Our last few weeks in Oz

The environment of our second house sitting was the polar opposite of our first.  We went from a brand new, rather stark new development of medium density housing to a well established country setting of large houses on five acre blocks near Picton.  The comfortable house was filled to the brim with 40 years of living.  We had two dogs and two goats to look after.  One of the dogs, Torro, kept us busy throwing balls and playing tug.

The driveway up to the house outside Picton

Some of the beautiful visitors to the house - Rainbow Lorikeet

Female King Parrot

Playful Torro

Quiet Ishie

The goats Carmel and Petal

Picton is located off the Hume Highway, the main route from Canberra to Sydney, and we had passed by hundreds of times but never explored the area.  This was our opportunity and we had several very pleasant walks along the Nepean and Bargo rivers.  Picton is a quaint little town.  We got to know the local librarian quite well as we used the printer at the library several times to print off various boarding passes for the next leg of our travels.  The town also has one of the best quilting shops I have seen.  The visit to the shop made me a bit melancholy as quilting is one of the activities I miss the most while living this nomadic life.

Nepean River at Picton

Steps along the river walk

Mermaid Pools on the Bargo River - we had a wonderful swim here

We took the train into Sydney twice to go to the Greek Consulate for my long stay visa.  I now will be able to stay in Greece for a year.  I am very pleased!  No more counting the 90 in 180 Schengen days and juggling passports.  We also visited some of my old stomping grounds around Sydney when I lived there in the late 1980's.

The little two up - two down terrace in Surrey Hills which I owned 1987- 1991- now worth 10 times what I sold it for!

Another day we drove into Sydney for a British Cruising Association Antipodean section luncheon at the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron in Kirribilli.  We had a great lunch with great company in a beautiful setting.  To our surprise most of the attendees have their boats in the Eastern Mediterranean and we had probably had crossed paths (wakes) over the past two years and may meet again in the upcoming season.  No matter what our backgrounds there is always something to talk about among other yachties.

Beautiful Sydney Harbour

The Antipodean CA group

After two weeks in Picton we finished our house sitting and made a lightening trip to Canberra to have a last dinner with the boys and say goodbye to some friends.  What a mix of emotions!  Miss you already, my handsome sons.  We are very proud of you both.

 

House Sitting – Canberra

Our plan was to spend six weeks in Australia catching up with family and friends after being away for about 20 months.  Realistically we could mooch off family and friends for only a few days at a time and staying in hotels would totally blow our budget.  We toyed with various other options for accommodation; renting or buying an old caravan, AirBnB but none suited us.  Then we Googled House Sitting and a whole new world opened up for us.  There were thousands of hits for these global house sitting web based services.  We chose Aussie House Sitters.

 

 For a small fee (less than the cost of one night in a hotel) we registered with the service.  We lodged a short biography of ourselves for prospective home owners to read and searched the site for those home owners who wanted someone to mind their house and pets for the dates and location we needed accommodation.  Once we found a listing that looked promising we flagged our interest with the home owner, who in turn would get in touch with us via the web site.  A conversation would start and if both parties felt comfortable, a deal would be made.  In exchange for looking after their house, garden and pets, we receive free accommodation.  It is the perfect win-win situation and quite amazing as it is all done on trust and good will.

Our first house sit was a small townhouse recently purchased by a young couple, Greg and Corrine.  It is located in a brand new suburb of Canberra and we were looking after Daisy, the greyhound.  The townhouse is located just down the road from where our sons live with two other young men, our family dog, Toby, and three chickens in a rambling old farm house straight out of The Young Ones.

The family dog, Toby

The chooks

The townhouse is in a new development of monochromatic grey and white medium density housing.  The townhouse was white - white walls, white furniture, white bedspreads, white cushions, white cupboards.  All surfaces were clear and uncluttered.  There were tiny yards front and back which were recently landscaped nicely with shrubs and flowers.  It took as a while to get use to the starkness of a new development but one could see that there was a community budding (as evidenced by a Boxing Day regatta of model sailboats organised by the residents).  When the trees and gardens grow over the next few years, it should be a vibrant district.

Bob and Daisy in front of our Townhouse house sit

Standard roses bursting into bloom

Man-made lakes dot the new development

Our daily evening walk around the neighbourhood with Daisy

We spent our three weeks in Canberra celebrating the holidays and spending time with the boys, catching up with friends, shopping for all those little things that are hard to get in Turkey and Greece, visiting old haunts and generally enjoying the Nation’s capital.  One day we took our family dog, Toby, for a walk around Mt Taylor, a walk we did weekly when we lived in Canberra.  The kangaroo population has exploded on the mountain.

Friendly mob of roos

Canberra is very quiet during the Christmas / New Year period and throughout January.  Many do the annual exodus to the Coast for the summer holiday leaving the streets empty.  Still, I enjoyed re-acquainting myself with this very pretty Capital where we lived for nearly 20 years.

Canberra looking toward Mt Ainsle

The Carillon on Lake Burley Griffin

Christmas sillies

Dinner at the Hellenic Club

Lake Burley Griffin panorama

Our Time in Oz - Sydney and Bello

We arrived back in Australia after being away for about 20 months.  We have been experiencing an occasional feeling of disconnect but are very happy to catch up with everyone and breathe in the Australian air filled with the scents of eucalyptus. 

Our first stop was to spend a few days in Sydney with Bob’s stepfather and brother.  It was heartening to see that Ray, at 88, has gone back to singing in his choir and is keeping active.  During our time away, creeping suburbia has invaded the pretty rural setting of the home of Bob’s brother; a sad consequence of ‘progress’.  Les is holding out to keep his few acres of Oz.

