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hi ladies, thought i would subscribe, DF is an av tech in the RAAF and we are currently in Newcastle.
Mrs Bexie i was sure when we moved here i read some where in the homefind package that there were prerequisites to DHA homes and one of them was a/c. hope you find a way to keep cool.
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They might do an April Fools joke just for fun
I wish we could find out that soon! Im assuming they go by cycles (when you posted in etc) sooooo hopefully itll be July for us. Dh is going to ask his boss about it and whether they can make it July instead of October or later so I have time to prepare and move.
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Thats a new pre-req. They have stated the same for Sydney BUT alot of us are still without air con. They only do it to houses that are leased for the full lease period (7 years I think?) Any houses, like ours, that are due for lease renewel soon or that cannot be (or the owners will not allow it to be) fitted with air cons miss out. Im guessing said houses will not be re-leased when their time is up. Only the tropics housing before this pre-req were required to be fitted with appropriate cooling ie air con and fans.
Dha dont even consider a heater to be an essential item in Sydney! Our broke down during winter and we had to wait 28 days for it to be fixed (I think it actually ended up being more like 38 days). I was so angry, it gets plenty freezing in Sydney in winter and my kids were all very ill. I ended up with pneumonia not long after.
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wow freya, thats shocking about the heater? when our air con broke they got people put here pretty quickly but we may as well had waited 38 days coz the guys that came out where Sh.t and had to come and go about 4 times coz they'd say what was wrong, get the part, come back, put the part in then realise something else was wrong to, this happened 4 times!! we ended up going through the whole of last Summer with no a/c. just lucky we live near the ocean.
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we own the house we live in, but i am dreading being posted and living in a DHA house after all the trouble i have been told of them not installing air cons or getting things done.
thanks for the invite to the adelaide meet up!
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hi girls,
haven't been on here for ages. Yeah there's new standards but they don't come into effect til a bit later... but they are supposed to be phasing into homes of that standard.
we were given a house near newcastle with no fans and one a/c in the dining roomjust what i want, a freezing dining room and sweltering lounge and bedroom! try being 9 months preggers in 43C temp and only a pedastal fan!!! DH was away at the time... i was not a happy camper! at the same time my loo broke on a friday arvo, i rang the maintenance line as that should be considered urgent (only one loo int he house) but nope, got told 'sometime monday'... I burst into tears and got hysterical!!! they sent someone out within 30 mins lol.
my best advice is to complain, complain, complain and haunt them.
there is also a defence group (i just can't remember its name but DCO should know) which oversees the contracts for DHA and toll etc and they are the ones you should go to if you have any real problems with any of the contractors... afterall these companies are providing a service to defence... they AREN'T doing you a favour by taking your call occassionally and giving you a crap, sub-standard house! gggrrrr (another one with dha issues here! took them 3 yrs to replace a broken toilet roll holder for pity sake! and after 5 yrs asking for a new oven that broke at least 6 or 7 times while we were there, they replace it... 1 month before we move!!!)
We have just been posted to darwin and secured a brand new 4 bed house in a new burb! BUT it wasn't til the 11th hour literally that amazingly, suddenly there were two four-bedders available to us to view... when apparently just the day before they swore there were none and we'd have to take the crap house we'd already locked in! pft pft pft. So lesson there for you girls who are posting!
oh dear, i was just going to get on and say hi... and have ranted and raved!
We are in Darwin now... anyone else out there???
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Oh the old sit on housing unless you harrass them trick. DHA's across the board like to do that.
I could go on and on about how unfair the classification system is for housing but I wont. Lets just say there is a lovely big 5 bedroom double story house in our street. The previous people who lived there had TWO children and Im guessing he qualified because it was last min only thing available (suuuuuuuuure) or he was a WO or higher. Meanwhile Dh and I and 3 little kids are stuck in a teeny 3 bedroom townhouse and Ive heard of other people with 4 or more kids being stuck in 3 bedroom housing. Pffft.
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FWIW I think DHA does try to help as many people out, but unfortunately they still have a stock of old and crapulent houses from the bad old days when they were *all* like that (and I could tell you some stories that would make your toes curl)...
I think it's worth remembering that people themselves have different standards as to what they consider "acceptable" housing, and for some people it is lower than others. I also think they will try it on if you're new and inexperienced. However, as in all things Defence, a little bit of polite self-assertiveness goes a long way. In our previous posting, I politely reminded the person who was helping us that we left our own 4 bedroom house to take a posting we didn't ask for, that I understood that I might need to accept a standard of housing that was lower than what we came from, but that there was a limit to the number of steps down in standard that I was prepared to take. Sure enough, at that point we were shown several houses that weren't on homefind. So there ya go. Mind you the house we'd locked in was really substandard, don't know where they dredged it up from, there were no shelves inside the cupboard recesses, the "family room" was a hallway you could barely fit a small kitchen table in, the window coverings were so old as to be decaying, a number of windows didn't even have window locks(!) and large portions of the trim (inside as well as out) were painted in a delightful shade of mission brown. DHA didn't want to spend to money to upgrade those things, I think that house was sold shortly afterwards. And to think if I'd sucked it up we would've lived there for 5 years.
Last edited by AnyDream; January 21st, 2011 at 06:02 PM.
