'Entire life' sold for £192,000

Mr Usher said he expected higher bids

A Briton living in Australia has agreed a bid of more than £192,000 after putting his "entire life" up for sale following a split from his wife.

Ian Usher, 44, who left Darlington six years ago, included his house, car, job and friends in the online eBay auction, in an effort to make a fresh start.

The lot attracted a peak offer of 399,300 Australian dollars (£192,276) when bids closed early on Sunday.

Despite expecting higher bids, Mr Usher said he had "no regrets".

At one point offers on the "life lot" rocketed to over two million Australian dollars (£1m) within hours of the sale's start last Sunday.

However, Mr Usher and eBay were forced to introduce a registration system to weed out what were revealed as hoax bids, many of which were from the UK.

Up for auction was his three-bedroom home, in Western Australia's capital Perth, and everything inside it, including his Mazda car, motorcycle, jet ski and parachuting gear.

He also sold an introduction to his friends and a trial run at his sales assistant job at a rug shop.

After the auction closed Mr Usher said: "I am relatively pleased but I thought it would go a bit higher, if I'm honest.

"But I've no regrets. What's done is done and I'm looking forward to sorting this all out."

Mr Usher said he would not reveal the identity of the buyer before he had made a telephone call to him.

He added: "It was open season for 18 hours or so and people got a bit over-excited. I was a bit disappointed by the fake bidding, but it didn't surprise me."

Mr Usher decided to cut ties with his current life after realising almost everything reminded him of his relationship with his wife of five years.

He said: "I've got some ideas. Once it's finished and confirmed, I'd like to do some travelling. I'd like to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, it's one of a huge list of things I want to achieve."

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