Living In New Land Estates: Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Last year my husband and I built a house. Yep, from scratch, from the ground up (and I have the photos to prove it) but no, not with my bare hands. I sensibly paid someone for that part. 

This means we live in what’s called a ‘greenfields estate’, or a newly released area of land which is in the process of being subdivided and sold off in stages. So I have no neighbours, basically. There’s a lot of empty space here. A few other houses are being built in my street, but ours is the only one occupied. The earlier parts of my estate have a lot more houses, but still aren’t completely finished. Basically, I live in a very new area of Sydney. 

Or, possibly, the cold nether regions of hell. 

Yes, I have a beautiful new house. And apparently to the rest of the world it doesn’t exist. 

It’s news to me, but it seems every GPS is powered by Google Maps or Whereis, and as it happens, even Google Maps in Australia gets its information from Whereis. According to Whereis, our street doesn’t exist. In fact, if you search my suburb, that also doesn’t exist. No one uses an old-fashioned street directory anymore, where we might (possibly) exist in the 2012 edition. I should purchase one just to check. And of course the novelty of owning an actual street directory. 

It’s amazing how many problems you have when you don’t exist.

• My electricity company sent me an ‘estimated’ bill because they ‘couldn’t find the meter box’ – read ‘We couldn’t find your house’.
• I’ve had to direct any number of people to my house on the phone, including the furniture delivery man, and the grocery delivery man. In fact, the grocery delivery man calls every fortnight. Invariably, when I ask where he is, he’s in a location I don’t know – just so I can’t direct him here. The one time he was somewhere I knew, he was at the wrong end of a very long road and he kept me on the phone while he drove from one end to the other. I had nothing better to do with that ten minutes of my life after all;
• Telstra, Australia’s biggest telecommunications company, told me they didn’t provide internet service in my area – because they couldn’t find it. Ironically, when I sorted that out, the guy who came to connect the phone had no problems finding us at all. See my post for ‘U’ in the A to Z Challenge for more information about my Telstra debacles.
• Australia Post is the only company that can unfailingly find me. As long as you only want to send me a letter. As soon as someone sends me a parcel, they can’t find me. Go figure. I’ve had parcels sent halfway across the country back to the sender because my house mysteriously disappeared when Australia Post came out that day;
• Telstra (again) tell me I ‘refused delivery’ of modem. I’m assuming this was a convenient excuse for the delivery man who (presumably) couldn’t find us because I never had anyone try and deliver a modem to me. Ironically, when Telstra sent me a piece of hardware I didn’t order and didn’t want, the delivery man found me that day.

So it’s been...fun. I’ve logged a change request for Whereis to include us, but so far no luck. I’ve also lodged a complaint with Australia Post, but I’m still waiting on the outcome of that. 

I guess the salesman forgot to mention this postcode is situated in the outer regions of hell with limited services!

I did wonder about the decor when we first visited the area...

This is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge Series. If you missed the previous posts, you can find them here - A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, and K.

If you enjoyed this post, please feel free to check out my previous posts if you haven't already. If you're finding yourself here often, you might like to join as a member, sign up to the blog through RSS or email, or subscribe to my newsletter.

Don't forget to share the love and spread the word on Twitter, Facebook or StumbleUpon (or other social networking site of your choice) if you know other people who might also enjoy this.

Thanks for stopping by and visiting with us!