It has been a long wait for the last two pianos to arrive... but they are finally in our house and ready to be put into active service again! It has been a bit of a harrowing five month wait for my wife as two of her babies were put firstly into storage in the Netherlands due to the spike in air-freight from the Omicron variant... and then when the Ukraine-Russia war broke out, air shipping costs went through the roof.

At first, we were just going to wait it all out... but it started to become apparent that the war wasn't going to end anytime soon, and the prices for air shipping was going to remain high for the foreseeable future. So, after three month or more in Dutch storage, we decided to bite the bullet and have the upright piano and the fortepiano shipped over... after all, we now had a home to move it into, and the sea shipment including the harpsichord had already arrived! Besides, my wife was starting to get work, and needed a decent piano to practice upon.

It stung, but we decided to ship the two instruments on the next available flight... a few weeks ago. Since then, they have been sitting in an Australia storage for Customs and Quarantine to inspect and clear. Until last week, when the pianos made their way up to Canberra and just today... into our house again.

It is really nice to see that they have arrived, and survived the CITES ordeal... the upright piano is a lovely old instrument that has old ivory keys. That means that it is a banned import/export material, unless you can prove that the ivory/instrument was before the CITES treaty was enacted. Thankfully, we had the proof that the instrument was old, and so we were able to have the CITES exemption certificate. However, the certificate validity was almost expired, which would mean that we would need to apply for another certificate, from the other side of the world! Well, applying for the first CITES exception was already a pain in the arse, from the same country (Netherlands), and so the incoming expiration was another factor in our decision to ship immediately!

So, the removalists probably hate moving pianos... thankfully, these were pretty light ones (light for pianos...)... there were only two guys doing it. I'm always amazed that they only send two guys to move a piano... but they have a trolley and the training, but it always seems like that it is going to be a back killer if you send less people. On the other hand, there really isn't that much more space to fit more people, so... I'm not entirely sure that having more people is going to help either!

The room Tetris puzzle isn't really solved.... but we are getting there. However, the next few weeks or more are going to be more about getting the outside sorted. There is a crazy amount of clearing of dead wood and leaves... getting the gutters cleaned and protected... trees to be trimmed or removed. That sort of thing... lots and lots of stuff to do. All outdoors, but hopefully, it will all be worth it when the whole thing is tidied up and under regular maintenance.

Until then, we have the lovely sounds of our pianos back again. It has been nice to hear them today... and they survived the trip without any major ill effects. Well, none that we managed to notice right off the bat. The removalists were pretty interested in the harpsichord and fortepiano, they were unusual instruments that they had never seen before... and one of them even had a little play on them!

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