House-shares

Only 3 nights in Canberra this week, so it's turned into a busy one as I've got to start sorting out where I'm going to live on a longer term basis than using work's apartment, which if I'm lucky I'll have for another 4–6 weeks.

There are lots of house-share websites that come up when you search online, but most seem to link to easyroommates.com.au.  You sign up by creating a profile telling people either about the room you have available to rent, or about what you're looking for if you're trying to find somewhere.  Once you've created your profile, it's an easy site to use but my big issue was even if you put in which areas of the city you're looking to rent in, you still get reminders about every property coming online in your chosen city!  This is really annoying when you don't know the areas and the names of the suburbs well as you have to check them all out until you eventually work out which ones you definitely don't want!

Anyway, in amongst the 10 million rooms that seemed to be available out in Harrison or Gunghalin (areas right on the edge of Canberra which is where masses of new building has been going on and which just feels like living in the middle of nowhere), I found a few places that sounded reasonable and checked them out during the weekday evenings.  The fact that it's winter and dark by 5.30pm isn't helpful as it means I'm always trying to find my way around places I don't know in the dark... and Canberra's street lighting is more mood lighting than useful too!!

I saw a couple of reasonable places and another place which was definitely student digs... not really what I want now, but a bit of a shame because the people seemed really lovely!  It did help me to decide that although Belconnen is a big hub in the outer suburbs, I do not want to be anywhere outside of the inner suburbs.  Even O'Connor, in the inner NW area, seemed a fair way from the city and would take about 20-30mins to walk into Civic, with most people telling me they wouldn't walk there in the dark because there has been a lot of crime, even along the main road which is heaving with traffic most of the time!

Gumtree is the other option for house shares and has quite a good range of places on offer.  The only issue I've had there is that people don't always respond very quickly to contact, which can be frustrating, especially if you are also contacting people on easyroommate as they tend to pick up messages on the online portal very quickly and respond immediately.  However, I've found one option on Gumtree that's close to work and now they've finally got back to me, I'll be checking that out next week.  If it doesn't float my boat though, it looks like I'll go for the most straightforward option which is sharing with someone I met at the running club!  It's very handy for work (<10 mins walk) and only 5 mins (in the other direction) from the shops and a gym which has Body Balance classes!  In fact, the weekday evening class is on a Tuesday, the same night I used to do Body Balance in the UK!!

So with Canberra accommodation hopefully nearly sorted, the next job is to turn my focus to finding my perfect apartment rental in Sydney.  This is the one which will be home and the place to which all my belongings from the UK will shortly be making their way!