Have you tried a Surf store? DFO might have some outlets worth checking.

Otherwise, thrifty shopping. Take a day trip to the Northern Beaches and check their local Vinnie’s/Salvos, I’m sure they’ll have something nice for a low price.

I’d say part of the problem lies with the responsibility to fix the potholes.

If I’m not wrong, the fixing of potholes falls under the councils (at least those potholes not in Motorways and such). And I’ll bet that each council has different budgets and priorities.

Sprinkle a bit of border arguments if a pothole happens to be between councils, and you’ve made yourself a nice plate of Not My Problem^TM!

I also wonder how much the population and area of Sydney affect this. Higher volume of cars degrades the road faster. Maybe we should use a measure of “potholes per capita” to be able to do an accurate comparison.

When I encountered a similar situation I tried with the ikea speakers (Sonos Based) and I couldn’t get them to work without the sonos app, so I returned them.

I figured that a solution could be having, in each room, a mini-pc (RPi or similar) running RuneAudio and a set of speakers connected via audiojack.

I tried with 1 room and the proof of concept seemed to work, but didn’t invest on getting the rest of the house work.

In the end went for a couple of portable Bluetooth speakers to have floating around the place. Cheap and simple