Our Furniture Made It to Brisbane. Our House Sale Didn't.

While we were busy learning the finer points of off-grid living at Narangba, there was another fairly major part of our lives unfolding about 1,700 kilometres away.

Our house in Melbourne was supposed to be selling.

I say supposed to be because our buyer was having a few issues.

Mostly involving money.

Specifically, getting enough of it from the bank to actually buy our house.

By this stage, we'd already agreed to give them more time to sort out their finance.

Then they needed more time.

So we agreed again.

Then came another request.

Three extensions.

Each time, we agreed.

Partly because we wanted to be reasonable.

But mostly because we really, really wanted the bloody house to sell.

We had plans.

Remember those?

😂

We were moving to Brisbane

Despite everything that had happened since leaving Victoria, that was still the plan.

We hadn't left Melbourne intending to travel around Australia indefinitely.

Col's new job had brought us to Brisbane.

Our Melbourne house would sell.

We'd buy a house in Brisbane.

Our furniture would come up.

We'd move in.

Life would settle down.

Simple.

In fact, we'd already found a house in Brisbane that we liked.

We put in an offer, subject to the sale of our Melbourne house.

It was accepted.

For a brief and beautiful moment, everything appeared to be falling into place.

Melbourne house sold.

Brisbane house bought.

Furniture moved north.

Done.

Honestly, you'd think by now we'd have learnt.

Time to move our life north

Most of our belongings were still sitting back in our house in Melbourne.

Beds.

Furniture.

Boxes.

Basically our entire life, minus whatever we'd managed to squeeze into Loki.

With settlement approaching, it was time to bring everything north.

I organised the removalists to collect it all from Melbourne and bring it to Brisbane, where it would go into storage until we could move into the new house.

We weren't there to supervise the Melbourne end, but thankfully our wonderful mate Platty was.

Platty made sure everything was loaded and that the whole operation went smoothly.

The truck left Melbourne.

And just like that, the contents of our house started travelling north without us.

It felt like a pretty big moment.

After months of living in Loki, house sitting, moving around and waiting for everything to fall into place, our belongings were finally coming to Brisbane.

This was actually happening.

The furniture arrived.

It went into storage.

One more enormous job ticked off the list.

All we needed now was for the Melbourne house to settle.

You already know where this is going, don't you?

The buyer didn't get finance

Yep.

After all the conditions.

After all the waiting.

After three extensions.

After we'd found a house in Brisbane.

After we'd arranged removalists.

After Platty had overseen everything at the Melbourne end.

After the entire contents of our house had travelled roughly 1,700 kilometres north and landed safely in storage...

the buyer couldn't get finance.

The sale fell over.

Our furniture had successfully moved to Brisbane.

Our house sale hadn't.

😂

For fuck's sake.

So there we were.

We still owned a house in Melbourne.

Our belongings were sitting in storage in Brisbane.

We were living in Loki in Queensland.

And because our purchase of the Brisbane house was subject to the sale of the Melbourne one...

that fell over too.

Brilliant.

We had somehow managed to move the entire contents of our house interstate without actually moving house.

Even by our standards, this was impressive.

Fine. We'll sell it again.

There wasn't much else we could do.

The Melbourne house went back on the market.

Again.

This time, we decided we'd try taking it to auction.

Maybe that would finally get the job done.

It didn't.

Nothing.

By now the market wasn't exactly doing us any favours either.

The whole process had been dragging on for months and we were getting tired of having our lives dictated by a house sitting empty in Melbourne.

We'd left Victoria on 1 February thinking the sale would happen and we'd simply move on with the next stage of our lives.

Instead, we were still waiting.

Except now our furniture was waiting in Brisbane too.

Eventually, we decided we'd had enough.

We'd rent the bloody house out.

At least then it would be doing something.

We could get tenants in, receive some rent and stop putting everything else on hold while we waited for the perfect buyer to magically appear.

So we started getting things organised to put the house on the rental market.

It wasn't what we'd originally planned.

But honestly, by this stage, who was surprised?

Plan A had gone.

Plan B hadn't exactly covered itself in glory.

So...

Plan C: become landlords.

Fine.

We could do that.

We started getting everything sorted.

And then...

just as we'd finally accepted that the house wasn't going to sell...

another offer came in.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

😂