Diary of a modern day pioneer couple

Upon James' brilliant idea that he was bored and needed to build something like a house, garage and stables, we sold our 100 acre farm between Goulburn and Marulan and bought a 200 acre farm between Gundaroo and Collector, just outside of Canberra. We are now living on the new farm in a caravan with no electricity, no sewerage and no running water! This is our story. James and Tracey

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Location: Gundaroo, New South Wales, Australia

Friday, August 25, 2006

The Shedders

We're no longer trailer trash, instead we're "Shedders". Yes, we're finally in the shed! And it's just fantabulous. Just to be able to stretch our arms out and up and not touch anything and to sleep in a bed that we both fit in is the most wonderful feeling in the world. Even though we coped quite well in the caravan after now living in the shed for about a week, we couldn't go back to the caravan. The van is being picked up today and while we certainly won't be sad to see it go, it certainly has been a big adventure being trailer trash. We only have one more load to pick up from storage and then we'll have all our stuff back.

It's been funny getting our stuff from storage to see what we've actually been able to live without and what we've missed. We'll probably do a big clean out soon, but we guess it probably would've been better to have done the clean out before we moved rather than after!! It's the small things like just being able to eat of a normal sized dinner plate that we've missed. We had been using a picnic set while we were in the van for the two days a week that the pub was closed for meals and while that was handy, they were small plates. And for those of you who know what James' appetite is like, well we ended up eating straight out of the saucepan or the frying pan 'cause a picnic plate just didn't hold enough food for James and his pet tapeworm!

Now that we're in a bigger space, we've been able to set up the gas stove/oven, the gas fridge and the patio table top gas heater. With the price of petrol through the roof at the moment, we'll certainly save on heating costs. We worked out that it was probably costing us more money in petrol for the generator than it would've cost us being on electricity!

And speaking of electricity, the trench is dug for the power we're just now waiting on a load of sand to put in the bottom of the trench and then we'll arrange for the electrician to come and lay the cable and connect us up - then we'll be living in the lap of luxury.

The site for the house, garage and stables has now been finished. We're still waiting on approval of our development application from the council. We spoke with the council last week to see how they were coming along with it and they told us that it shouldn't be too much longer. They were able to tell us that our DA already had about 50 conditions on it. We spoke to our neighbours who have friends who have just finished building and are in the same council area. They told us not to worry too much about the conditions on the DA as they could be really simple ones. Their friends had about 30 conditions and some of them were like the fridge space should be closed in on all four sides - so how are they going to open the fridge?? And the bathroom, kitchen and laundry taps all needed to be connected to the rainwater tank - what else would they be connected to in a rural area with no mains water?? We're waiting with baited breath to see what conditions this council has put on our DA....

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