So now you know where we are, you may be interested in knowing how we ended up here. The story begins not so long ago, two weeks before Easter in 2007. Most of you would know that I work for an IT consulting firm, JASCO Consulting. One of our larger customers was making significant headway into the construction industry in the booming WA economy, and were looking for us to provide (or recommend) someone to manage their IT needs in WA.

A week later, I was meeting with my MD, Jason. He'd had further discussions with our client, and it appeared as though things were moving ahead at a greater pace than we'd first realised. I half-jokingly suggested that I take my whole family across to Perth for a holiday (seeing as how next week was Easter) and have a look around at the company's expense. To my surprise, Jason agreed. Less than a week later we were winging our way westward, somewhere I'd never been before, to look at Perth with a view to transplanting our lives as quickly as we could.

We spent the Easter break driving around, trying to get a feel for the place (after arriving Good Friday and not being able to buy a beer anywhere - Grrrr!). We pretty much liked what we saw, but really had no idea where we were going to live. We created a shortlist of suburbs, but both agreed that it was impossible to get a feel for anything in only a few days. We returned to Melbourne after Easter generally excited by the prospect, but completely unsure about anything.

I then set out to find a rental via the Intneret, with a Perth-based colleague to assist with local inspections. The Perth property market was at it's peak, and rentals were getting scarce. I found a few places I liked and made a shortlist to inspect when I returned to Perth around a week later. Basically, I needed to find a nice suburb, a good school and a reasonale house, in that order.

The first house I looked at was in Sawyers Valley. The suburb was beautiful and I got a very positive feeling about the school (I spent a few hours there over 2 days). By the end of my second day back I Perth, I'd decided (without looking at another house, school or suburb). I signed the lease, enrolled the kids in school and went to my new local pub for a counter meal. One of the best pub steaks ever told me that I'd made the right choice. Teresa was fantastic through the whole process. She must have been very nervous at the time sitting back in Melbourne (especially in trusting me to find a house and a school unaided), but I think she'd agree that it's all worked out really well.

The rest was a complete whirlwind. I went back to Melbourne and started organising removalists, an estate agent to rent my Melbourne home, and everything else that goes with moving your life from one side of the country to the other. On 22nd May we moved into our rental at Sawyers Valley, just a little over six weeks from the original idea!