8) Finding a house

One evening as we were driving home from Spoon Bay we passed a house with a “To Rent” sign on it. I laughingly said to Siân “ We’ll just rent that “ Siân said “Would you like to live her Mom?” I told her that I was just joking; the house would be far too expensive for us. It looked a pretty large house, it was a double storey, and it was so close to the beach the rent would bound to be too high for us. Siân said that as rents in the Central Coast were not as high as in Sydney she thought it would be less that anything we had looked at so far and she offered to ring the agents on Monday morning to find out more about the place.

First thing Monday morning Siân got in touch with the letting agents and found out that the asking price for the house was $240 a week. $60 a week less that anything we had seen in Sydney. We made arrangements to meet with the agent, a young woman called Margaret, later in the week and she promised that she would get together a list of other rental accommodation in the area for us to inspect at the same time. Meanwhile we did a bit of research on the Central Coast and found that it was not a bad place to live so we were pretty enthusiastic when we drove through a few days later. Margaret had given us detailed instructions on how to get to her office but somehow or other we went very wrong and got pretty lost. She had told us to get onto the Wyong road and when we saw a sign that said Woy Woy we thought that must have been what she said (we were very used to misunderstanding what the Australians said to us) so we turned there. Fortunately Siân had lent us a road map so we were able, eventually, to find our way. I remember we complained all the time that the roads weren’t well marked but I suppose it had something to do with the fact that we were not reading the signs properly.

Margaret showed us three different houses. One in Archbold Rd. that was far too large for us, it had five bedrooms. The second one was in Helen Street but I can’t remember what was wrong with it but eventually she came to Spoon Bay Road and both Jonny and I liked this one best of all.

7) Going to the beach

During the Christmas holidays Jonathan and Siân took us all to the beach. We went to their favourite beach – Spoon Bay. It is about an hours drive from their house in Cowan but closer than a lot of the Sydney beaches and well worth the drive. We took the freeway and then on to the back roads so that we by passed the city of Gosford to get to the beach. After parking the car we walked a little way along a brick pathway and then down about 40 or so steps on to the beach. It was easy to see why this was their favourite beach. It is not a big beach but it is very attractive. On the north side there are some high cliffs that reach out into the sea and the waves pound ceaselessly against them. As the waves break against the rocks they are forced through a blowhole and a large spout of water shoots up into the air. Then there is a large pool rather like a spoon that I suppose gave the beach its name. South of the Spoon are many rocks that form many little pools of various sizes. The sizes and shapes of the pools change as the tide goes in or out. When the tide is very high the pools all vanish, as the rocks are completely submerged. These pool are such fun to explore, there is always something interesting to find there. Shells, fish, crabs, starfish, sea anemones, cuttlefish, sponges and many different kinds of seaweed. Claudia and Lauren particularly like these pools and make up wonderful games while they play there. Then the bay sweeps on in a large arch to Wamberal and then on to Terrigal. I remember the first time we went there Jonathan and Sian took us to Terrigal after our afternoon on the beach. We stopped at the fish and chip shop and bought our supper. We sat at the wooden tables and ate our food and jolly good it was too. Of course the seagulls came to investigate what we were eating and made it very clear that they were partial to a little bit of fish or a chip or two. Claudia and Lauren were trying to catch a gull. I asked them what they would do with it if they caught it but they were not sure. Their father had told them previously that if they caught a seagull he would give them $10 for it and so they were trying very hard. For years after that I remember them trying to earn the $10. Oh well I suppose it kept them all fit – the kids and the seagulls.

Spoon Bay from the view site

6) Looking for a house

At the beginning of January we started to look for a house to rent. We knew that we could not stay with Jonathan and Sian indefinitely. They were very kind to us and in no way made us feel unwelcome but they had their lives to live and we needed to get on with ours. Claudia and Lauren were sharing one bedroom and sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor. We were occupying the other room and had both of their beds. One of the first things we did was to buy ourselves a new bed, as we had got rid of our old one when we left South Africa. We had decided that when we bought we would buy ourselves a queen size one as our headboard was a queen sized one.It did not look that big in the store but when it was delivered I was amazed how big it was. I just about filled the whole room and I was worried that I had made a mistake with my measurements and that our headboard would not fit it.

