired and I'm no longer tied to the city for work. We've even started browsing estate agents' windows when we go travelling, to see what might be on offer wherever we happen to be. Which is how we came across a particular property while we were down south last week, popped out to have a look at it, and thought 'What the hey? Let's go live there.'

It's a nice house. Nothing fancy. But it is set 1,000 metres up in the granite hills of the New England Table Land and the views are spectacular. It also has 46 acres of unspoilt forest and is surrounded on three sides by State Forest with a gigantic fruit farm on the fourth. It's the kind of place where a man could grow old watching the sun set over the distant mountains, keep himself active walking in the forests and chopping wood for the stove, and watch the wallabies and parrots outside his office window whilst writing his blog. (That is, I'd be writing the blog, of course, the wallabies would be, well, bouncing and stuff. Honest. This is really written by me. No wallabies are involved at all, except, perhaps, in an entertainment capacity, if the buying and selling thing works out.)

Another thing about living at 1,000 m is that you get real seasons. Sometimes, it even snows up there! That'll be nice.

Meanwhile, I'm in a sort of daze. The decision to go just sort of made itself and, having kicked the machinery into action, I'm now being carried along by it from one hugely expensive activity to another – and I probably will be for the next few months, until the wheels stop spinning and I find myself sitting in a house full of boxes at the top of a granite hill, blinking at Wifie in amazement.