Our very own bit of Australia!

Finally, the dream of most Australians - to own their house outright -has come true for us!   Thanks to Ken's inheritance from his darling Mother, we paid our mortgage off earlier this year.  But it wasn't quite complete.
The title was still in the name of our bank, and we had to go to the Land Victoria office (formerly known as the Titles Office) and have the title changed to our names as owners.  I did this last week, at a cost of $215 (they get at you in all ways, don't they....you still have to pay for the piece of paper that says you own your land) and we celebrated afterwards with lunch in the CBD.  The original is now safely in a security box at our solicitor's office, with a photocopy here at home.
This is what the original title looks like.  The lady at the lending department of our bank told us that the Titles office would issue a new one and destroy this, and advised us to take a photo of it, as it is a historic document that dates back nearly 100 years.  So we did take a copy, but lo and behold the original was handed back to us along with the new title - the lady said keep it as a souvenir!

And this is the new one - all computerised now, but with the same information on it.  For obvious reasons, I have cut the address details out of the scan before posting it here!