I had already lived in four different houses, in three different cities, in two different countries before I was 18 years old.
Joined the Army and over the next nearly 20 years moved eight times (not counting three operational deployments).
So yeah, Im basically over packing up and moving. When I started working as a civvy in Canberra we bought a house in the burbs and a few years later a couple of hundred acres with a small two bedroom cottage as a ‘weekender’. In 2014 we decided that we would renovate and add an extension to the cottage and move out here full time which we did in 2015. Once we did that we sold the house in Canberra to get the mortgage down to an affordable level.
We are a bit over a one hour drive to Canberra and about the same to Cooma (a sizable country town of approx 7,000 people). But we are well of the tourist roads and pretty much the only people we see are locals or Canberra folk who are lost
As far as I’m concerned we are living in the Goldilocks zone. Close enough to shops and amenities, but ‘remote’ enough that you get the sense of true rural isolation. We can only see one neighbouring house from our property, and that is only because it is within 50m of our shared boundary (can’t see it from our house though).
I didn’t even find it too much of a chore commuting about 50 miles each way for work (fuel got expensive though), but now that we are properly retired on a very generous .gov service pension for life I guess my answer to your question is: I’m here already.
Yup, I feel the same. We’re on a significantly warmer end of the Goldilocks zone but we are Dutch so taking into account our experience of distance, it’s actually similar. We bought a house close to, but outside the city, in a village. On the coast side, so I can go kiteboarding more easily. Which I only did twice this Summer, but should be doing more now that the move and renovation are sort of done.
Because I’m lazy, love switching up where I work every year or two, and hate commuting in the rain, we basically live on the train station. We were a bit scared that would cause noise, but there’s almost no cargo on this track, and modern Dutch passenger trains are so quiet that we usually don’t even hear them in the bedroom and living room.
And I love just rolling straight into the train and not having to bike or hurry to the station, or stand in the rain waiting, to get to the office.
It also means that every half hour, we can be in the hustle and bustle of the city centre in 5 minutes. While living outside the city.
So, as a disclaimer, we did this move during Covid and neither of us now have the same jobs we had then… but my partner and I moved out of the city to a place we had planned to retire to while still working. A lot of stuff has changed. But all of it has been for the better.
If you can make it work, I’d suggest thinking about the move before you retire - certainly it makes affording a decent place easier (at least where I am).
We’ve been planning to make a plan to get over that way for some time. There’s a book, I think written by Tim Cahill, circa 1990 (a ‘humor’ travel writer) that piqued my curiosity back then. I think it was called, “In a Sun burnt Land” but I can’t find it on the Net or my boxes.
Canberra isn’t exactly a place that I imagine springs to mind as a destination for foreign tourists?
But there is more than enough to keep someone occupied for a few days: The Australian War Memorial, Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking station, The National Mint (certain collectable coins can only be purchased there), National Art Gallery, Old Parliament House… even the ‘new’ Parliament House are all worth a visit.
But it has a fascinating backstory about how it was transformed from a sheep paddock and became our national Capital. It was actually designed by an American, Walter Burley Griffin, who was also a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright. And a lot of those influences are visible in a lot of the architecture.
Finally. I would be very disappointed if any Mudspikers were in the area and didn’t let me know. There is even a guest room for anyone who wanted it.
My wife and I really enjoyed Canberra the couple of times we went down there (from SW Syd). Cooma is a beautiful place too, but I’ve only been once so had tourist goggles on.
