Of homelessness & cyclonic action

Issue 1:

How renting works everywhere we have lived in Australia so far ...

a) Find a whole load of properties you like/are in the right area/are the right price etc. 
b) Drive past each property and make sure it isn't a dive (photos and descriptions lie a lot and you can halve your list this way).
c) Find out when the viewing is (normally a 15 minute window in the middle of the day).
d) Register for the viewing.
e) Turn up for the viewing with a ton of other people and look round the property (in some cases walk in, walk out - you can't always judge a book by it's cover).
f) If you like it fill out between 4-7 page application (depending on agent), and rush back to real estate office to show ID, proof of income and hand in application.  (At this point you are apparently legally obliged to take that property if you are accepted.)
g) Wait between 3-7 days (the longest wait was almost 2 weeks to hear) to discover if your application has been accepted.  (At this stage all sorts can go on, the real-estate agent decides if they have enough applications, normally waiting until they have at least 3. Then they decide who looks like a good bet on paper and start checking all their references, once they have done this, they decide who to put through for consideration by the property owner, again usually at least 3.  Owner looks through application and references and picks one applicant, or sometimes rejects them all - we were told after submitting one 7 page application that the owner of that particular property never accepts anyone with children, or old people, that particular property is still vacant?)
h) Forget the fact that you have multiple applications in, keep viewing properties and keep applying for properties.  It's a numbers game.

Other rules and complications, some agents will only let you have one pending application in at once due to 'f' above, so if you find a better property, you have to withdraw the previous application and submit a new one.  Every real estate has different ID requirements, requires different kinds and numbers of references (business, work, personal), has different questions etc.  There is no first come first served, though it does help.

Things to note, all real estate companies we lodged applications with passed our application checks and submitted our applications to owners (even the one that never accepts kids, as the agents aren't allowed to discriminate even if the owners do).

Finally last Tuesday, after 4 weeks of following the rules above (and probably much more) - I got two calls from the same agent (even they seemed excited) saying we had been accepted by one of our preferred property applications - we immediately accepted.  Two days later another owner 'accepted' us ... too late :P

So after almost 2 months in Mackay, we will move into a permanent place on the 22nd February :D

Issue 2:

Cyclones (in some other parts of the world also known as Typhoons or Hurricanes)

Yes, we have been through our first 2 cyclone warnings in less than 4 days.  I almost blogged last night, but as the worst was predicted, and we fully expected multiple deaths (it appears that there have been none), and power out for several days at least - I decided that it was best not to blog, as it may well have been several days before I could confirm to those who care that we were fine.

To put it in perspective 'Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi' looked like this yesterday (although it has been moved further south to show it's scale to Australia as well as the UK and America)

 

To show I am not exaggerating, below is where Yasi actually was, and to scale

Now as I know that some of our readers struggle with geography, here it is in relation to where we live ;p

We live in Mackay (said Mackye), so while we were on the edge of the warning, we apparently took as much impact as Cairns did.

Yasi was a Cat 5 Cyclone when it hit land, this is the most severe rating that there is, and the first time that a Cat 5 has had landfall in Australia, and the strongest cyclone since at least 1908.

Again I like this final map to show that to some scale, particularly to Hurricane Katrina - it hit at high tide and caused both tide and storm surge.  (This is the one worth clicking on and enlarging)

Seriously, this thing was massive!

We were as prepared as we could be, everything was charged up, we had cool boxes full of ice, containers of water, tinned food and powdered milk all boxed and ready to go, plenty of torches and my work vehicle had ropes and tarps ready to secure any small damage.  We also had another vehicle loaded at work for any of us to use with wet weather gear, petrol and a generator, more ice boxes, chainsaw, more rope and tarps, big lights etc.

One good thing about not having found a permanent place to live yet ... most of our stuff is in a 'water tight' shipping container near the airport, we had been in and made sure boxes with books and all electrical items were raised off the floor and had tried to raise our insurance coverage for our possessions (as a cyclone watch was in place, we couldn't increase cover, but managed to increase our car coverage).  We also collected our camp stove and sleeping bags from storage as well as water filtration device in case of evacuation or being trapped for several days.

I worked a normal day and was glad to find the roads virtually empty as I drove home, and everything else closed up.  Noëlle was just finishing taping up the windows when I got home.

We had done everything we could to prepare, so all I could do was watch the news as the weather came in

And yes, in case you are wondering, that is the ocean you can see in the background, we currently live on top of a hill a short walk from the beach ...

While the destruction up and down the coastline has been horrific, we are blessed to have not had anything of ours damaged.  Overall, while much has been destroyed, again luck, good planning and warning appears to have meant no loss of life - Of course this part of Australia is significantly less populated than Louisiana, but people listened and acted, and the authorities seemed to be on the ball.

As we expect to live in this area for some time, cyclones will now become part of our lives - having gone through such a major one so soon I hope we don't become complacent with future warnings - I think we did everything right this time, even if none of our emergency plans were needed or supplies used.

Sorry for such a long blog post, but that's what happens when you hear nothing from me for more than a month!