Summary of Our Story
Summary of Our Story
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Published by admin on 21-Jan-2017 14:30 (2660 )
Welcome
We have been living “off the grid” for about 11 years now.
Why did we decide to make the change from living in an amazing house on Port Phillip Bay, with everything that goes along with that life style (ie boating, restaurants, electricity, water, telephone, Foxtel, mail delivery, garbage removal, etc etc etc) to living a way more different life in Central Victoria?
There was a complex set of reasons for wanting to totally change our existence to a more simple lifestyle.
Yes from the outside looking in our life was wonderful. We lapped up everything available. We could sit around watching foxtel all day or go boating and enjoy the bay life. We could eat a lot of take away food because it was so easy to go drive round the corner and have a choice of restaurants. We could indulge ourselves in any way we wanted to. (As far as our resources would let us)
But…. what sort of life is that really? How can sitting around thinking of ways to amuse ourselves really be a positive life? Feeling unattached and unproductive leads to depression.
We decided that there had to be way more to our existence. We wanted to participate and not be reliant on the outside world for everything. We wanted to stop being part of the system that just ‘uses’ and take for granted that we would be provided for. We wanted to be more self reliant, more conscious and more independent. In short we wanted more out of our life.
We were then over 50 and looking at the retirement years coming up. There was some choices to be made, we could sit around and get old and fat and wait until we could claim The Old Age Pension, or we could change our life. Find our purpose and really LIVE.
We put our house on the market and looked around for months for the exact property that we felt would meet our needs. Our criteria included things like being close enough to basic shops and a petrol station that you could drive there without wasting an hour and petrol to get there and back if you just wanted a loaf of bread or some milk. We also wanted to be closer to a bigger town that had supermarkets, hardware, banks, etc. We wanted some land so that we could spread out and have some animals and food growing. We wanted some sort of infrastructure so that we could move in and survive in the short term. We wanted solar power and rain tanks. We wanted to have a dam and we wanted to have some trees that we could harvest for fire wood. We wanted the land to be in a safe place. This means it had to have an elevation that precluded floods and tsunamis. It also needed to be not in area that was so thick with bushland that was too dangerous for fires.
Our house was sold and the settlement day was looming and although we had driven all around Victoria to look at properties for sale we were having trouble finding the perfect place. One day a property came up on Gumtree and we thought well we have to look at it and we were hoping it would be okay. It was in an area that I didn’t know at all. We made the 3 hour trip hoping it would be okay. What we found was an old ‘transportable house’ with a large container attached. To say it was average would be kind, but it was shelter and it did have an old solar system, a water tank, a septic. It also was on a made road, not dirt. It was 35 acres with 2 titles. It had 2 dams. And it was 5 minutes from a small town, 10 minutes to a much larger town and 45 minutes from 2 regional cities. It was a bush block so there was a lot of trees that could be harvested for fire wood, but it wasn’t the type of bush that was think with understory, so not too dangerous for fires. The price was also perfect, so we made an offer and bought the place in the nick of time because we were only a few weeks off settlement.
We moved in and worked for about 8 months straight making the property into somewhere we could call home.
Well that was all about 9 years ago. At the beginning of 2016 we decided that we wanted to sell the original property on a title and keep the second title and rebuild. We had lived here for long enough and found all the pitfalls. We hadn’t upgraded the solar system and that was really becoming a major issue. We had a great hydroponic garden set up which we loved; we had the chooks and ducks; we had a really comfortable property, but we felt we could make it better. And making it better meant starting from scratch and rebuilding.
The new owners came along and gave us 10 weeks for settlement so we were off and running. We needed to have somewhere to move all our stuff to and somewhere to live in 10 weeks.
We managed to get an amazing shed up for our stuff and a beautiful little one room bungalow complete with a kitchen finished and we moved in. We didn’t have a bathroom so that was obviously a priority. We did have a water tank and had it half filled and then it rained and filled it up… yeah…. all 22,500 litres. We had a composting toilet, a solar panel, a couple of batteries and we were set to start our new adventure.
This website is a story about how we live. Its a very simple life. We are as self reliant, as far as possible. We are of an age when retirement years are looming and we want to be able to sustain ourselves during those years and live an amazing adventure.
