nikkiwd

My kids sometimes go to the YMCA out of school hours care at her school. they do before and after school care and vacation care too which they love as they go on excursions which are included in the price. The daily fee for vacation care there is $60 ish per child but centrelink covers some of the cost.

I know its not quite the same as we bought an established home but the stamp duty discount was linked to us being approved for the first home owners grant, in fact our settlement was delayed by a couple of days due to the lazy folks down the finance department not giving us the approval in time, therefore we would have had to pay the full rate of stamp duty on settlement if we hadn't have been able to delay until the approval came through.

VS my hubby spoke to the local surf club about using their kitchen on an 'as and when' kind of basis and they agreed so he now stores all his stuff down there for cheap rent then just pays a day rate whenever he needs to go down to cook. Its great while he is still trying to get business going without the massive overheads.

The brumbys near me closed down too but there are 3 bakers delight shops within a 10 minute radius and all are busy. Food vans are expensive to buy kit out and the red tape you have to get around from the council is a bit of a nightmare as hubby was looking at this last year, he was thinking of selling proper Cornish pasties (he is cornish and a chef so is pretty good at them) but gave up.

I know, its been a while @Walkabout. We are staying in Kingsley but struggled to find anything other than duplexes in our price range near Eloise's school so we have gone over to Moolanda. She will stay at her school though. I bet you are fed up with DIY by now?

Congrats, sounds like things are falling into place for you. We live in Kingsley and are just in process of buying as we love it here. There seem to be a lot more rentals here at the moment and they are a lot cheaper than when we arrived last year. A nice house we were interested in buying a couple of months ago was sold and just came up for rent this week at $440pw which is $60pw cheaper than what we have been paying!

We have just bought ourselves a do-er up-er on a pretty big block, got a decent amount of money off the original asking price and as the agent said 'you got the cheapest house in the suburb'. Beats paying $27k a year for someone else's mortgage and it will be nice to decorate how we want it.

Unless its changed, it used be every week for 190 visas.

My husband and I have an event catering business which we do on the side of our regular jobs, we are still trying to build up but my husband wants to eventually give up work to do the business only. Anyone needing a caterer for their party or event you know where to come

There are nurseries (day care ) for kids under 5, some of these also provide a before and after school care for older kids where they drop and pick up the kids to/from school. Our school has a YMCA care on site which provides the school kids with before/after school care and also vacation care. Its pretty good value too compared to others. There are lots of YMCA childcare places around Perth, just google. Some people use childminders (called family daycare I think here) but I think they are harder to come by. The cost of the daycare for our local nursery is $80per day and the Ymca after school care is $30. We get around 50% of this paid by centrelink. The vacation care is $60 per day and again half of this is covered. Depending where you live, costs can be higher.

Your 4 yr old will be at Kindy at school so will get 2 days one week and 3 days every other week for free. We both work and do fine on a household income a fair bit less than yours, we have 2 kids too.

I get on the train at Greenwood at 6.20am and rarely get a seat

Joondalup is probably about half an hour to the city by train then the extra time getting to/from stations. Mindarie is closest to Clarkson station and thats probably 40 mins by train to city plus 10-15 for getting to station and parking etc. Its not that bad if you're used to commuting and don't mind it.

We are house hunting just now, we live in Kingsley and some of the prices are being dropped as the houses aren't selling as quickly as they were. The house next door to us has been on the market for about 2 months and the price has dropped about $40k but TBH most are over priced in the first place. Its definitely a buyers market now though so go in lower and you can always increase your offer.

congratulations on finally making it here Odies!

Hey VS, why not set up your own business...gold prospecting tours! we'd be your first customers

Thats a shame but maybe not altogether a bad thing if you are feeling homesick, you'll be glad to see your wife sooner.

We stayed in Ridgewood when we first arrived, we went to the Merriwa shops a couple of times and there were all sorts of characters hanging around there in the evening!

Sounds great Porty. We were down there last week and its beautiful. Seriously considering whether we want to be buying a small house for so much money up here when you can get so much more for your money down there and its so lovely. We did also visit a lot of wineries and relieved them of some of there stock

A friend who lives in Butler (who loves it by the way) said to us to avoid Catalina as it is along from the dump on Marmion and when the wind goes the right way you get the smell...I haven't been there though so don't know how true that is.

my local IGA even sells most of those things, they are pretty easy to come by. I bought the coconut oil a couple of weeks ago as I has also read the benefits of it... tried it once by adding a couple of spoons to some homemade soup...that was one way to ruin a perfectly nice soup

we stayed in Ridgewood for 4 weeks when we arrived and although the house was nice we felt the area was bland and you had to drive everywhere as the weren't any shops or anything nearby. It was also too far north for us as we got work in the city.

yup, I put our duvets back on the beds today after the last few months of sleeping with just sheets. I am also finding it chilly in the shade during the day but warm when in the sun.

Nikkis2000, the lights were visible from WA on the 18th and people in the perth hills managed to get great photos

sounds very different to here, hope you are enjoying it. The Aurora sounds amazing, only seen it twice but very, very faint.