housesitting

Darwin (Karama) – Two Brilliant Canine Companions

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Roy and Moo loving the beach life at Lee Point, NT

If you’ve noticed a large gap in my posts and references on this page, you’re very observant.

I fell off a plane in Darwin on 26 March 2019 for what was to be my last housesit.

Mostly because I hadn’t *needed* to housesit to guarantee a roof over my head for over nine months; from June 2018 I was cashed up and not needing to be sweating for the next housesit for shelter. I chose to honour my outstanding commitments, and also chose to finish a run of five years non-stop in the Northern Territory – the last of the eight state/territory jurisdictions in Terra Australis I’d not set foot on until that day.

And then a funny thing happened. I could afford a much grander lifestyle (and my financial adviser was encouraging me to spend some of my money), when July 2021 kicked in, I could afford an even grander lifestyle thanks to a very generous superannuation pension.

But by then, I was acclimatised to living like a gypsy. I’d embraced the lifestyle. Moving around from place to place had become my normal.


Never say never, famous last words, and don’t put the mockers on yourself. From a combination of laziness and Covid, I stayed in the NT for two years nine months, and as soon as I mumbled the words ‘house sitter’ in the company of others, the offers and requests came trickling in. I had gigs all over Darwin and Palmerston for over two years.

I probably would have left NT in late 2020, despite the relentless march of Covid19 and the territory’s relative insulation from its worst ravages. But a chance Facebook post had me enter into a recurring two-week-on, two-week-off arrangement from December 2020 to July 2021.

Despite many, many housesits in Darwin and Palmerston from March 2019 onwards, this was the one and only written reference I received:

Back in December 2020, I put up an ad on Facebook for a house/dog sitter for two weeks. I work a two weeks on/two weeks off FIFO roster.

Bill answered my ad and come and looked after my two dogs and house for me. I have a very boisterous staffy (Roy), and a little foxy x Jack Russell (Moo). Both dogs are super spoilt and both inside/outside dogs. 

When I returned from work, Bill picked me up at the airport. When I dropped him off I said, if you are interested in sitting again, let me know. To my surprise he said, “Yes!!!!”

Eight months later, Bill has looked after my home and dogs every other two weeks.

I also let him borrow my car as he is THE ONLY sitter I have ever had that has taken my dogs to the beach for walks. This means so much to me. And there is always fuel in the car when I return.

I can go to work, knowing my dogs and home are safe. My dogs are happy and well looked after. My home is spotless, just the way I left it, and Bill even washes his bedding before leaving.

I work a very demanding job, so going to work and not having to stress about what’s going at at home means a lot to me. I barely have to message Bill to even check in with him, as I know everything is fine.

Bill has never accepted money from me even when I have offered it. He is just simply happy to sit for me. So understandably when Bill told me he is going to move on from Darwin, I was a little upset, but I wish Bill all the best with his new ventures in life.

My dogs love Bill, I love Bill. I highly recommend him to anyone that is looking for a clean, tidy and respectable house sitter.

Hope, Moo and Roy

[Reference] Thornleigh, New South Wales – One energetic greyhound and a very attentive moggie

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

Occasionally I return to a suburb to housesit, sometimes for the same homeowner, sometimes for another.

But Thornleigh in Sydney’s far northern suburbs was a first for me: I housesat in three houses consecutively, all within the space of a couple of hundred metres on the same side of the street!

I was initially booked for one residence for a period of seven weeks (reference still on the way for that one), but before I’d arrived, the homeowner had been chatting to friends three doors down, and they booked me in for another couple of weeks to follow directly after the initial housesit.

Then while I was there, we jointly agreed on my filling in for a few days in between at the house directly next door to the initial housesit. This was very handy as late May to mid August, my transitions allowed me to pack my bag and move next door and then subsequently just four doors down. My Opal transport card got to feel extremely neglected.

This reference is from the last of those housesits, looking after a very low-maintenance greyhound who loved her walks and the occasional visit to the dog park, loved that I was around most of the time, but made very few demands of me.

Continue reading →

[Video] Bill The Housesitter’s 2017 Clients – From A to Y

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This is just about a comprehensive collection of all the pets I looked after in 2017 as Bill The Housesitter.

With the exception of a few fish and hamsters. And several chooks.

It literally is a collection from A to Y.

As I was compiling these photos, I realised I’d inadvertently put them in alphabetical location order: from Algester (Qld) to Yeppoon (Qld)!

In housesitting years gone by, I could have told you at any tick of the clock how many housesits I was up to for that year at that point in time.

But 2017 was such an absolute mess, I totally lost track along the way.