Bob, Ray and Les

Our next stop was up the Pacific Highway to Bellingen to catch up with friends, to inspect our house and see how our belongings have fared during their time in storage.  Our friend, Wendy, offered us her flat in Coffs Harbour for our stay.  We were so grateful for the offer.  Not only did it save us hundreds in accommodation cost but the setting was just magic.  It struck us that in all our time living in Bellingen, Coffs was generally a place to come to for a big shop and then return home.  We now had the opportunity to leisurely explore the area and what a beautiful area it is.  We now have a whole new appreciation of Coffs Harbour.

Our view of Coffs Harbour from Wendy's flat

Sunrise from the bedroom window

Our house on Shamballa was looking good.  All the renovations and landscaping we did in 2014 -15 have paid off as the place is much easier for tenants to maintain.  We have a new tenant, Andrew, a tree surgeon.  He has already been up the 100 foot Tallowood tree in the front paddock and removed a dead branch.  It looks like he and his two girls are loving the place as much as we do.  We hope they will stay for some time.

Solar Mist, which we had wrapped up in tarps, looked just as we left her (though I could tell she was feeling very sad to have been usurped by her big sister).  All our household goods are stored in a 20 foot shipping container.  We were game only to open it up and peek inside to check that no leaks or obvious damage had occurred.  As nice as it would have been to get a few things, we were not going to start unpacking.  All was fine inside but as we locked up the container we wondered how much of what it contained would we really want or need when we come back to live in Bellingen.  The Troopie fared the worst during our absence.  We hadn’t covered it and it was filthy, covered in gum leaves and very musty inside.  We cleaned it up as best we good, chased out the critters that had taken up residence and covered it with a tarp.  Fingers crossed we will still have a usable vehicle when we next return.

Horace, the Huntsman spider, living in the Troopie

We caught up with friends and visited Josh’s grave in the cemetery.  Our little cemetery on the property now has six people remembered there.  It is a very beautiful spot.   

After 5 days it was time to head to Canberra to see the boys and start our house sitting caper.  As always we leave Bellingen with a mix of emotions, torn between our love of the place and its people and our need to travel and sail.

End of Year Reflections

 

It is the end of 2016 and we are now back in Australia for a visit.  We have been away from Australia since April 2015.  Yet in many ways it seems like we left only a week ago.

 

As is the custom at the end of the year, we have been reflecting on and reviewing the strange trip it has been since our retirement.  I stopped full time work in May 2013, Bob stopped in December of that year.  In those three and one half years we have traveled to 23 different countries, renovated two houses and sold one, became nomads with no fixed address and bought a boat on which we now live when not doing land travel.  Yes, what a strange trip it has been.

Each star represents where we spent at least one night outside Australia since May 2013

I must say we do not miss work at all.  I do sometimes wonder if this lifestyle is a bit too hedonistic. (Bob doesn’t seem to have this Puritanical guilt.)  But we have always been travelers, a driving force for us really.  Bob traveled extensively in the 70’s and 80’s, including doing the hippie trail overland from England to Australia, through many routes that are now closed to tourist.  Travel has always been a priority for me as well, spending saved up money on airfares instead of new cars or household goods, and indeed emigrating to a new country in my early 30’s. 

We reflected on how travel has changed over the last 30 to 40 years.  In the 70’s, it was a great Australian tradition for young people to take a year or so off to see the world.  When I first went overseas in 1978, I was totally blown away by the many Australians I met at youth hostels who had been traveling for nine months or more, when my one month independent European trip was viewed by my contemporaries as being quite adventurous.  Meeting those travelers opened up great possibilities for me.

The Lonely Planet Shoestring Guides - The Bible for travelers in the 70's

Australia’s isolation certainly played a role in the country’s youth becoming great travelers. (Australia was so far away from the ‘rest of the world’ that you better see as much as you could while you had the chance.)  But perhaps more importantly, Australians traveled because they could.  One could take a year off after university to see the world and travel on a shoestring (no university debt as higher education was free then in Australia).  One then could come back and easily get a job (unemployment was at record lows) with no adverse effect on one’s career.  This travel was not restricted to those who had gone to university.  Young adults could get a good paying and respected job after high school, save up money and then hit the road.  Society seemed to support and encourage this rite of passage as it broadened ones’ world view and demonstrated independence and resourcefulness; characteristics employers respected back then.

 

 In the US, travel for the young was and still seems to be largely restricted to the organised two week high school trip to Europe or the semester abroad.  Pressures of career and massive university debt seem to make all but the most fleeting travel impossible for most young Americans; to say nothing of the near impossibility for those with only a high school education.

The travel guides now seem to treat destinations as boxes to tick for bragging rights – Ten Best this, Most Luxurious that.  Travel seems to have become more an indulgence for the self-absorbed wealthy than a learning experience that should be open to the majority.  The very places that had attracted the backpacker in the 70’s for its uniqueness and authenticity have become sanitised and westernised and just another box for tourist to tick – 100 Places to go Before You Die.

On the positive side we see that travel is opening up for youth outside of the Western world.  Air Asia has made a tremendous difference in travel opportunities for young Asians.

So as we continue our travels into the next year of our retirement, embracing the bug that was planted in our 20’s, we apologise to and mourn for what the next generation may miss.  Our generation has not left the world a better place for the next.  We are keenly aware of the privilege and honour to live this lifestyle.  All I can say is keep open to possibilities; do not accept that the life society dictates is the only option open.