There's no place like.... Coogee

So we're now officially residents of Coogee. It's the Australia Day long weekend which means, like all self-respecting Australians, we spent it trawling Ikea for random bits of shit we thought we'd packed but clearly ditched because 27 boxes was enough.

I think the inevitable arrival of all our boxes a couple of weeks ago, like a weird and belated sentimental Christmas, was really the push I needed to find somewhere for us to live - ahead of schedule and without the necessary funds. And so I lodged an application for our (ok, ok, my) dream apartment and in the face of all the Sydney shrieking about real estate and rental markets, we were approved and given the keys.

As much as I loved living up on the northern beaches in the sanctuary that is parental paradise, even my inner cranky Londoner was quietly having to concede that it was less living and more hiding. Whether we like it not, we live in Sydney now. So best get on with it, I suppose. 

And thus last weekend we moved to Coogee. 

Pictures still need to be hung and there's probably another trip to Ikea on the horizon somewhere but otherwise we're largely moved in and despite the uncertainties of Everything Else About Sydney, I feel like we finally have a little place that is definitively ours. And having so many tangible traces of our London life around us again feels pathetically reassuring - that no matter how far away we get from our time there, we have proof that it happened.

27 boxes of proof that now decorate the loveliest of apartments in Coogee.

Sydney might not feel like home but this little flat does.