Kitty and I were walking past South Bank this week when we saw what looked like giant lego men all over the QPAC building. On closer inspection, we realized they were milk crates, and were work of Crateman, aka Cornelius Brown from Melbourne. I quickly too some snaps because they’re part of the Brisbane Festival which finishes on the 25 September. If you want to see them, I’d get down there quick smart.
The more I get into succulents, the more I anticipate and appreciate them when they flower. Unlike a lot of other plants, succulents will only flower when the conditions are just right, like it’s a reward for you looking after them well. Unlike bromeliads, they can continue to flower. A few of my favourite succulents are in flower at the moment, probably due to the nicely warm weather in Brisbane at the moment. I took s0me snaps of these on the weekend. There’ll be hopefully many more to come in the coming months.
If you’re looking to rent a place in Australia, REFind is your best friend. It aggregates places to rent off all the major real estate sites, but it also shows you price reductions (by how much and when) and the length of time advertised. These are great pieces of information as you’ll get a much better deal if you can find a place that has been advertised for a long time as the landlord will be (even more) desperate to get someone in.
On the topic of renting, I still stand by my view that Australian real estate is grossly overpriced, which has been continually confirmed by The Economist Magazine, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, and Chairman of one of the world’s largest funds managers Jeremy Grantham.
It’s easy to observe the craziness when you compare total cost of renting to total cost of buying.
For example, there are four brand new townhouses around the corner from us at South Brisbane. They plan on selling them one-by-one, but in over three months, they haven’t had any luck even selling the first! They reduced the price of the first townhouse from $2.85 million to $2.79 million, or $60,000 less, but still can’t sell it.
They’ve recently listed it to rent, and in a month have dropped the weekly rent from $2200 to $1600. To put the $1600 weekly rent into perspective, at current rates the repayments on $2.79 million are just under $5000 per week. If interest rates rise 1% over the next 12 months, the weekly repayment rises to just under $5500 per week. Plus there would be other costs involved in owning such as rates, water and property maintenance.
Renting this place for $1600 per week is well over 3 times cheaper, just on repayments, and taking into account other expenses and interest rate increases, would more likely be 5-6 times cheaper! And people still think we don’t have a house price bubble. Crazy.
We all ventured down the street for the Go Between Bridge Concert last Friday night, Junior Pixels included as babies were admitted free! It was kinda weird watching a live music concert on a bridge, but the incline allowed us to have a very good view even when standing at the back. The night was a lot of fun, we ended up seeing Josh Pyke, Robert Forster and Angus & Julia Stone play. The Stones were our pick, which was expected, and when Angus sang The Yellow Brick Road I couldn’t believe my luck. As the fireworks began, we managed to hail a green cab (literally a three wheeled bicycle) who took the three of us home. What an amazing night!
The empty block next to us is about to be developed, which is a shame as it has quite an eclectic collection of street art. The old brick walls on the site make the perfect texture for all sorts of art, so I thought I’d ignore the ‘do not enter’ sign and capture these before they’re gone forever.
We’re pretty excited about the Go Between Bridge Concert. It’s on June 25 in Brisbane and features Angus & Julia Stone, Josh Pyke, and Bob Evans, among others.
It’s all ages, and since kids aged three and younger are free, we’re taking Junior Pixels to his first music concert! We’ve already bought his Gwyneth Paltrow inspired earmuffs to protect his sensitive little ears. Tix are about $48 include booking fees, and available now, but I’d hurry, I am sure they won’t last long.
I love this quote I found by someone who has recently migrated to Australia from Switzerland.
I live here now since October 2008 and I still haven’t a house but I didn’t expect this to happen anyway.
What concerns me more is that I had to over think my decade-long statement. Where is [sic] the Aussie lifestyle gone to?… Nowadays Australians are under a lot of pressure seems to me that they now live to work as well. And no wonder – look at your prices – one example :
- I live in a Mango tree town – they are just everywhere – why does Wollies sell them for 2 Dollar each?
In fact I have a lot of “why” questions!
- Why do healthy things like Broccoli cost 8 Dollars a kilo when MacDonalds gives you the Supersize-me deal for 4.95?
- Why did Australians overtake Americans on the scales?
- Why is everything “mobil” (phones, internet) so expensive?
- Why can I buy things “No Deposit – No interest – till 2015″?
- Why is Joyce Maine and Harvey Norman shouting at me in their ads?
- Why do the Good Guys not dance when I step into their Establishment?
- Why do I have to drive 130 km for a simple Ultrasonic scan?
- Why are houses priced and not valued?
- Why can Australians afford so much with so little pay?
I love quotes lie this because it shows how quickly we’ve lost our shoshin and have forgot to question things. An example is how stupidly houses are in Australia. While the world laughs at us, we just accept that houses are ridiculously expensive, instead of asking why, and doing something to correct it.
It won’t be too long before people clue-on and find somewhere where things make sense.
Whilst out walking Junior Pixels this morning, Kitty spotted an Angus & Julia Stone tour poster: “but they only just toured!” I said. But, yes, they’re touring again this September. We saw them in March, and since they were a-maz-ing, we’re gonna go again in September. Tour dates are here, tickets on sale Friday 7 May. I also found some pictures of their last tour that we saw (by Henryk Lobaczewski via myspace).
