The wife wasn't keen to move to a village. I wanted to, but I just said it was up to her. I couldn't force her. My knees at that stage were very bad and we struggled with what I call an upside-down house, with all the living upstairs. In fact, we had placed a deposit on a chair lift for the stairs but it just wasn't going to work."

"The whole maintenance scene was getting me down."

"The wife wasn't keen to move to a village. I wanted to, but I just said it was up to her. I couldn't force her. My knees at that stage were very bad and we struggled with what I call an upside-down house, with all the living upstairs. In fact, we had placed a deposit on a chair lift for the stairs but it just wasn't going to work."

"We also had a huge garden area and all I was doing was work, work, work around the home. It was looking lovely but I was 75 and I wasn't coping. The whole maintenance scene was getting me down. We couldn't see the value of moving out of our house to a smaller one or even an apartment. We may as well have stayed where we were. And we had basically been there since 1958."

As my wife saw the development starting, she could see the shape of it and the overall suburb of Pemulwuy forming. Retirement By Design were really good because they kept involving us in their special days; they kept us interested without placing any pressure on us. They had a big day down by the lake where all the residents from the suburb came along; there were young families, kids and dogs. It felt good. We went ahead and bought off the plan. I reckon we got the pick of the lot."

"Everybody thinks it's hard making the move and in a way it is, but it's worth it. We often say we are glad we made the effort now while we are in our 70s rather than in 10 years time in our 80s when it really would be very hard clearing out the old house, selling it and setting yourself up again."

"Now we are really treating ourselves to the comforts of life. My wife has always wanted a big-screen plasma television, but we never bought one because our 1971 television was so good it would never wear out. The only things we brought along from the old place were two beds and some paintings. The rest is brand new - including that plasma television. She had to make the decision to get rid of all the old stuff and upgrade. We also bought two fabulous leather recliner chairs. They are wonderful. She loves it all."

"Our apartment is a good size; 112 square metres of living, plus three different balconies. She loves the kitchen which is compact but with no wasted space - in our old house, we had a big kitchen but there was a lot of wasted space. We have two air-conditioners with split systems, where in the old house we had ducted air upstairs and nothing down stairs. But we find this place is so well insulated that we don't use the air-conditioner much, and you can see this in the costs to live here. We just got our first electricity bill which was $165 compared to the same period in our old house where the bill was $400, and on top of that we had the gas hot water, gas stove and gas heating."

"I have to tell you, I don't miss the maintenance or the garden. And I love the heated swimming pool which has been really good for my knees; I do aquarobics in it once and sometimes twice a day. My wife loves to sit on the balcony and looking out on Pemulwuy with the children playing and the dogs being walked. The big Woolworths and all the shops being right next door also makes a huge difference. She feels part of the community, even more than our old family home; we were a bit cut off there when you think about it."

"It's all good here, mate."

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