Housing in the Brisbane area

Just a blog to note the difference between what we are used to in the states and the housing here. Most of the houses close to the city are very old. To get the more modern homes, you have to move farther away from the city. Most of the older homes do not have central are or heat. They have one or two units in the house to cool and heat. Bathrooms and garages are not so important. A house can have 5 bedrooms and one bathroom and either no garage or a 1 car garage. Most of the flooring is either timber or tile or both. I only saw one house with carpeting while we were house hunting. Closets are also not important. Many of the houses only have a closet in the master bedroom, either a built-in or a free standing wardrobe. Verandas are popular! Queenslanders are very popular and old. A Queenslander is usually a 2-3 bedroom house on stilts with timber flooring, no closets and a wrap around porch. Parking and storage is under the house along with the laundry room.
The clothes dryers are not vented out of the houses so you can imagine the humidity on laundry days. Every yard has a clothesline to dry laundry.
All of the toilets in Brisbane have two buttons on top of the tank. One is for a half flush and the other is for a full flush. This is part of their water conservation efforts. Many of the toilets are down the hall from the rest of the bathroom. Hmm. Sinks are not necessarily built into the counter. Some have large bowls that sit on top and are plumbed into the counter.
The power here is 240 volts. All of the outlets have a on/off switch for each plug. The outlet must be turned off before plugging anything into it and turned off before unplugging anything. We are never to leave an outlet on when not in use.
Some of the bedrooms are very small. We struggled finding a house with 2 bathrooms and a house that could hold our size furniture. The furniture here is much more condensed. One house that we looked at had a built in toddler bed and just room enough for a small chest of drawers. and the other bedroom had a built in twin bed with storage under it and room for a small chest of drawers. Absolutely no room for toys or walking room. We have two long dressers with mirrors and night stands so it wasn't easy to find a big enough master and a room big enough for Rachel's furniture.
There are no neighborhoods here. They are called suburbs. Sometimes the suburbs are big and sometimes they are tiny. They are all accountable to the Brisbane City authority. You can go through several suburbs in just minutes.
The house we found has two stories, 4 bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, 3 verandas, timber flooring, a one car garage, laundry off of the kitchen. 2 bedrooms have closets and there is a airconditioner in the master bedroom and I can't remember if the living area has one or not. It is a short walk down the sidewalk to the park and primary school without crossing any streets. Mt Cootha Forest is down the street in the opposite direction. The train station that Duane will use to travel to work is about a mile from our house. I will probably drop him off and pick him up on workdays. We get the keys tonight so I'll post pictures at a later date.