End of April Update

Apologies for the lack of blog posts this month - predominantly the result of bad weather, the van being pretty much finished, and the lack of offers on the house.

We have been tinkering away on the van - Nick fitted a new stereo and leisure battery and I made some seat organisers to hang on the back of the cab seats. The near constant rain we have been having has also revealed a couple of leaks in the windscreen seal that we had to repair. But on the whole it is pretty much done and ready to go!

The house is still on the market - we have dropped the price and gone with another estate agent to generate more interest and we have had several recent viewings. As much as we can we have been sorting and selling our possessions. 

Not much more to report! If the house takes longer than anticipated to sell then we may get some casual work to tide us over until then. I was feeling a bit glum about the fact that we aren't on the road already but I've got over that now - you have to make the best of what you've got and accept what you can't change!

Leisure Battery Electrics

The vehicle electrics all seemed to be working, i.e. all the lights, squirters, wipers etc, so we're going to leave them alone. However, the leisure battery electrics were not so tip-top. The internal light was wired directly to the battery with an inline fuse, the fridge and water pump had an archaic fuse box, and all the wiring was shoddy.

So I decided to rip it all out and start again. I added a secondary fuse box for everything to be attached to. I added a long LED light above the sink and a similar smaller one in the back by the bed. I added a new water pump and switch, and a 12v socket on the side of the back cupboard for powering chargers etc. When I fit the new stereo, I'll power it from the leisure battery so that the starter battery is not drained when we're listening to music in the evenings.

You can see the 12v socket on the left hand side of the cupboard.

This is the new fuse box. I've still got to paint the wood white, and those black wire under the tape is cable for the back speaker that I've still got to wire up. The blue tubing is the water pipe feeding the tap from the water bottle. We're thinking of putting a curtain across the opening to hide it all.

End of March Update

April heralds the end of our fixed rate mortgage and hence we are now free to sell the house and start realising our dreams.

Bad stuff first - our chain-free perfect buyer for our house pulled out and we have had to put the house back on the market. Until it sells we will not have the funds to put all our plans into motion. We have arranged a three month payment holiday for the mortgage, as we have both now quit our jobs and so have no income coming in!

I know some people think we are slightly crazy - what happens in three months if we haven't sold the house? How will we carry on paying the mortgage? Shouldn't we have carried on working? I guess the only way I can explain it is that we both have full acceptance of uncertainty. No one knows what will happen in the future and so there is no need to worry about what hasn't happened yet. We believe that whatever happens we will be resourceful enough to deal with it together. For the first time in years I feel like my life belongs to no-one but myself which is an amazing feeling. 

Now the good stuff! We have had confirmation that our Australian Permanent Residence visa has been granted! We have until February 2013 to enter Australia. It's very exciting. We applied on the 30 May 2011 and the grant came on 30 March 2012 so it has taken exactly 10 months. The estimated processing time on the visa website when we applied was 18-24 months so it's been much quicker than expected. 

The camper van is practically finished - Nick is just finishing off some final electrics and before we set off we will get it all serviced.

So at the moment everything is ready to go and all we are waiting for is the house to sell. The longer it takes, the more our plans get shifted back, so we are keen to get it sold as soon as possible.