Stuck in a conflict! BUT, the house is ours!

G’day mates!

Let’s go on with our house buying adventure!
Our housesitting in Townsville ended and we had about 4 weeks to drive slowly towards the Gold Coast, where my Aunty lives, to do the house sitting for her. She was going to The Netherlands for 10 weeks and we would look after her place. Not a punishment really!! I’ll show you, but we are not there not in this story, still get it? 🤪🤪. This is our perspective ....

Anyway on the way down I wanted to do some gold digging still as that could be one of the last times, so we went to Clermont again where we also had been with Danny on the way up. You have to pass Charters Towers to get to Clermont and in stead of going there again we had our first stop at Bivouac Holiday Camp a few k's before Charters Towers. What a great spot this is!

Great Camp Kitchen....

Cheerful amenities.... 

It was just a shame that the river was so dry....

BBQ facilities at the Camp sites

Clemont;
This time the caravan park was totally packed and we were banned to the edge of the park on a grass site, didn’t matter we had a nice view...

and “nice” visitors.....

During the day, night in Holland, I had time for prospecting and after 5 o’clock (BeerO’clock) the circus started again, emailing, printing, scanning, Skyping, What’s-apping with the real estate, the “Notaris”, our financial adviser, my sister etc etc.

Yes, we have all that stuff in our caravan!

The conflict;

Then our Dutch Notary (actually named “Notaris” and is not quite the same as a Notary here) said to us that we didn’t had to go to the Netherlands to sign the contract unless we could provide a Power of Attorney (PoA), made by a Public Notary here together with an Apostille (I’ll explain later what that is). He even send us the concept PoA in Dutch with the message “ it has to be like this but in English”.

Together with my big friend “Google” I found some Public Notaries on our way to the Gold Coast and started calling. The first three Notaries said we had to provide the a PoA in Dutch, he would witness us signing it, we then get the Apostille and send it up. I told that to the Dutch “Notaris “ and he said “no it has to be in English”. For us that sounded illogical as well as the Notary here, (the one who eventually helped us) said: “I don’t have to know what’s written in that Power of Attorney, you buy the house in the Netherlands so it is logical that it’s in Dutch and that you understand what it says, I only have to witness that you sign it! We have done these things before! And I can’t make a PoA for you in English as I don’t know the rules in your country!"

Again I told that to the “Notaris” but he kept on saying “no, in English”. To make a long story short: the Notary in Rockhampton and I agreed; I send him one in English, he checks if it looks good, we make an appointment to come and sign and so we did. I just put the Dutch PoA through, again my big friend: “ Google Translate”, emailed it to the Public Notary and made an appointment.

It was only 385 k's to Rockhampton where we stayed at a very nice caravan park at the river.

On the other side of the river we could see the building of the Notary where we had the appointment next day. We gathered important paperwork and went on our way.....

My God, it was like an old English movie, we stepped about 100 years back in time when entering that office. Stacks of files where packed in the office and the whole building and little rooms were so old fashion I really had to laugh. The only modern thing what brought us back into the present was when I had to pay, that went through eftpos 😂😂.
We were so smart to have both PoA signed, the English as well as the Dutch one so nothing could go wrong.

They even offered to arrange the Apostille for us as well but then everything had to go through the mail and we were short in time as the paperwork had to be in the Netherlands at a certain date. We rather keep control and so we had to race to Brisbane to go to the DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) at the Australian Passport Offices and get the Apostille which is the legalisation of the Notary's signature, pfff.

Of course we celebrated this first important step with a nice meal at the Criterion Hotel....

We had a stop in Maryborough as is was too far to drive in one go. Maryborough an historic city on the Mary River now noted for its connections with Mary Poppins. Its a very nice place with beautiful buildings....

Helen Lyndon Goff, the famous author of the Mary Poppins books, was born in Maryborough....

We also had a good time at the Mary river at the Wharf....

Then we had a stop at the Caboolture Showgrounds and we could go by train into Brisbane as on the 6th of August we had the appointment for the Apostille, luckily we could wait for it and send it to the “Notaris” in the Netherlands straight away, express and registered. It was all in time!

On the 20th of August the transfer of our house was a fact, everything was signed, my sister was handed over the keys and the house is ours!

They are all looking after it very well till we go back and be there to take over.

We still had some time left and we could go earlier to my aunt but we had decided that it would be better to sell our little house in wheels in the time we would do the housesitting! The timing was just better as it is before the big holidays and we had the great opportunity to clean it well and unpack it.
Of course we wanted to postpone that moment and so we decided to go back up a bit to Beachmere just to relax a bit and recover from all the stress. But that's next.......

Cheers!

"Ik vertrek", mislukt?

G'day mates!


I have to apologise to my non Dutch fans to have my title in Dutch this time. It's just that I know most of  my Dutch readers will recognise the title of  above popular TV program and so they will to pay extra attention.

I will try to explain: In the Netherlands this TV program is of people who emigrate to another country, most of them stay somewhere in Europe, buy an old house, a castle or an other building which nearly collapses and preferably with a lot of land. The intention is to do it all up, mostly all by themselves, and start something like f.i. ; a caravan-park, a bed & breakfast, a hotel or something similar. The program makers follow them from the start; f.i. the resign at their work, the farewell party and the move to the destination. Then they film the progress of their project with all the ups and downs. There are always much more downs then ups but most of the time everything comes to a good end. So "vertrek" actually means "leaving" (emigration) and "mislukt" is "failed".

