We are currently living in Ipswich, just outside of Brisbane, and making regular trips to our farm.  It’s lovely to spend time with family in the area, and making progress with our plans to develop the property as quickly as we can.

First job on arriving back in OZ was to uncover our “other” freedom machine – aka The Troopy.  Air in the tyres, a new battery, and a scrub and she was up and running.

Our farm is on the caldera of an extinct volcano and is bordered by two National Parks, the Border Ranges and the Mebbin, and is in a beautiful temperate part of Australia.  The property is large, but we only plan on developing a two acre patch.  That will be plenty for us to look after as we still want to travel. 

The cottage and the property generally was severely overgrown and neglected.  We hired a dozer driver and within six hours he had miraculously cleared a huge portion of land to reveal something that we knew we could “fix”.  On closer inspection of the cottage, we were encouraged to see we could give it a good scrubbing and tentatively stay there whilst planning the renovations.  

Since arriving back in OZ, we have made five trips to the farm and have achieved clearing a substantial part of the two acres, got ourselves a local Post Office box and have received one letter already!, have had a couple of friends come and stay, hosted two six person dinner parties, and had a 20ft shipping container delivered onsite.  We’ve cleaned around the cottage and the tool shed where the dozer couldn’t reach and Dale resurrected all the electrics so that we have light powered by a generator.  Even though we have all camping equipment, we have been using the wood stove inside the cottage for cooking, and the other day we cleared and then planted some 500m2 of grass seed.  We’ve had a little rain, a lot of sunshine, and we keep checking on the grass each day to see if it has sprouted yet!

We try and do a little exploring each visit.  My brother Bruce was in Brisbane from Perth a week ago, so we brought him down to be a part of our adventure, then took a glorious winding country road back to Ipswich via the Summerland Way.

We’d like to think we can renovate the cottage and have the place quite presentable by the end of this year.  Willing hands are always welcome…