Down under

[Gulfalan67]

Thanks for the welcome everybody...

Nice to connect with a group of complete strangers across the world. As I mentioned above, I read a few discussion threads on the forum that I found interesting and was impressed at the thoughtful and civil discussion.

Some very knowledgeable folks on here apparently.

My wife and I live out bush in the Territory, close to a district called ‘Robin Falls’. We’re not sure what our own place is called. Haven’t given it a name yet.

We’ve spent about ten years so far building our home, and are at the point where we live very comfortably with all amenities. From now on we just get bigger, not better. It’s been bloody hard work getting to this point. The only outside help we brought in were sparkies installing our off grid power and air condition systems. Even in the Territory ( where there is little regulation) we needed certified trades to do that.

The third member of our family is our boy. Four legs and waggy tail.

Alan

 

[1 shot willie]

@Gulfalan67

Hi Alan.

"Interesting and thoughtful discussion" ...............you must have caught us all on a good day

What you have.... and have achieved there sounds pretty amazing....and yes....I can imagine the hard work and logistics involved.
How did you live in the beginning when building and project first started.....did you travel too and fro.....or camp on site?

Would love to see some pictures if you would like to share.....and read more about the journey through..... to where you are at now

Must include the Dog

 

[Gulfalan67]

Hiya Willie

Yes, it’s been an interesting project, but we feel very privileged to have been able to undertake it. We’ve been very lucky in many respects, health, finances and probably most importantly having the right partner.

In our experience nobody could do this alone. Takes two minimum and my wife is every bit an equal partner in this. In fact, have to say in many respects she is our primary building/ engineering strategist - while I lead more on the land management side of things.

We don’t live like ferals or hippies here. Unless you looked out of the windows you’d never know we didn’t live in a suburb. But it’s taken a long time to achieve. Back-breaking work.

Before we came, there’d never been any human occupation here. No infrastructure. That’s pretty rare, even for remote north Australia. Some ancient rock art in a gorge on the other side of the range, but apart from a few flint scatters on our side, nothing. Aboriginals probably passed through, but never stayed. Which is odd because lots of water around. But it’s hard country.

Back in the early days you couldn’t even drive the last few meters to our house site. Every single thing our house is built from had to unloaded and carried by hand up a rocky hill. That was one of my major contributions! Also because larger trucks couldn’t get to our home site, all materials had to be unloaded (by hand) then reloaded onto 4wd Toyota or LandRover utes ( pickups), driven through bush tracks to our home site, then unloaded by hand, carried manually up the hill. Ever moved a whole house by hand? I have, three times! These days we have a front loader to do much of the lifting, and have more property tracks.

Camping? Yes we spent several months camping on site while we got the first structures up and liveable. About 50 metres from my house there’s the archoaeological remains of the site where we pitched a tent, and had an awning up over our ‘kitchen’ and a bush shower. One day I’ll do a little sign or monument to mark that site... lots of memories.

Happy to share snaps if anybody’s interested in this stuff. It’s still very much a work in progress, but our country round here is pretty amazing. We’ve been very lucky, but still have much to learn from others...

Alan

 

[Ark79]

Sounds like it was a lot of hard work, labour of love

am sure I can speak for everyone on the forum about wanting to see a few pictures we are picture daft

 

[Ystranc]

It sounds like an awesome project in more ways than one....I would love to see details of how you've developed your off-grid home Alan, it sounds really interesting.

 

[Bopdude]

Sounds hard work but also sounds like you're living the dream, mine at least, would love to disappear into the outback, I think, having never been to Oz, it's on my bucket list though