Please join us on our journey.
We have been living “off the grid” for about 11 years now.
Why did we decide to make the change from living in an amazing house on Port Phillip Bay, with everything that goes along with that life style (ie boating, restaurants, electricity, water, telephone, Foxtel, mail delivery, garbage removal, etc etc etc) to living a way more different life in Central Victoria?
There was a complex set of reasons for wanting to totally change our existence to a more simple lifestyle.
Yes from the outside looking in our life was wonderful. We lapped up everything available. We could sit around watching foxtel all day or go boating and enjoy the bay life. We could eat a lot of take away food because it was so easy to go drive round the corner and have a choice of restaurants. We could indulge ourselves in any way we wanted to. (As far as our resources would let us)
But…. what sort of life is that really? How can sitting around thinking of ways to amuse ourselves really be a positive life? Feeling unattached and unproductive leads to depression.
We decided that there had to be way more to our existence. We wanted to participate and not be reliant on the outside world for everything. We wanted to stop being part of the system that just ‘uses’ and take for granted that we would be provided for. We wanted to be more self reliant, more conscious and more independent. In short we wanted more out of our life.
We were then over 50 and looking at the retirement years coming up. There was some choices to be made, we could sit around and get old and fat and wait until we could claim The Old Age Pension, or we could change our life. Find our purpose and really LIVE.
We put our house on the market and looked around for months for the exact property that we felt would meet our needs. Our criteria included things like being close enough to basic shops and a petrol station that you could drive there without wasting an hour and petrol to get there and back if you just wanted a loaf of bread or some milk. We also wanted to be closer to a bigger town that had supermarkets, hardware, banks, etc. We wanted some land so that we could spread out and have some animals and food growing. We wanted some sort of infrastructure so that we could move in and survive in the short term. We wanted solar power and rain tanks. We wanted to have a dam and we wanted to have some trees that we could harvest for fire wood. We wanted the land to be in a safe place. This means it had to have an elevation that precluded floods and tsunamis. It also needed to be not in area that was so thick with bushland that was too dangerous for fires.
Our house was sold and the settlement day was looming and although we had driven all around Victoria to look at properties for sale we were having trouble finding the perfect place. One day a property came up on Gumtree and we thought well we have to look at it and we were hoping it would be okay. It was in an area that I didn’t know at all. We made the 3 hour trip hoping it would be okay. What we found was an old ‘transportable house’ with a large container attached. To say it was average would be kind, but it was shelter and it did have an old solar system, a water tank, a septic. It also was on a made road, not dirt. It was 35 acres with 2 titles. It had 2 dams. And it was 5 minutes from a small town, 10 minutes to a much larger town and 45 minutes from 2 regional cities. It was a bush block so there was a lot of trees that could be harvested for fire wood, but it wasn’t the type of bush that was think with understory, so not too dangerous for fires. The price was also perfect, so we made an offer and bought the place in the nick of time because we were only a few weeks off settlement.
We moved in and worked for about 8 months straight making the property into somewhere we could call home.
Well that was all about 9 years ago. At the beginning of 2016 we decided that we wanted to sell the original property on a title and keep the second title and rebuild. We had lived here for long enough and found all the pitfalls. We hadn’t upgraded the solar system and that was really becoming a major issue. We had a great hydroponic garden set up which we loved; we had the chooks and ducks; we had a really comfortable property, but we felt we could make it better. And making it better meant starting from scratch and rebuilding.
The new owners came along and gave us 10 weeks for settlement so we were off and running. We needed to have somewhere to move all our stuff to and somewhere to live in 10 weeks.
We managed to get an amazing shed up for our stuff and a beautiful little one room bungalow complete with a kitchen finished and we moved in. We didn’t have a bathroom so that was obviously a priority. We did have a water tank and had it half filled and then it rained and filled it up… yeah…. all 22,500 litres. We had a composting toilet, a solar panel, a couple of batteries and we were set to start our new adventure.
This website is a story about how we live. Its a very simple life. We are as self reliant, as far as possible. We are of an age when retirement years are looming and we want to be able to sustain ourselves during those years and live an amazing adventure.
Please join us on our journey.
