This is the blog section of the Bill The Housesitter site. See above tabs for ‘About’, ‘Availability’, ‘Contact’ and ‘References’.

This website was under construction — for all of 49 minutes. My WordPress skills are coming on a treat!

I’ve registered this new website today to make it a little easier for prospective ‘clients’ to find me. (‘Clients’ is a rubbery term since it’s a non-commercial operation.)

My occupational hazard is to run into friendly pet-owners in the street or at a dog park, get chatting, and they then ask if I have a card. I do have this one, but…

it doesn’t have the website address on it. And when I tried to explain the old website, well, it just rolled off the tongue like a brick.

I have found that Googling ‘Bill The Housesitter’ would sometimes find it first hit and sometimes not. A bloke on the street in Lane Cove North whipped out his iPhone and it was the top spot. When I tried a few days later in the Parramatta Public Library, I got the details of some 64 year old dude from Tobacco Spit, Missouri.

So herewith, I present to you www.BillTheHousesitter.com

One of the great advantages of this separate site over the old version is that I can use lots of tabs to segregate information. (The former was restricted to a single page as it was an off-shoot of my music/interviews blog.) So availability, references and my general blurb all appear neatly under tabs at the top of the page.

An old acquaintance hadn’t realised the full extent of what I do until last night when he saw the old page. He immediately had 20 questions, mostly about security, liability and such like. Hopefully the tabs will provide easy access to this information for potential users of my services.

(Note: My friend latched on to the fact that I do this on a no-fee basis and believes my business name should be ‘The Diddly Squatter’. Trademark registered, all rights reserved, Adrian, lower Blue Mountains, NSW.)

What this new format allows me to do with the dedicated blog is something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time: write about some of the amazing animals, locations and anecdotes I stumble upon on, living this rather unusual lifestyle. Approaching two years full-time now, it’s gone from something of necessity being the mother of invention to an approach I actively enjoy and embrace.

It won’t be a regular thing, but I’m going to blog on a bit about the blessings, burdens, delights, joys, pitfalls and pleasures of being a full-time housesitter. And without turning it into an all-out travel blog, I’d like to record a bit about the places I go, the things I see, the quirky bits that amuse and bemuse me.

A sort of an, “If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Belrose” sort of thing.

Come with?

I may do a little light back-tracking. My first housesits were in Hawker in the ACT many years ago, but I didn’t really get into the swing until late 2011, and then after leaving a particularly unpleasant houseshare, I started to loose myself from the binds of a place to laughingly call ‘home’.

So in those years, there have been some formidable and formidable (fr.) experiences.

It is strictly no surnames, no pack drill for clients and pets. Privacy laws and common courtesy rule supreme.

So, if you’re sitting comfortably, let’s begin!

Bill Quinn

Wednesday 7 October 2015, 2pm
Holsworthy, New South Wales, Australia