"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!