More - potentially - house

 We have now sold our apartment in Canberra.  There were 2 reasons for this.  In priority order:

1. We want to visit our daughter and family in Melbourne more than we have done in the past. This makes it a major drag to also fit in visiting Canberra (and if we don't go there why keep the apartment?)
2. I am so pissed off with the ACT Government.  They seem to have no realisation that there are thousands of people (4835 at the 2021 Census and I suspect a lot more now) living there.  If they do so realise they don't care about them.  While I expect this from the ALP (only concerned about keeping the CFMEU happy) and the Liberals (only concerned about the top end of town on Mugga Way etc happy) I had hoped the Greens would be better, but they are only concerned about the tram, the tram, the tram and keeping ethic minorities happy.

We have been keeping an eye on listings in Domain and realestate.com and visited Melbourne for a week to check out some areas.  The visit was good in that it removed a few areas from consideration:

• Fitzroy seemed to be rather run down.  Perhaps we would have liked it when we were 35, but 40 years later we say no thank you.
• Docklands was a mixture.  The most Northern part seemed just a bunch of rather average apartments in a set of concrete canyons: pass.   The area South of the Yarra, effectively Fishermen's Bend North, was much nicer but had no public transport on weekends and the nearest tram to the unit we inspected was 1.8 km away: pass.
• There were some very well situated buildings at Port Melbourne.  Fortunately a friend warned us about the impact of the cruise ships.  I hadn't thought about them and had assumed, from the crappy look of it, Station Pier was being demolished.  Instead it seems there is a cruise ship (with 3,000 passengers and 1,000 crew) docking nearly every day from October to March.  The agent (a very pleasant guy) tried very hard to persuade us that this wouldn't affect us, but not hard enough: pass.

We are about to head back to Melbourne, focussing on the Abbotsford/Kew area.  We have lined up 5 inspections in the first 2 days.  Probably in priority order:

1. A place on Victoria St which ticks most if not all our boxes.  Questions are: 
1. how noisy is Victoria St?
2. Why is it still on the market? (Looking at recent sales in the area - mainly in another building nearby - the price seems reasonable.  I am not sanguine about getting a complete answer to this from the agent.)
2. An East Melbourne apartment which seems to be attached to the Hyatt Hotel.  Ticks most if not all boxes, but may be small.  Other questions:
1. What is the arrangement with the Hyatt?
2. How much noise will come from hotel guests coming and going?
   
3. Two adjacent places - one large and expensive, one smaller and less expensive - in Kew.  A small development of 15 units.  The location is excellent, across the road from Yarra Bend Park.  The big question is what is public transport like?  Looks to be 500m from the nearest bus and 2km from a tram.
4. Another place on Victoria St.  Quite close to 1 and looks attractively set out: but
1. Very new - not quite "off the plan" but only just "off-"off the plan"".  
2. Our place in Canberra was still embroiled in law suits with the Public Officer of developer 10 years after the building was occupied.  An indicator of their trustworthiness will be the name of the company that has done the development: if it is something like Abbotsford Vic Street Company 47 Ltd we will be running away as that would be an indication of phoenixing on the horizon.
3. The apartment is on the first floor so noise from restaurants etc could be an issue.

Once we have done inspections, assuming we are still interested in one or more of the places, there are a few things we need to do to sort out whether a place is actually what we want before putting in an offer.  Checking the draft contract might give us a bit of an idea.  That will include the minutes of the latest Annual General Meeting of the body corporate and the House Rules: I have already seen that for the smaller place in Kew.  (I intend to ask for the minutes of the last two meetings of the Management Committee as well: for our place in Canberra there was a lot of interesting stuff in those meetings which didn't appear at the AGM.)

It seems likely that place 4 will be fixed at the quoted price.  It is a lot cheaper than others available in the development and is the only one at that price.  With the others I expect to depart from our normal practice (of offering what the owners have suggested) and going at the most at the bottom of their range.  We shall see how that works out.

If we get to the point of making an offer and having it accepted we will then pass the contract to a conveyancing company - based in Lakes Entrance who did a good job for our Mallacoota friends Steve and Kim.  They will advise us of any legal nastiness which we have not picked up.

So any way: we left Mallacoota at 0920 and zoomed off.  On stopping at the facilities in Newmerella we were astonished to find there was a queue!  Fortunately the needs were not that great!

What do you call the river at Stratford?

Interestingly, the river was apparently named first (after a river in Scotland) and then named their run Stratford.  It had a good flow on this day.

This is normally a dairy area so I have no idea what these Charolais are doing there!

I have a suspicion that this area will cease roadworks 2 days after Hell freezes over.  The 60 limit extends for some kilometres: mainly because the workers have left bollards and fencing beside the road.

Steam from - I think - the Loy Yang power station.

Old buildings in Hawthorn.  We took the scenic route avoiding the tollway!  A remarkable number of school zones along the way.

This huge Morton Bay Fig is on the banks of the Yarra.

Civic pride?  I wonder if the cameras are programmed only to fire when a pooch parks one?

The high point of Abbotsford history is the skipping girl, which has an interesting story.  Unlit...

.. and lit.