The estate agents in the UK could learn a thing or two from these guys! I've never been presented with champagne when I went to pick the keys up before.
Completed on the house today! We have bought this house just to let out and are completing on another in mid-January which will eventually be our home. The plan is to let both initially and set off on 'The Big Lap' for a year or so.
Today's one needs a bit of work but we are moving the caravan in to the front garden tomorrow and will live there while we work on the house. 
The Lemon Tree Passage Club is right opposite so we popped across the road for a celebratory cool one, and this chap was trotting around the tables. No pigeons in our pub garden, just the odd ibis! Clubs are big in Australia and almost every reasonably sized town has an RSL (Returned Servicemens League). These are equivalent to the British Legion in the UK but far better organised. They have restaurants with reasonably priced food, bar, sports facilities and clubs and the inevitable slot machines. The bigger ones are music venues too. I am still a bit shocked to see sort of betting shops in these clubs, often with an ATM in (to encourage more betting I suppose) and then racks full of leaflets with titles like 'Do you have a gambling problem?' I feel like filling one in saying 'I didn't until I joined your club!'
We are going to try what I suspect will be the impossible this morning (Christmas Eve) and get our internet installed by Telstra in time to Skype my Mum and sister Gill tomorrow. Let's see what they can do otherwise we may have an internet communications blackout for a few days.
Collected our prawns for Christmas lunch today, it will be a strange one this year, camping in the garden of a house we will never actually live in, sweltering in the heat, no turkey, no Paxo, no Pagham pram race and no post Christmas post mortem with the Spooners! Let's hope the sunshine makes up for it.
Merry Christmas everyone xxx