Back online after moving into the new house

In my last post, I mentioned I was moving out of the city (Melbourne, Australia) and heading to the country.

Well the transition has occurred and I'm more than happy with the move. Our neighbours two deep on each side have all come out and introduced themselves, and the general atmosphere around the place is warm and uplifting.

The sense of community runs strong outside of the capital cities by the look of it.

Bannockburn is by no means a small town, though it's no thriving metropolis. It's about 15 mins drive from Geelong, but you would think you're thousands of miles away or in a parallel universe. Hand-waves whilst driving, a chat with a stranger (soon to be become an acquaintance/friend) are all common place. At the time of the 2006 Census, the population was a mere 2,486, but has more than doubled in the following two years. By 2015, they are expecting a population of around 15,000. If you're down this way, be sure to drop in. It's a quaint part of town and quite charming.

All the majority of our daily needs are here (local Woolworths, petrol, green grocer, butcher, baker, vet, auto repair, post office, pub, restaurants, fast-food, legal and accounting services,etc can all be found in the town). Those not here (ie: the not-every-day purchases) is only a 15 minute car-drive into Geelong.

I'm loving the lack of police sirens/choppers and cars doing wheelies until 4am most nights. The only noise we hear at present is the 6-7am chatter of the native birds found in abundance. (Not a real problem -- we're up at 6-7am anyway -- working through to late at night getting the house set-up).

Bannockburn for me was a natural choice. It's closer to loved ones, as well as the type of environment, community I would like to raise a family one day. The hustle and bustle and dog-eat-dog attitude that the big cities portray is not the values I would like to instil into my own children.

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So how did the move go on Friday? As many know there was a deluge across a lot of Australia. In our neck of the woods we had the pitter-patter of a few rain drops from about 10:30am whilst filling the removalist's truck. By 3:15pm they had finished unloading the truck and literally seconds after the truck doors had been shut down it bucketed!

I'm glad we got our water tank hooked up prior to the move. Those 24 hours resulted in approx 70mm of rain. The tank is now full!
That much rain ensured we had a natural inground swimming pool over most of the backyard. The dogs found this too irresistable (they had never seen so much rain in their young years), and decided it was time for swimming. Shortly after we had dual-coloured dogs.... The original colour on their top half and a nice brown/muddy underbelly.

Saturday/Sunday saw us return to clean up our vacated premises. On Wednesday we return the keys to the landlord. It's a great feeling moving out of the rent cycle and into our own home.

Monday I had our networking guys in to terminate off our wired house. We now have 48 GigaE running throughout the house. The 19" racks I have in the garage look all very impressive now. I'll take some photos in the next few days and post them up for all to see. (Once I find the box with my camera data-cable! )

The new 48-port GigE Managed Switch also has PoE on all ports, and makes powering the Snom VoIP phones a breeze with no need for a power pack anymore (frees up on power point, and also one less cable to tangle unde rmy desk!). Cabling the house was a great idea -- being able to just plug an Ethernet cable into the wall in nearly every room of the house is just a god-send and something I would recommend to anyone who's building (do it during the framing stage, prior to the plastering).

The mountain of boxes strewn around the house are slowly disappearing. It will take us some time but we're hoping by Christmas to have everything fully unpacked/setup. That will leave me with the daunting task of establishing our gardens/plants/lawns outside during this crazy drought/summer. Something I am looking forward to getting up and running.

One of the benefits is since moving that my ADSL1 connection is indeed faster and cleaner here than our previous location (though we are about the same distance from the exchange (1-1.5kms). I'm pulling down pretty much the physical limits of ADSL1 and squeezing 100-150Kb/sec more then I previously have. Once ADSL2+ becomes available through my provider (Internode - due in the next few days), I may consider the move up if the price is 'reasonable'.

The garden shed and vegie garden will probably be first off the ranks, with the rest to follow after that.
I'm seriously considering putting in a large sandpit for the dogs so they can dig til their hearts content (and not in my lawn/vegies/plants! )

Though, all in good time. In the interim, I'm just enjoying country life, and not missing the glare of the city at all. A few more weeks of setting up house and I'll be as happy as my dogs running around in mud!