First, the vocabulary
Three terms decide how smooth your day is, so it is worth knowing exactly what they mean:
- Lift booking: a reserved window where one lift is yours, usually fitted with protective curtains by building management. Most managed buildings in Wollongong require one for moves, and popular slots go a week or more ahead.
- Loading dock or loading zone: where the truck legally stands while it works. Newer towers have a dock off the street; older blocks rely on the kerbside loading zone, which is shared and short-stay.
- Building manager: the person who controls both of the above. Make friends early; a five-minute call to them answers half of this guide for your specific building.
Two weeks out
- Book the lift at BOTH buildings if you are moving tower to tower. The second booking is the one people forget, and it is the one that strands a loaded truck.
- Ask each building manager: which lift, what hours, is a deposit or insurance certificate required, and where does the truck stand?
- Measure the four things that decide whether big furniture comes with you: the lift door height and depth, the narrowest corridor corner, the apartment door, and the balcony opening if a sofa might need to arrive sideways.
The night before
- Finish packing completely. In an apartment there is nowhere to hide a half-packed room, and lift windows do not stretch.
- Label every box with its destination room. Corridor time is the expensive time in a tower move; a labelled box never travels twice.
- Pack a first-night box and keep it in your own car: kettle, chargers, sheets, toiletries, and whatever makes a place feel like yours.
- Empty, defrost and dry the fridge. A dripping fridge in a protected lift makes no friends.
On the day
A good crew runs a tower move as a loop: two movers feeding the lift in alternating trolley runs so it never travels empty, protection on the lift walls and lobby floor before the first box, heaviest pieces in the middle of the window when everyone is warm but not tired. Your job is decisions, not lifting: be reachable, and know where the essentials box went.
The one mistake that ruins tower moves: treating the lift window as a suggestion. If the window is 8 to 11, the truck needs to be loading by 8:05. It is the reason we plan truck position the week before, not on the morning.
Landing well
- Beds rebuilt first, before the boxes are even half done. A made bed turns a chaotic first night into a fine one.
- Break down boxes as you empty them; apartments have no box graveyard, and most Wollongong buildings have cardboard recycling rules worth knowing.
- Meet the building manager as yourself this time, not as a move. It pays off for the next delivery, the next repair, the next favour.