Renting in Melbourne (Part II)

We signed the lease one rainy afternoon, got the keys and came to see the house. We wanted to see the house again, because initially we loved it, but were rushed through by the agent who showed it to us. Now it was our rented house! But we found dog hair in most rooms, brown spots of burnt oil in the overn and just old paint staring at us balankly from the walls. Yes, the rental company forgot to clean the house. The next morning we called them and in another two days they steam cleaned the carpets and ignored walls and oven... We had to move in anyway, and the lesson we learnt was that walls are not painted when a new tenant moves in, not one nail can be shot into the walls without the owner's permission and the oven, well, they just didn't care about it! When the first leak occurred, water started to drip through the ceiling. We called the rental company, who callled the owner. The owner decided to find someone to go up on the roof and check the roof tiles. He also decided that painting was a job the rental company could assign to someone, or better, the insurance company could take care of it... The timeline for this is as follows: leak appeared in February; roof repairman came in late March (Thank God it didn't rain much in a month!); first painter called in May; it's end of June and the ceiling is as brown as the rain left it... Luckily we don't use the guest room right now. If we'll ever use it again, I'll tell you. But we continue to pay the same rent, while we pray that nothing else breaks. Story number two. We also had a window that didn't open anymore. The owner and a painter he trusted decided that the problem was the bare wood of the windowsill. The painter came one day and painted the window on the outside. SHUT! We complained right away to the rental company, and they sent a repairman. He laughed at the painter's job, forced the window open, repainted it and, finally, made it work. I know you feel tired just by reading these stories. I do, too, but from waiting for months for something trivial my father could have fixed in an hour... Today's picture (totally unrelated, sorry) introduces to you another Australian parrot, the Rosella!