As of this morning, Bill The Housesitter is now booked until at least 5 January 2017.
I have some dates already booked in for the first half of 2017 – see my Availability page for full details.
However, all dates are now spoken for in 2016, and hopefully will stay that way, the various good gods-willing, and if the creeks don’t rise and the crops don’t fail. 😉
In fact, I’m even taking two weeks for myself and having a holiday in Queensland, NSW, ACT and Victoria. This is something I would not even have considered towards the start of this year.
But while some cruel and even tragic* things have happened this year, on balance, it goes well. Good things are happening, and a little time for #1 is in order.
One of the great joys (of the many to be had) when you housesit is when you strike upon a winning formula with two new furry friends from the get-go.
I’m here in beautiful Capalaba, south east of Brisbane, a short drive from the coastline including Cleveland, Raby Bay and Redland Bay, with Wynnum and Manly a little to the north. It’s then a hop, skip and a jump to the ferry terminal down south for the islands: Stradbroke and Russell to name just two I can think of without consulting a map!
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!
Bill The Housesitter (Australia) 