Jeff Update

Ok, well the update on Jeff is that there are no updates

It’s been over two weeks now since we last saw him and we’re now starting to get used to the fact that the last time we saw him really will be just that!

Junior is gutted and to be honest, we’re all pretty down about the whole thing.

Loosing a pet is always going to be a difficult time however literally loosing a pet is turning out to be even worse.

At least if Jeff had past away and we knew about it then we could do something about it and then move on.

The concept of Jeff just disappearing is a pretty difficult one to grasp for a five year old and is an even more difficult thing for a mum or dad to explain.

At the moment, Jeff has gone away on ‘holiday’, there will be a time when we’ll have to think of something a little more creative but the holiday thing is holding up pretty well so far.

In a way the last year and a bit in Australia for Jeff has been a massive holiday and I’m still glad that we brought him.

Back in west Yorkshire in the UK, Jeff was found as a kitten inside a plastic bag on a rubbish dump.

My sister got him from the local RSPCA shelter where he enjoyed the first three to four years of his life until she got a dog which didn’t get on that well with Cats.

So, it was time for the missus and I to adopt Jeff and bring him home to our place where he was introduced to Charlie (our other cat) and the wonders of outdoor living. (Jeff was an indoor cat at my sister’s place as she lived in an apartment at the time).

Jeff always enjoyed the sunshine and we never doubted that he’d love Australia and we were right.

There were times when he got a little to warm and had to come back inside or find a shady spot to cool off but all in all Jeff loved the sunshine here.

Jeff lying on our lawn or by the pool, his eyes half open, half shut in pure contentment will be our lasting memory. If he is on ‘holiday’ then I hope he’s having a damn good time!

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Australian Real Estate Market - So Whats Happening?

It’s been a whilst since I wrote about the Australian Real Estate Market so I thought I’d write an entry to give an update on whats going on from a housing perspective in this great land of ours.

In Perth the rising interest rates and an exodus of investors has trebled the number of houses on the market.

Figures released by the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia (REIWA) show a dramatic increase in number of properties for sale.

The Institute says that the number of properties for sale has climbed from 4-thousand 8-hundred two years ago to almost 17-thousand today.

The President Robb Druitt says some investors are pulling out because it is no longer as profitable to invest in Western Australia and having seen the slow down in the rate by which houses are increasing over here I can certainly validate this point.

Houses are still selling though. On our street alone it doesn’t seem to be too long before the ‘For Sale’ sign outside of peoples houses is quickly replaced with a SOLD sign.

House prices appear to be stabalising at the moment to but this still means that by ‘old Aussie standards’ houses are still a lot more expensive then they were 3 - 5 years ago.

Having said that, it looks like house prices could continue to rise even higher with some Analysts predicting that Housing prices across Australia could rise by a further 40 percent!

Economic forecaster BIS Shrapnel says the housing affordability crisis will only get worse as demand for housing continues to outstrip supply but surprisingly the relatively high interest rates here in Australia could influence this.

Our forecast is for anywhere between 25 and 40 per cent across most of the capital cities… The environment will still stay tough for the next 12 to 18 months because of rising interest rates. But as the interest rate situation stabilises we expect a lot of those pent-up demand pressures to be released onto the market in terms of rising price growth.

Apparently at least 30,000 more homes need to be built each year to keep up with the demand for housing, especially with overseas migration at record highs. Unfortunately the actual number of new houses being built falls well short of this figure.

The lack of land seems to be a pretty large influencing factor here, after all theres no point building 30,000 new houses a year if there is no where to put them and this is starting to have a further knock on effect on housing affordability, especially with first time buyers!

An Article in the Sydney Morning Herald indicates that the average first-home buyer can only afford one in four Sydney properties.

Heading back to Perth again, the average first-home buyer can afford to buy only one in 10 properties!

In summary I think it’s fair to say that the property market here in Australia is a little ‘vexed’ .

I know there are still some great buys in Adelaide. Melbourne also offers opportunities to pick up a nice house at a price which by UK standards is bit of a bargain.

The problem starts if you don’t want to live there.

On the bright side, if your a builder, bricklayer, electrician or someone holding a skill which would be well utilised within the building industry then don’t worry. It looks like you’ll have plenty of work to keep you busy for a very long time

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Where’s Jeff?

Our regular readers will know that as well as dragging the missus, junior and I out to Australia, we also decided to bring our two cats; Charlie and Jeff to Australia to

Many people find the thought of spending literally thousands of £’s on moving two cats abroad a concept that’s difficult to grasp!

I don’t share this view though. At the end of the day they were part of our family (although a bloody big selfish sulky I want my own way part) and I also think that as a responsible pet owner it’s only right that we brought them with us instead of dumping them on another family member who had neither the time or inclination to look after two cats.

So nearly 15 months later, the older of the cats; Jeff has gone missing. No idea where either, the last time we saw him was Monday evening.

