“Keep moving forward.” This was the fortune cookie quote I found on the kitchen floor when we moved our fridge. I remember thinking, “how fitting to find this on moving day of all days,” followed closely by, “how long has this been here because I can’t remember the last time we ordered anything that included fortune cookies….”
Life has been moving in a forward trajectory in a very fast, very nonstop kind of way all year. The biggest change for us being that we packed up everything we had, and moved interstate from NSW to sunny QLD. Moving to QLD had always been bit of a pipe dream for us, something we’d talk about after a few drinks. The kind of talks that always started with “how nice would it be to buy a house in QLD?” and ending with “but that won’t happen for another few years.” Though we had only been to QLD together twice, we just always thought it would be a nice place to move to. Where the weather was warmer, the housing and cost of living was cheaper and the lifestyle more relaxed.
But work and finances always kept it a pipe dream for us. I felt like I had really started gaining some momentum in my role last year and I just wasn’t ready to leave it yet, and so it went on the back burner as a dream to be followed “someday.”
Well “someday” came quicker than I thought. My work announced late last year that it was opening up a new office right on the border of QLD and NSW in June of 2023. They asked for expressions of interest of any staff members that might want to relocate to the new office, and I thought this is it. This is our chance to move, I wouldn’t have to leave the company and we could live in QLD. It just felt like a sign for us. Before I even got to finishing telling the story to Jamie, he was already saying yes.
So I put my interest in just before we went on our holiday to Vietnam, and when I got back in January I had an interview and before I knew it, I was signing a relocation contract and it became official. WE WERE MOVING INTERSTATE.
The hardest part was breaking the news to our friends and family. I had lived in Sydney for 33 years. It was all I ever knew, and some of the friendships I had built over the last few years in particular, had become so important to me. And for Jamie, who had moved to Sydney from Melbourne 6 years ago with no friends and family, and the friends we share had become like both to him. But we both knew this was the best move for us, and our loved ones were sad but understood the decision. Ultimately, they just wanted us to be happy, which helped make the move a little easier.
Once we told everyone, it became a reality and with the reality came the stressful part – the logistics of it all. Moving is stressful enough, add to that moving to a different state and it becomes a whole new ball game. We couldn’t just fly up to inspect properties whenever we wanted, we had neither the time or money for that. And most real estate agencies weren’t willing to offer video walk throughs. We also weren’t sure of what area we wanted to actually move to.
So we decided on the Easter Long Weekend to head up and check out some suburbs, and also book in some inspections on a whim to see what the market was like, and also to chat to some real estate agents about our situation to see what our options looked like.
Jamie thankfully, is an extrovert. He can talk to anyone and everyone about anything. I am not that way inclined at all, and so in any scenarios that depend heavily on small talk, I rely pretty heavily on him. After a conversation with a friendly real estate agent, Jamie came away with a name for a trusted relocation specialist that could help us with our move. And THANK GOD for that recommendation (and Jamie’s small talk skills) because I don’t think we would have been able to do the move without all her help.
If ever you need someone to help you move to QLD, I cannot recommend Janneke from Moving to the Gold Coast enough. We used a decent chunk of our savings to get the all inclusive package and it was honestly worth every dollar. We gave her some ideas of areas we wanted to live in, what kind of place we wanted and what features were important to us, and she turned our pipe dream into something achievable, realistic and easy.
Janneke never made us feel stupid for some of our ideas and opinions, she listened to us and also gave us a lot of feedback and advice about suburbs that we wouldn’t have otherwise known given we weren’t locals (eg. noisy long term roadworks, places that fell under popular air traffic routes etc). She sourced us a range of houses and apartments, did the inspections, sent us detailed videos and reports of the homes with honest pros and cons as well. And after only 3 inspections, we found our dream apartment in a suburb in the Gold Coast.
She also helped us with the application process, and before we knew it we were signing the lease for it! It really took the majority of the stress out of the process for us, and if it’s something you can budget for, it’s something I really, really recommend. (Also even though it seemed a bit costly to begin with, it was also still so much cheaper and less time consuming than doing it all ourselves, so it actually saved us in the long run).
While that was being taken care of, we had time to put effort into the other things – like work and the actual moving part. Though I was lucky to already have a job ready for me, Jamie had to figure out something for himself. But what we didn’t realise was that electricians were in such high demand up here, so he ended up having his pick of 3 job offers before we even moved. He ended up being able to negotiate and score himself a great job with more benefits than his job in Sydney!
Then in terms of moving, we crunched the numbers and to see the different between hiring a moving company to cart all our stuff up and unload it on the other end, versus us hiring our own truck and moving it ourselves. To do it ourselves was going to save us about $2000, so it was clear to us which one we had to pick. Financially, it was the best decision for us to do it ourselves. Mentally and physically though, it was definitely the most draining.
We lived in a 3.5 bedroom house in Sydney, so you can just imagine all the crap we had hoarded over the years. Knowing that we were downsizing from this to a 2 bedroom apartment, and also knowing that we would need to physically move anything we decided to take up there ourselves, we decided to sell/donate/throw out as much as we could. We were so ruthless in the culling process, because the less we had, the less we had to move. Even after all that, we still filled the moving truck. It was a big job.
We ended up doing the move over two weekends, with the first one being the biggest. On the Friday morning, we packed all our belongings into the moving truck and left for QLD by the afternoon. We stopped halfway at Port Macquarie and spent the night. Then early Saturday morning we completed the trip to the Gold Coast, and spent the day unloading everything in the van into our apartment. It was also the first time we saw our apartment in the flesh, but unfortunately had no time to take it all in. We spent more time in the lift and parking garage then sitting in our apartment that day. After passing out from exhaustion that night, we then did the long drive back on Sunday.
Daisy joined us for the trip and she loved it. The moving van had three seats in the front, which meant we could strap her bed in between us and she got to ride up front with us for the whole trip. She slept most of the time, only really waking up to the sound of chip packets opening or for her bathroom breaks.
We spent the rest of the week finishing the cleaning of our house in Sydney, sleeping on an air mattress and eating pizzas, pastries from the local bakery and frozen ready meals all week. Then on the Friday, we said the final goodbye to Sydney and got into our car and did the same trip back up the Gold Coast. Except this time we took our time along the way. We made a lot of stops, had meals and cold beers at roadside country pubs, and just let it all sink in that we were finally leaving NSW for good.
We have officially been here for about two months now. Our first month here was really just spent unpacking and settling into our jobs and routine. But now it feels like finally, finally, we are able to spend some time exploring our new surrounds and what this new city has to offer. It’s been wonderful, and challenging, but mostly wonderful.
I can honestly say it’s been the best decision we’ve made together (besides adopting Daisy). And though we haven’t purchased a house yet, that pipe dream of ours is finally in motion and it feels really good to have started this next chapter in our lives.
Hopefully there will be some more regular posting on here now that I have finally found my feet here and there’s a bit of breathing room after the chaos that is the moving process.
In the meantime though, if you have any restaurants, cafes, bars, hiking spots you can recommend in the Gold Coast, please comment below and let me know!
Laura x.