Council and government departments - wherefore art thou helpful civil servants??

Council contacted us again ... and this time they need two letters from us before approving our plans. Apparently they require a letter from our neighbours-to-be confirming that they have no objections to us renovating an old home next door, and another from us stating that we will complete the renovation within a specified period of time (8months). I had a bit of a grumble about whether this was really necessary, and then dutifully wrote the letters. The neighbours have signed theirs and so we will submit them to council tomorrow. Hopefully this will be the last hurdle, but I won't be counting my chickens (or even my eggs at this stage)!

In other news, I have been trying to get some more research done on our little house. The Dept of Land and Resources were somewhat helpful, however I don't think it was quite worth my trip to their Nambour office, nor the $13.50 fee. I had a current title search done on the block of land in New Farm that our house was originally built on. All this told me was that it had been bought by a corporation who have now combined a number of blocks and built retail space (including a Coles supermarket) on the land.

One interesting piece of information it did reveal is that water and sewerage were connected in 1928, so our little house must have had an outhouse if it was built before this date, as we suspect. In order to get any more useful information, it looks like we'll have to do a historical title search. The lovely lady helping me at the Dept did everything she could to persuade me that this would be far too costly an excercise, and for what? I don't think she quite understood my obsession with our house's history.

In the meantime I have spoken with a lady at the Brisbane City Council Archives, who is happy for me to visit their office and they will help me with further research (for no cost!). Apparently it may be difficult without first having the name of the owner of the land before the house was built, but I'll take my chances and see what we come up with. At least she sounded enthusiastic, and even appreciative, that I wanted to delve into history!

I am hoping my next post will have "woohoo!" in the title - please council, you've given us enough grief already, get that "APPROVED" stamp out!

x M