My house-sit in Wavell Heights was one of a few I’d lined up while still in Sydney, so it was great that a few people like Samantha and Dan were prepared to take me on, sight unseen, before I had even arrived in the great south east of Queensland back in February 2016.
(And it’s also a testament to the value of collecting these references, and I offer my sincere thanks to everyone who has provided them for me.)
Like a good one-third to two-thirds of the places I visit, I’d never heard of Wavell Heights before I lobbed there in June 2016. Put a gun to my head and there’s no way I could have pointed to it on a map of Greater Brisbane.
Like most of my canine companions, Gus had zero interest in the Tour de France.
Burleigh Heads is one of my new favourite places on the planet.
It’s also my new nominal “””home””” address, and my use of the three sets of inverted commas is to denote that I don’t really have a home address in any sense of the word!
However, it is the home of an old, old friend and former work colleague*, his wife, and their furry triumvirate: a very sweet little collie dog, and the actual, true house-owners, two Persian Himalayan cats. Continue reading →
It’s been a while since the last blog post and video here. So long that I’m currently under roof #12 for calendar year 2016.
This evening on Burleigh Beach, as I was trying to simultaneously drink in all the scenery and document it to within an inch of its life, I realised this was prime video material.
Et voilà!
I can’t tell you how much I adore drifting up and down the Burleigh promenade. Yeah, it’s tourist central, but this is mid-winter.
I adore it.
A hive of activity, people of all ages, nationalities, and descriptions. And I have more conversations and shared moments here on one evening’s walk than in some whole weeks elsewhere. Continue reading →
I had a short, fortuitous two-week house-sit in inner Sydney city Paddington in December 2015.
Fortuitous as it fitted neatly in between five weeks in Holsworthy and the subsequent five weeks in Bankstown.
Paddington is a wondrous conundrum of a paradox wrapped up in an enigma with a little mystery sprinkled on top. It’s home to many of the upper middle class entitled semi-demi noveau rich that you’d expect to find in the electorate of the conservative Prime Minister of the country.
And yet it’s also home to a fantastic bohemian set, mostly foreign-born, and it was these people I met by the truck-load over just two weeks — in the streets, in shops, in bars. For a loan traveller, I rarely find myself alone in the inner city. (Suburbia is a bit of a different story.) Continue reading →
It always takes at least a few days and sometimes a week or more to really get the measure of my canine clients when house-sitting.
Sometimes that happens on the fly for short periods, like one of my absolute favourites this year, a little Jack Russell in West Wollongong who I just clicked with from the get-go.
But for others it’s really a case of me learning their rules.
Because I’m a visitor and a guest in THEIR home, and yet I’m their temporary pack leader at the same time, so it’s a paradoxical relationship.
In this current setting, I have two tricky breeds to deal with: Husky and Malamute.
But almost two weeks in, the solution is clear, pack leader. “Take me out to the dog park!”
Shot at The Vale Of Ah Reserve, Auld Avenue, Milperra.
Sergeant Schultz und Colonel Klink Mit Wilhelm Quinn Fur Ein Tag
Welcome to a Day In The Life of “Colonel Klink” und “Sergeant Schultz” von Liverpool, New South Wales, Australie.
Those are not their real names and the location given is the area rather than the actual localité.
Today I want to show you what a typical day…. wait, scratch that. I do not have typical days and neither do the pets.
NOT having a routine is a good thing for almost all sentient mammalian beings. Unless that being has severe chemical or physical or mental issues, in which case, the more strict the regime the better.
That is not the case with these two. Sure, Klink has traditionally been extremely anxious, and Schultz has had some real challenges in his lifetime, on the whole those have been nurture issues related to their environment.
And let me make this plainer than plain: it is NOT to do with the house and the others in it. The two homo sapien friends of C & S have provided a loving, caring, diverse, well-looked-after-without-over-pampering household.
BUT, on all three sides, over all three boundary fences are extremely nervous dogs with some severe behavioural challenges. And haven’t really fully clapped eyes on them all yet, but sight is not a sense needed to come to that conclusion.
That is not a problem; it’s an opportunity. I have been in-house friends with these two Germans now for three weeks and 3.6 days roughly.
Even in that time, I have NOT taught them commands or tricks or behaviours inconsistent with how I found them. BUT they have both calmed down considerably. Bear in mind that this is THE first time they have both been separated from their significant others who have significantly less fur.
Let’s begin.
Earlier on Woensday nacht before I ducked out shortly to the shopsSchultz: if he were any more laid back… no, I don’t see how that would be possible!
You’ve got this Overheard Productions thing you say is a home-based operation mostly, and then there’s the house-siting. Can you provide salient examples and unpack the minutiae of your routinus caninus and entertainus (here we are now, entertain us).
Here within and thereto under, I pledge thee a trough. For the dogs’ water.
Here’s some moving pictures. (♪♪♪ What about me, it isn’t fair ♪♪♪ — True story. I house-sat next door to Gary the guitarist from Moving Pictures last year. Gave him some copies of my articles in Trad and Now magazine. He was rather impressed at my advice to artists article.)
Please press <PLAY>…
Here’s the result of the investment of about 20 minutes of my time in the wee small hours before this was shot:
Click on picture
Bill Quinn
Bill The Housesitter
23:36, Tuesday 20 October 2015
This week-long house-sit straddled the start of October 2015 and came to me like manna from heaven. Book-ended by two x six week house-sits, it was an eight day stretch that was potentially going to be tough to fill, and possibly expensive if it meant heading to a youth hostel for the duration.
So when it bobbed up on a house-sitting web-site, I was onto it like a seagull on a chip.
It’s a good example of how sometimes a bit of mutual trust can work out beneficially for all concerned. The home-owners took me sight unseen, as they were flying out of the country the morning I was finishing up north of Newcastle. I used the NSW Transport Plan Your Trip site to plot this transport solution:
And strike me, with eight possible fail points, I arrived at the front door at 15:27!
You have to be a little wary of letting yourself into a strange place with a strange dog at the door, even a pint-sized one. The little Jack Russell took one look at me and seemed to think, ‘Right, well, I’d best be showing you around, then’, and we set off to the backyard to case the joint.
Bill The Housesitter (Australia) 