First Apartment in Oz

I'm not in Kansas anymore, but I am in Oz!

After hours and hours of internet searches, realtor visits, rental applications, and walk-throughs, we finally found the right apartment for us. It's in Kirra, which is on the southern end of the Gold Coast - not far from the Coolangatta airport actually, which will be nice when we start getting out-of-town visitors. We're about a block from the beach, so we can wake up every morning and see the waves crashing on the shore, which is pretty close to being in heaven.

This is the view from the living room window:


It's a two bedroom, 2nd floor apartment with a carport, balcony toward the beach, and washer hookup. The main kitchen/living room space is tile, which is nice. I'm always wary of old rental unit carpeting and how clean it is. Although with tile, you have to buy a lot of rugs, which can be expensive.



The funny thing about most Southern Hemisphere bathrooms is that the toilet is in tiny separate room from the rest of the bathroom/shower room. I haven't figured out why, but it sure is nice to avoid the toilet after my husband has been in there! LOL

I didn't believe Theo before we moved here, but it's true what he used to say about clothes dryers. Most people here don't use them. I supposed it's already so hot outside, you might as well use nature. I wasn't sure if I would like this, but so far it's been easy to get used to. It saves money on electricity as well, I suppose. We haven't gotten our first utility bill yet, so that will be interesting. Water is included in the rent, so it will just be power. I was surprised (after living the Midwest all my life), to find out that I could specify how "green" I wanted my power to be. Being the environmentalist that I am, I was excited to get 100% green power for the first time in my life!

Furnishing the place has been a slow process...for a few reasons. But we did get some hand-me-downs, like cooking pots, table & chairs, etc. Still no bed. We're sleeping on the floor. This was pretty brutal for the first few nights, but now we are actually used to it. And I'm not saying this to be positive or optimistic. Neither of us have had back problems and we're sleeping like babies. So now we don't know if we'll even buy a bed! Maybe we'll get one for visitors, though :)