We always bring the cats in at night as it’s during this time they represent the greatest risk to Australia’s native wildlife. There’s also the chance that during this time they’re more likely to get into scraps with the rougher ‘outdoor’ cats.

On the rare occasion they don’t come in they’ll always be sat by the patio door first thing in the morning, meowing their displeasure at the fact they had to sleep during the night on this strange foreign object called the floor!

So, Jeff’s been outside for 2 nights now. We’ve had a look around the local streets and can’t find any signs of Jeff as a ‘road traffic victim’ so the only thing we can surmise is the fact that he might be locked in a garage or a garden shed somewhere.

If he doesn’t come home today then we’ll probably need to do a letter drop down the street tonight asking residents to check their garages! This in turn will probably add another day as peoples letter boxes here in Australia or normally located at the bottom of their driveway so seeing a letter on their front doormat before turning in for the night probably won’t happen.

To be honest, we are getting a little worried. He’ll be fine without food for about a week or so but will need water pretty soon if he is locked in somewhere!

He’s also getting on a bit and last time he was at the vets we were told he had a slight heart murmur.

Hopefully, if he is roaming the streets, his collar and the fact that we had to have him micro chipped as part of the process to move him out here will help him find his way home!

Here’s hoping anyway

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300 Posts - Bloody Hell

I forget sometimes that I’ve been updating Getting Down Under since January 2006 and it’s good to see that the site has developed during this time.

So I’m sat here this morning just messing about with a few things on the site and whilst doing so I checked out the ‘dashboard’.

The Dashboard gives me a number of snippets of interesting info but amongst other things it details my Blog Stats: Read more

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Gardening in Australia

I’ve always enjoyed gardening. Back in the UK I’d spend many a happy hour in the small garden at the back of our house and after living there for about 7 years we were getting the garden just as we liked it.

Gardening in Australia was a completely foreign thing for me though and moving to Australia brought with it the opportunity to start from scratch with a new gardening project.

Thankfully, although our house is 4 years old the garden was still very much a blank canvass so I was really looking forward to getting my hands dirty!

It wasn’t going to be that straight forward though. A quick trip down to Bunnings showed me that the plants you pick up here in Australia are a little different to those that you’d find at your local B&Q in West Yorkshire.

Sure, you’ll see plants that you’ll recognise from ‘back home’ but you really could go crazy choosing some of the many exotic variety’s available.

As an example. Fruit bearing plants. Sure you’ll find your apple trees and your pear trees but here in Australia you’ll also find Lemon trees, lime trees, Kiwi Fruit plants, passion fruit, grape vines, the list goes on!

The stuff you stick your plants into appears a little different over here to. Doing a little research it appears there are many soil types here in Australia, but the two extremes appear to be clay and sand.

I’m familiar with the sticky, easily waterlogged and compacted clay which sets like stone when it dries out. Here in Perth however (especially near the coast) we have sand and lots of it!

Sure, it’s free draining, but it can’t hold moisture or nutrients. So I needed to do some work to improve the structure so I had something half decent for growing plants.

‘Some work’ involved our back garden smelling like a farm yard as I mixed in bag upon bag of ’soil improver’ (aka cow poo) which was great for the flies but not so great for alfresco dining.

Then I had to add a few bags of soil wetter (to help retain the moisture) and buy a couple of hundred weight in Mulch to add to the top of the soil once the plants had been put in.

The scary thing was, even after adding what felt like tons of soil improver, the soil still looked like something you’d find in a child’s sandpit (Click the thumbnail above and you’ll get the idea). It obviously it didn’t smell that way though.

Our Garden here is a little bit bigger then the garden back inthe UK and the flower bed I’ve put in stretches along for about about 40 meters.

This meant a fair few trips to Bunnings but $1000 later I’d managed to collect together a nice collection of shrubs. I went for plants that will look nice and grow quick so a collection consisting of Hibiscus, Bougainvillea, Yuccas and a few other flowering variety’s seemed to do the trick.

I also picked up an Orange, a Lemon and a lime tree (for future Gin and Tonics!) and a really beautiful flowering Magnolia tree which holds pride of place in the corner of our garden.

Once all the shrubs were planted (about 30 in total) it was then time to pop back to Bunnings to buy even more plants to fill the gaps.

This time around though it was time to go for a few more recognisable flowering variety’s such as Geraniums and Iris’s. I also bought a few plants which I’ve never hear of before so goodness knows how they’ll go but hey, thats how you learn right?

Once all the plants were in it was time for the Mulch. Not only will this keep the roots cool (which is a good thing apparently) it’ll help cut down on weeds and retain some of the millions of gallons of valuable water I’ll likely be pumping into the garden in the years to come.

Back in the UK I’d say that I had pretty green fingers. Over here though it’s a completely different experience and it’ll be interesting to see how things grow (or not) in the months and years to come,

I’ll obviously keep you guys posted on how the garden grows so keep your eyes open for future blog entries. I Can’t wait for our first lemon!

Useful Resources : http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/

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