Thursday, August 7, 2008

Life At Virginia

Hi All
We had settled in reasonably quickly at Mum and Dean's rental house in Virginia, for those of you who don't know Virginia is a Suburb of Adelaide South Australia. We had decided only to unpack the necessities as we knew this was only a temporary arrangement and we would be renting a place of our own soon enough. We just needed to decide where.

The girls having a bath in the UGLY purple bath in the Virginia house.

The girls on the "LOVELY" carpet that almost cause a break down trying to keep it clean


I am not sure if I mentioned this in a previous post however the day before we left we realised there had been a mix up in communication on Tony's part and he didn't in fact have the job at the wind farm. As far as the site boss knew he was coming down to look around and to see if it was what he wanted to do and they were going to basically have a job interview. I will warn you all that this is what happens when you deal with more than one person. We decided it didn't matter we had already given our resignation and packed up and said our goodbyes, so if the wind farm job did in fact fall through, which we were quietly confident that it wouldn't he would find something else. Tony called when we arrived and organised for his interview and all went very well. He started work about 3 weeks after we arrived.

So please consider this, we had just travelled 2800+K's for this job, spent up to and above $3000 to get here and keep our heads a float before his first pay check only to find out that the company he would be working for payed monthly and were 2 weeks behind in their rotation so it was going to be 6 weeks before we were paid. Oh My God what were we going to do?

I usually get my Centre link payment withheld throughout the year and get them in one lump sum once we have done our tax return. I do this because at the farm Tony was getting paid by the hour and it was very hard to estimate how much he would earn. Crops, rain, harvesting and watering affected everything. If they had rain he didn't have to water so less hours less pay. If they had good enough prolonged rain they couldn't harvest and bail. You get the idea, very unpredictable and I didn't want to get into a situation where I owed Centre link money as this would have made things even harder. So at the end of the financial year 06'/07' when we got a lump sum, I paid off the rest of the car. Anyway back to the original story I called Centre link and asked them if I could please receive my payments for the next 6 weeks. I do not know what we would have done without this money or money loaned to us from Mum and Dean. Tony also asked for a weeks advance after he had been working there for 3 weeks so that helped too. Mum and Dean were also letting us stay in there house rent free so that also made a HUGE difference.

Mum and Dean had moved the van to Port Broughton and were staying there as they were both working on the wind farm. Dean is a crane operator and Mum worked in the smoko van. So Port Broughton was there home away from home. Tony was housed in Clare so he was also closer to the job site in Snowtown and the girls and I were in the house at Virginia by ourselves. The house looked very nice, however it had white carpet so you could imagine the drama's I faced with two toddlers trying to keep that clean. It was also very, very cold at night and very noisy it was located on a reasonably busy road and I don't think it had insulation. Every time a car drove passed it sounded like it was in the house. I would take the girls down to the local shopping centre everyday just for something to do and Mickalee would say Hi to everyone and it amazed me how many people ignored her. She is two! What is she going to do Steal your purse? I don't think so!! Needless to say I HATED IT!!

Mum and Deans lease was due to run out at the beginning of June so we started looking for another house to move into. We considered where all the up coming jobs were going to be and decided Jamestown was reasonably central to all of them and by moving here I was guaranteed to be one place for longer than 6 months. We looked around all the rental websites and organised to view a few that let us have pets outside. One house had wooden floor boards and as soon as the girls heard their stomps echo I couldn't stop them so I had to say no, then the other had a yard but it wasn't fenced really well and was on a corner block with 2 reasonably bust streets surrounding it and I saw it as a danger. Mum and Dean had stayed in the van park in Jamestown for a few months while Dean was working at Hallet and made some friends. One day while mum was visiting one of the ladies told her about a private rental. So we called the number viewed the house and I fell in love. It was perfect.

The house was a cream demountable with four bedrooms, new kitchen and very tidy bathroom, loo and laundry. It has carpet throughout but it a burnt colour older style short shag so very easy to keep clean. I loved the black lino in the kitchen and dining area, and I knew Tony would love the fact It has a HUGE shed. There is no lawns to mow, only 2 garden beds with roses, and a nice mini oasis with ferns and a fish pond. We had found our new home in a nice small country town. I was happy.

Goodbye Virginia!!! I will not miss you!!
Bye for now and Happy Blogging.
Bec

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