We used to always move ourselves until we had kids.

Now we get removalists.

We just moved a 4br house from Brisbane to Toowoomba (about 1.5 hours driving distance) and it cost us $900 to use a removal company. We did all our own packing - they turned up on the day, loaded it all in the truck, moved it and unloaded again at the other end.

The move before that (about 2 years ago) we got a couple of guys out of the local paper. They were ex-army and they went like the clappers. They moved us two suburbs over by 11am for $500 and didn't damage a thing. They were awesome, but by the time we moved up here they'd gone onto other things.

It was worth every cent to us, it's just too painful with little kids and we also didn't have alot of hands available at the brisbane end to help with either kids or moving.