verging_on_random

I’m H-A-P-P-Y …..

February 11, 2007 on 7:42 pm | In Uncategorized |

This week I finally ended every connection with the caravan park where I’ve lived for the last 14 years. Until I moved away, I didn’t realise how much I hated living there.

For the last two years I’ve been trying to put a second-hand relocatable home on my site and build some extensions on it. The park’s owned by the local council, which is also the approval authority for new building works. Needless to say, it was like dealing with two separate, mutually antagonistic bureaucracies. I had to take the council to the Residential Tenancies Tribunal to get ‘in principle’ approval for my proposal, and that was before I’d even done any work.

Getting a builder was also a problem. IDK how builders are doing in your part of the world but up here they work 2-3 days a week and spend the rest of the time consulting their financial planners. If I had $100 for every builder who said “I’ll get back to you” I’d be a rich man. When I bothered to chase them up I’d usually get some version of “Hey I’m pretty committed ATM, call me next year”. In the best part of two years I only managed to get one definite quote, and that was from a bloke pulling the old builder’s trick of hinting that he didn’t want anything to do with my job but if I wanted to pay a $15000 premium over a rational price then he might be able to fit me in.

I could have handled one or the other of these challenges but tackling them both was too much. I’m not as young as I was. So I baled and managed to sell everything without losing too much money. Now I’m back in the rental market … and living in a terrific place. So my current mood is

One final thought … anybody who harbours romantic notions about Australians of Anglo-Saxon origin being decent caring compassionate human beings should go live in a Northern Rivers caravan park for a few years … it wasn’t a fluke that Pauline Hanson got 20% of the primary vote on the Tweed coast in 1998 you know.