Well, if you read my last post dated 19 March, you will know I mentioned that a move to Tasmania was coming up. Although we hadn’t planned to move to Tasmania so soon (we were going to leave it for a 2 or 3 years before moving down), I decided to move so that I could receive the $7,000 first home owner grant and the $4,000 stamp duty rebate. The deal with receiving the first home owners grant is that you have to move into the purchased property within 12 months of settlement and live in it for a continuous period of 6 months. Our settlement took place on 30 June 2008, so after 30 June 2009, the first homeowner grant and stamp duty rebate would not be available to me if I had not moved into the house.

I really wanted to get the first home owner grant and stamp duty rebate so I decided to find a job in Tasmania and move down here for the required 6 months. After jetting down to Tasmania for a round of interviews one day, I managed to get 3 offers of employment. I chose to take a job which involves typing court transcripts. Luckily for me, my boss at my job in Sydney offered me a 6 month leave of absence, and said that if it doesn’t work out in Tasmania and I decide to go back to Sydney, they will leave my old job open for me. I grabbed at the offer, as it was a great fall back if it fails down here.

I then set about purchasing a 6 x 9 foot trailer and filled it with 3 months’ worth of business stock, our washing machine and our clothes dryer, plus my clothes and my computer, and set off driving from Sydney down to Melbourne and then from Melbourne onto the Spirit of Tasmania ferry, across Bass Strait and into the port of Devonport at the top of Tasmania. We then drove from the top of Tasmania to our house south of Hobart in the Huon Valley. We traveled approximately 1,588 km 3 days. Tim came down with me for the drive and to help me settle in for the first week. Unfortunately he just wasn’t able to stay with me and live in Tasmania as he decided to stay in Sydney and keep working until August when he would be eligible to get a transfer with Australia Post down to Tasmania.

Prior to leaving Sydney, it just so happened that one of Tim’s friends had to move from a house to an apartment and, as a result, wasn’t able to keep his 2 year old American staffy named Smokey. Sure enough, I was going to need some company while I was down in Tasmania by myself for 4 months and we have a good sized block of land, so we agreed to be Smokey’s new owners. We arranged for Smokey to be flown from Sydney to Hobart and two days after we arrived at our house after the long drive from Sydney, we collected Smokey from the airport.

Since arriving in Tasmania, things have gone well enough. The first few weeks of being here was particularly hard, with starting a new job, looking after Smokey and looking after myself. It has been hard – much harder than I thought – living here by myself with Tim in Sydney so far away. To my dismay, I soon discovered that we have some bogan neighbours who enjoy having drunken parties every weekend. One night I had to call 000 because they were fighting and throwing bottles, swearing, yelling, screaming and threatening each other. As a result of these parties, I dreaded the weekends and every now and then I booked poor Smokey into the local kennels and flew to Sydney to be with Tim for the weekend and to get a good night’s sleep.

The new job typing the court transcripts basically requires a complete re-learning of everything that I have ever learned working in law firms for my entire working life. Things like capitalisation of “Court”, “Subpoena”, “Affidavit”, “Exhibit” – things that come naturally to me – is not the right way at the new place I am working at. Unfortunately, I keep making the same stupid mistakes and I am finding it extremely difficult to do things the right way. I feel like I’ve been institutionalised for the last 6 years and I now have to re-wire my brain for this new job.

The new job, though, was nothing compared to looking after Smokey by myself. I had never previously owned a dog before, not even when I was a kid, and I found it to be a huge responsibility (almost a burden) – I felt like I suddenly had a baby that was dependent on me. I was pedantic about making sure he had fresh water and a bowl of biscuits before I went to work. Smokey is after all Tim’s dog as well, and if anything happened to Smokey it would be my fault. After Tim went back to Sydney after that first week he was here with me, Smokey sort of represented Tim in a funny way. During that first week that we arrived in Tasmania (while Tim was here helping me settle in), Smokey had jumped over the fence three times. Poor Smokey has had a hard life so far, and he is not yet even 2 years old. He was placed at the dog’s home after his first owners couldn’t keep him. He spent 3 or 4 months at the dog’s home before Tim’s friend took ownership of him. Then Tim’s friend only had him for 4 months before he ended up with us in a completely different environment than what he is used to. Smokey is a classic city dog and had never seen horses, cows, possums or chickens before. Next door is a paddock with a few horses in it and unfortunately our fence was just not high enough and the distraction of the horses proved too much for him. As a result of his constant escaping, I had to get a new (higher) fence put in at a cost of close to $7,000. Fortunately, the money has been worth it as Smokey hasn’t even tried to escape since the fence went up

Tim found out soon after returning to Sydney after that first week he was here with me that the prospects of getting a transfer with his job at Australia Post are pretty slim. It seems that the postie jobs in here in Tasmania are very tightly held. It’s very rare that someone leaves Australia Post in Tasmania, unless they retire. And even then there are 10 posties already in the queue waiting for transfers from Sydney. So Tim’s chances of getting a transfer were promptly flushed down the toilet. After a couple of months of separation, he decided to quit his job and move down here with me, which of course was a massive relief for me, especially considering the rawkus neighbours partying every weekend. Tim has now been here for 3.5 weeks and I feel so at home and I can sleep more peacefully at night now. All we need now is for Tim to get a job. He has applied for 3 or 4 jobs (all different kinds of jobs from cleaning to electricity meter reading) and hasn’t heard back from any of them just yet. Everyone we talk to seems pretty confident that there will be something for him.