We started scanning the local newspaper for ‘houses to rent’ and were rather shocked at the prices that were being asked. We were hoping to stay fairly near to Cowan and Berowra so that we could see as much of our family as possible but there did not seem to be a lot going for rent there. I remember one house we looked at in Asquith, a suburb about 10 kms South of Berowra. $300 a week was about the limit we were prepared to pay but when we asked the agent if they were going to fix the house before we took it they said “No”. The grass was overgrown, the garden was full of weeds, the gutters were falling down and there were broken windows. We were sure that if they were not prepared to fix it up before we moved in they certainly would not fix anything once we were in residence so we decided to forgo the pleasure of living in their little dump. They were asking $300 a week for it and it was a complete wreck. We looked at one in Hornsby, $350 but with no garage or off street parking for our vehicles. Also there was no where to store all the tools and workshop equipment that was on the high seas on it’s way to us in a shipping container. We had been told by the shipping agents that our furniture would take about two months to reach us so we worked out that it would arrive at the beginning of February. We needed to find somewhere to live so that we could store our stuff. Just buying a bed seemed to have filled Jonathan’s house to overflowing, we had no idea how we would manage with a whole household of belongings.

Another thing we had to get used to was, the way rents are always, unless otherwise stated, quoted weekly. In South Africa one always paid ones rent monthly. I think that had something to do with the fact that most people were paid monthly. Although artisans were mostly paid weekly, it had been the same when we were in Rhodesia too. I remember once going to a course on managing a household budget. We did not have much money and I thought it would be sensible to learn to use it wisely. The first thing we were told was to make up a list of all our expenses on the left side of a sheet of paper and to put our monthly wage on the right hand side. I asked the lady who was running the course “What if we are weekly paid?” She laughed at me in front of the whole class and said “No one in Rhodesia is weekly paid” I told her that my husband was an artisan and that just about all artisans were weekly paid. Also all the lower paid people, the builders, the labourers, gardeners, maids and the like were weekly paid and surely they were the people who most needed to learn how to manage a household budget. She said she had never heard of such a thing and brushed it off as if I was stupid but I knew I was right. I am afraid that it meant a very poor start to the course as after that I did not believe any thing she said and only continued with the course because I had paid my money and wanted to see if there was anything she could teach me. I learnt that if you have the cheek to set yourself up as an expert on anything and presume to teach others about it you will not have to worry too much about keeping to a budget.

I digress though, back to the house hunting. We did have some offers of furnished accommodation but as we were sure that our furniture would arrive soon and if we had no where to store it we would have to pay to put it into storage besides paying our rent we decided against doing this. Storage would not have been a problem though (except for the financial aspect). Here in Australia there are many companies that have a few rows of garages that they hire out to people who do not have enough space to store their goods. People store all sorts of things in them, furniture, boats, caravans and just general household belongings. A very useful service if one has need of it. I have never seen this kind of Storage Company in South Africa.

Rental properties in Australia all have a stove and curtains so it does mean that we would not have to lay out any money on these items. It is normal to expect to pay the equivalent of four weeks rent as a deposit that is held in a special fund against any damage that the tenant might do to the property during their stay. This deposit is returned – minus charges for damage – when one moves out of the property. I do not remember this system in South Africa but maybe it was just because we had not rented there for many years.

5) Things to Learn

One of the things we had to do when we came to Australia was to learn to speak Australian. Yes, I know it is still English but they speak it so differently. First of all they have different words for so many things. The vehicle that would be called a van in England became a bakkie when I moved to Africa and now it has changed once again to a ute. A current account is a cheque account, a bottle store is a bottle shop (English Off-licence), flip-flops are thongs, (open sandals) bathing costumes are called swimmers, a braai is a barbie (a barbeque). A smoke break is a smoko and a day’s sick leave is a sickie. No one here takes a day’s sick leave they “chuck a sickie”. A chicken is a chook, a sausage is a snag, candyfloss is fairy floss and all sweets are lollies. A working man could either be a Postie – a postman, or a Journo – a Journalist, or maybe a Fisho – a fishmonger. If you put your nose into someone else’s business you are a stickybeak and if you tell porkys you are untruthful. If you are lazy you are a bludger and if your business in not completely above board, it could be classed as shonky. If you are happy-go-lucky and a bit of a dare devil you could be a larrikin and you would be pretty stoked – pleased with life. As a child in England every year at Christmas time we had Tangerines, then I went to Africa and the same fruit became Nartjies. Now once again they have changed their name as in Australia they are called Mandarins. I assure this is fair dinkum – true.