We left The Netherlands 10 years ago, emigrated to Australia to stay but we are going back now in a few months, has our adventure failed? Yes and No!

Yes, because we just can't stay, that's beyond our control and so going back is not voluntarily. (Luckily the program makers didn't start to follow us 10 years ago otherwise it would have been a long lasting soap series by now.)

No, because everyone who has been following my blog has seen that we had 10 great years, most of the years we have been travelling and saw this big red sunburned country from all angles.

Our preparing for the return is a roller-coaster of hassles, sad, comical, emotional, difficult but also happy periods and I'm going to try to explain what we have gone through in my next stories....
 

Lets go back for a while to the reality. We know, when Danny left from Cairns and we are leaving Cairns as well, that we most probably will never see Cairns again and that goes for the whole trip we are going to make now. First we went back to the free camp were the snake visited us a few weeks ago, to relax and prepare for the house sitting we are going to do next in Townsville.

And then the house sit, what a great spot again.

 It was more a farm stay; 2 dogs, 3 cats, chooks, 2 birds, 3 horses and a bunch of cows. I was so happy as one mother cow got a baby cow during our stay....

One of the doggies, he was following me everywhere but they weren't allowed inside so most of the day we sat on the veranda, enjoying the view and the doggies could join us.....

This house didn't have glass windows in the bedrooms, not even fly screens so you could stick your hands from the inside out to the open air, means: creepy crawlers can come inside easily as well! Luckily that didn't happen....

You know me; when there is a pool, I have to swim...

Between this house sit and the next one, which is also near Townsville but at a different side, we went back North for about 230 k's to Mission Beach as that always has been on of our favourite spots and despite that we had been there already with Danny, we wanted to go back a few more days to say good bye properly; 

Can you imagine why we love it there!

AND HERE, IN MISSION BEACH, IT ALL HAPPENED!.....

Lets go back to my introduction;

The feeling that we might have to go back once, has already been playing in our minds for a few years. Maybe you read this before but in 2008 we put our house for sale in the Netherlands, just 1 month before the crisis hit the world. Everything collapsed and most hit was the housing market.

Everything was planned for our emigration and so we just left and hoped the real estate would do a good job and sell the house. We didn't expect the crisis to be that bad and so long! Years past, we dropped the price many times but without results. After about 5 years we thought that "something" wants us to go back as why would we otherwise be so unlucky not selling the house. Still we couldn't give up yet! We kept on travelling.

We also saw that it's getting more and more expensive here in Australia and that made us decide at the end to go back. Finely we sold our house last year (after 9 years) for a bottom price, here the prices are only going up to skyrocket heights. Impossible for us to buy a house and renting is even more out of the question.

Back to Mission Beach;

While having a great time and just minding our own business, we got an email from my sister that she had seen a nice house for us in the Netherlands, close to where she and Danny lives. She proposed to have a look together with Danny, which they did. The house is exactly what we want according to them and so it starts....

In the mean time the crisis is over and the housing markets is on its return to the opposite way.
Our plan was to go back to The Netherlands mid next year but can we wait that long? Would we be so unlucky that the prices would be sky high again so we will remain empty handed; the bank took most of the money from the house we sold, there is not much left!

We might look very relaxed here but we aren't ......

There are a lot questions going through our head; 

Can we buy the house? 

Can we get a mortgage as hubby is not that young anymore and we can't get it here because of that! Do we have to go to The Netherlands for the purchase now? Or to sign for paperwork? That would be a shame as we still have some obligations here till at least February next year so it would be a quick return flight in between!

Anyway, there were, according to the real estate, a lot more people interested in that house and so we made an offer and the waiting began as more viewings were planned.

We didn't had good weather all the time....

In the mean we started to try to get answers to all above questions, emailing, skyping, whats-apping and waiting, a lot of waiting also because of the time difference.....

Finally some relieving answers came; we could get a mortgage but limited and most probably we could do all transactions from here without having to fly to The Netherlands.

And then the message came from the real estate; all people interested in the house could do one last offer, the one with the highest offer would get it!
We went a bit over the asking price and we were the lucky ones! Thanks to a guardian angel; my cousin!

Now we could relax a bit more and wait for all the things we had to do....

It was hard to leave Mission Beach (actually Wongalin Beach) and again; knowing we might never come there again.

On our next house sitting we had to deal with all sorts of contracts but besides that we also enjoyed Townsville.....

The House...

Our view from the back veranda....

Of course....

Townsville; "The Strand", a great park along the shore....

with playgrounds.....

beautiful fig tree

a big wall with houses on the top which I wouldn't dare to live....

and the Rockpool, a lovely swimming pool, next to the ocean in which you can't swim because of the Stingers and other dangerous creatures....  

There is something to do for everyone!

How tempting!

Between the trips to the city, our walks with Lillee.......

....and admiring all the beautiful things what came on our path.....

.....at night some cuddles (also with the 2 cats we looked after)....

.....we were struggling with stacks of paperwork and most of all, try to read all these contracts and try to understand them!

Printing, signing, copying, scanning etc etc filled our days but, we are coming closer though at this stage, we still didn't know if we had to fly to The Netherlands!

It was a very weird idea, buying a house we haven't seen ourselves and that we will have a home again after all these years.......

 The rest comes next time, it ain't over yet, more stress to come!

For now try to relax,

Cheers!