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they are called the DRHM Defence Relocation and Housing Managers. I work quite closely with the Sydney office. They are Defence employees there basically to make sure DHA and Toll are adhering to the terms of their contracts. They take so many complaints but sometimes things are just unreasonable...the sense of entitlement some ppl have is incredible!!
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Peekaboo
Since I was last on BB we have moved back to Adelaide, and our lovely home was vacant for 18 months... So DHA have had plenty of calls from me for things like plumbing, electrics, and phone. But it is a nice house. Typical army style though, DH has been given extra stand down because the new army stuff at Edinburgh is not ready. Metalsmith with no welding wire, Qies with no stationary, ect ect ect. So he is home until the end of January and using the RAAF gym because the army gym is not ready yet. Could be worse though.
We found out 2 days before prepack which hotels we were staying in, and got allowances a day late, but we got here without too many problems.
Anna if you post to Adelaide ask to not get Sombrero Suites for TAASA... THEY SUCK!!! Does not deserve the 4 stars that it got 15 odd years ago.
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Hey girls. We have just moved from Sydney to Melbourne, so any of you out there in Melbourne???
We had a terrible time with Toll for this move. Our relocations manager was CRAP!!!! she forgot to get a cot for our ds and we had to arrange that ourselves and then the silly woman forgot to recalculate our allowances and now we have to pay them back!! She was hopeless!!!
Anyway's so far liking Melbourne and our new house is pretty good. It's even got ducted evaporative cooling which is keeping me sane
Hope you're all well. Welcome to all the new ladies
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Hi everyone.
Wow, I can't imagine how tough it must be for you guys dealing with dha. Dh and I own our home so thankfully we have never had to deal with dha yet and I don't see him being posted anywhere any time soon so for now I don't think we will have to. Dh thinks that in order for him to get a promotion any time soon we may need to move but thankfully he is pretty happy doing what he is doing for now so is happy to sit tight for now. Dh and i are adelaide born and raised so i would find it very tough to move away. I don't know how you ladies do it moving away from family and support.
Dh took a posting when ds1 was born which meant little to no travel so iv been very spoilt the last two years having him at home all the time. I am dreading the thought of him returning to his previous squadron as they are so stretched at the moment that some guys are only going to be home 5 months of this year. Dh has another year on his current posting and then hopefully can stay on or would like to get into recruiting. I think he really needs a bit of a change and that would be great for him as his travel would be substantially reduced as we live about an hour away from the base so dh has a fair bit of travel everyday. I find it hard being so far away from the base sometimes as I don't really have anyone around me who really gets what being a defence wife is really like. I found this especially hard when dh was travelling alot. People would just give me the old you knew what his job was when you married him line.
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God I hate that line!!! Of course I knew what his job was but it does not make it any easier to be a defence wife!!!!! Stupid people
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Wowee, is it really true you're in Adelaide! Are you coming to the get together next weekend???
Last edited by AnyDream; January 22nd, 2011 at 02:32 PM.
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All this talk about DHA houses - when I was moved to Brisbane (while DH was deployed), I accepted a house that was lower than our entitlement because it was only 20 minutes away from my Mum's house and it was only myself living there anyway (my sister moved in too, but officially it was only me). It was in Brisbane with no air con and only a ceiling fan in my room that squeaked all the time! As if I didn't get little enough sleep being heavily pregnant and having put on 20kgs! Anyway, I rang DHA only about the garage door not working and they got someone to call me really quickly. Turned out I just have to flick a switch and it worked again.
Beautitude - I understand what you mean about living far away from the base. My DH is in the Navy, so they don't really do anything anyway at the bases, but when I was living in Brisbane the DHA house we got was just around the corner from Ennoggera Barracks. It was great there - they had playgroup and craft weekly, plus ladies night in once a month. I used to get together with a lot of the ladies from there too and it was really good. Their husband's were deployed just before mine got back, so they understood what I was going through and were really supportive.
Does anyone else live in Canberra?
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Yeah I totally get that but the discrepancy in housing allocation is ridiculous as well. Couples with no kids in four bedroom houses is just as unbelievably incredible (and sucky).
I must say the HMC in Townsville was amazing when we lived up there, they hooked us up with a house that was beautiful, were endlessly helpful in the moving etc, never took ages to get things fixed. I can only give them two thumbs up. Sydney on the other hand...................they can bite me lol
Thanks for the tip about the TAASA in Adelaide Ali.
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Hey ladies! Also just found this thread so thought I'd say hi! I'm Jo and I'm married to an arty boy. We just moved from Brisbane to Townsville in September on our first posting - loving it up here but I have no friendsI know a few other wives but they don't seem to like me for some reason which annoys me to the beginning of no end! So I guess I'm really looking to make friends up here who are in the same boat...ship, jet, aslav.... Anyway! Just wanted to say hi!
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Strawberry fields: hopefully in 6 months we will be up there too!!! Townsville is our first preference n we will be moving in July-aug so you will hve a friend then! I hate how most army wives are pretentious and clicky... But not us! Haha. I haven't gotten involved with the others really unless they are gf's or wives of other guys on course.. Any of the instructors or higher ranked wives seem to not like fraternizing with trainees wives (even tho hubby has been in for 6yrs)
But I think you guys are all great! Lol.
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