January 2006 - Leaving our Edinburgh Home

Friday January 13, 2006 was an auspicious day for the Ellison brothers. It was the birthday of Mark's brother Stephen. His other brother Phil and family moved into their newly bought house in Kalamunda. That same day, we left the flat in Edinburgh that had been Mark's home for a dozen years, and Ela's home for most of a decade.

We sold the flat in November last year. You can read the agent's description here. In the end, we accepted the first offer we received for the flat. Because Ela had not been well, we put settlement off till January.

Most of our furniture was sold by direct advertising. We'd tried advertising on various bulletin boards. In the end, we printed flyers and Ela letterboxed the neighbourhood. Our best units were sold in a few days.


The belongings we were shipping to Australia went in instalments. Mark bought a barcode scanner, and started scanning books then packing them into boxes. He packed 45 boxes. The rest were packed with the kitchen items on January 11. Three guys arrived at 9am .. at noon they had to call in two more .. and they still didn't finish till after 6pm. 189 boxes in total. We held some items back, such as both of our main computers and our printer. We'd need those in our remaining time in Edinburgh.

So on Friday the 13th, we said goodbye to our neighbours and made our way across town to our temporary home on Buccleuch St. The picture shows Mark closing the door on 1F3 for the last time.