In many cases they pronounce English in a more logical way than the English people do. ‘Berkleyvale’ is said ‘Berkleyevale’ not ‘Barkleyvale’ as an Englishman would say so I am learning to say things in the Australian way so that they will understand me. There is one word I will not give in on though “maroon”. I have spent the last six years trying to re-educate the average Australian that ‘maroon’ is maroon not ‘marone’. I tell them that they would not call our lunar satellite the ‘mone’ but the ‘moon’. They are prepared to accept that Robinson Crusoe was not ‘maroned’ he was marooned but they will not budge over the colour. You might think that this word would not often come up in everyday conversations so it can hardly be an issue but you would be wrong. Every year the rugby league holds a competition between the New South Wales team and the Queensland team. The competition is called “State of Origin” and the best of three games is the winner. The New South Wales Team wear blue uniforms and are called the ‘Blues’, the Queensland team wear ‘maroon’ uniforms and are called the ‘Marones’. I spend the few weeks of the competition blocking my ears and pulling out my hair. 

Accents are rather amazing things; why on earth do so many of the people who live in this part but the world talk in such a strange way. Also Australians talk too fast. Or as one man once said to Jonny “I will talk slowly, because I know you can only listen slowly”. When we first arrived we were introduced to EFTPOS. EFTPOS is an Australian and New Zealand system that enables you to draw cash from any shop. Maybe this is available in South Africa now but when we left it was not and I am sure the equivalent is available in the rest of the modern world. It was a wonderful convenience to be able to use my bankcard not only in the ATM machine but also in most shops too. It was great not to have to carry much cash with us but also not to have to worry about being embarrassed that we did not have enough money on us when we got to the cash desk. For a little while we did not understand when the check out girls asked us, “duwancashowt?” It was only when we were told that money could be drawn from the supermarket check outs that we realised that what they were saying was “Do you want any cash out?” We did have so much to learn.

4) Christmas Down Under

Christmas 2002

To be able to celebrate Christmas with our family all together again was a wonderful blessing. We woke early and shared the excitement of the girls as they unpacked their stockings and saw what Father Christmas had brought them. I don’t suppose that part of Christmas changes much no matter what part of the world one is in. Later on we went to church with Dominic at the Baptist church in Berowra. The minister there is Bil Ghali and on that morning Bil enacted the story of Christmas from the point of view of the Inn Keeper.

Bil is of Egyptian parentage ( hence his name is Bil and not Bill). With a little extra padding and a false beard he really looked the part. He told us how good he was to the young couple who had come to his inn and had nowhere to stay and how he had ‘out of the goodness of his heart’ given them a place to stay, how he had not charged them as much as he could have for a place in his stable. He told that the baby had been born in the night and how the shepherds had come to visit the little family and how he in his wisdom had realised that there was something very different about this child. If Bil had not been a minister he should have been an actor or scriptwriter but the stage’s loss is surely the church’s gain.

I have lived in the southern hemisphere for many years so am used to having Christmas in the middle of summer. In Africa people had tried to pretend that it was just the same as a northern Christmas and mostly ate a cooked hot meal of turkey, ham steamed puddings and all the trimmings. In Australia they tend to move a little away form the European traditions and much more seafood is served at Christmas. Prawns have become an Australian Christmas tradition and they are sometimes cooked on the barbie (barbeque). A traditional feature of an Australian Christmas eve is the long queue of customers waiting for service at the fish shops and in the fish markets. Quite a lot of people like to have their Christmas barbie on the beach but they are in the minority, most people get together in their homes with their families and enjoy a good meal.

Christmas is a very popular time for people in Australia to take their holidays. The children have a fairly long break and by adding the public holidays to any leave due to them most people can usually increase their holiday by about three or four days. Hotels and caravan parks are heavily booked and there is a great deal of traffic on the roads. Because of this Christmas stretches into mid January and it takes all that time for people to recover from the “Silly season”

Like many other countries, after Christmas the shops have huge sales, where clothes, toys, electrical appliances, furniture and all sorts of consumer goods are reduced to tempt the poor public to part with the few dollars that they have left on their credit cards. Only the other day Jonny commented that each year before Christmas “THEY” say that that this year they are expecting lower than usual Christmas sales but come January it is reported that if fact it was a bumper season and more money was spent than ever before. He has noticed this phenomenon for many years now. Maybe the retail trade thinks that if they tell us how little they are going to make we will all rush out and get ourselves further into debt to make them happy. It seems to be working doesn’t it?