Just now, I’ve used a very scientific method (i.e. counting on fingers as this video ran through its paces) to come up with the definitive count for the year: twenty three (23).

From Machan’s Beach (Cairns) in the north to Baulkham Hills (Sydney) in the south.

(2017 housesit locations. Not pictured: Baulkham Hills (Sydney), New South Wales.)

So, with a little favourite music in the background, and arrayed in alphabetical order, here are my feathery, furry, and finned clients of 2017:

Here’s to 2018 and all who sail in her!

Bill Quinn
Bill The Housesitter

Sydney, New South Wales

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[Reference] Wynnum West (Brisbane), Queensland – One lazy, friendly old Labrador and two fairly sociable Bearded Dragons

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

A question I get asked more and more these days is, “What’s been your favourite housesit?”

Try as I might, I never have a good and/or definitive answer for this. There are just too many variants: location, number of animals, sociability of those animals, comfort level of accommodation, TV and media choices in the home, and so and so and so.

I can honestly not pick one.

However, there are other metrics I can easily use to pick ‘The Most Something’ of a housesit and this is one. Namely, it’s been the shortest!

Bearded Dragon2Initially intended to be a little over 24 hours, this short housesit at Wynnum West ended up falling about five hours short of two whole days. The family had forgotten that they had a Saturday morning obligation or two for their kids, and so rather than meandering slowly back from the Gold Coast on a pleasant Saturday morning/afternoon, they came barrelling back up the M1 early, and I’d barely (in two senses of the word) stepped out of the shower when they were back.

25 minutes later I was on the westbound platform at Lindum train station!

Continue reading →

[Reference] Berrinba (near Brisbane), Queensland (One very autonomous but friendly Manx cat)

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

Following a trend for taking housesits in relatively far-flung parts of Brisbane, I spent two weeks in the deep south in a suburb called Berrinba with Cinnamon the Manx cat.

To be honest, I hesitated when it came up on my pick list. Just across the freeway from Berrinba are the localities of Woodridge and Logan, which have a reputation for being a bit dicey. If you’re familiar with the work of Jim Croce, and in particular his ballad of Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, then imagine his depiction of the south side of Chicago!

But I suspended disbelief, let my fingers do the walking to Google Maps Street View, and found the pictures of its streets uncluttered by pictures of knife-wielding gangs or cars on fire, and within a few days I was meeting with Annette and Bob.

Berrinba1Cinnamon definitely had the run of the joint, especially since as a 23.5 hours a day inside cat, she was absolutely queen of her domain. Her first couple of days were spent in master’s bedroom, but by and by she started spending more time with me on my sole pursuit for much of the two weeks: the league championship series and start of the World Series of baseball on their glorious Fox Sports cable TV.

For the other half an hour a day, Cinnamon got to have time in the exercise yard (read: small patio and grassed backyard), though we had to skip a couple of days as we were on the receiving end of a mighty amount of precipitation for the duration.

That aside, I spent a couple of days a week with a public relations mob in Logan, but Cinnamon was amply able to keep herself occupied on those days, as that’s what she’s used to her with her pack leaders. Continue reading →

[Reference] Wynnum, Queensland – One very friendly Labrador and two bearded dragons

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

As mentioned many times here and at www.Facebook.com/BillTheHousesitter, 2017 has been the year of lots of short housesits – and they’ve never if ever come shorter than this one!

The family at Wynnum were only looking for someone to look after the house and pets for two nights, but this housesit broke up a week-long spell at the backpacker hostel in the CBD just nicely, so I jumped on the Cleveland line one Thursday morning and headed out west.

The place is a modern house in a quiet street with easy access to one of the most under-used dog parks I’ve ever encountered. The old Labrador and I ambled over to Evelyn Street on both days I was there, but in all that time we only saw one other patron. Which is a bit of a shame, as other parks I’ve frequented have been a buzzy hive of socialising (especially Upper Kedron and Hamilton, to name just two).

But the extent of my interaction over those two days was one: “G’day’. 😥

Wynnum2Looking after bearded dragons was a first for me, but I have to say that on balance I prefer them to snakes and most other non-dog, non-cat clients.

My two companions were fine to be let out and happily roam around the living area, though their choice of roaming was mostly rather limited. They did a pretty consistent job of finding a preferred spot (perched on the back of the couch, or squirrelled away under the entertainment unit) and either kept a steady watch on the human and canine, or stayed well out of sight. Continue reading →

[Reference] Return to Wavell Heights, Queensland – Two dogs: something old, something new

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

Much as I’d like to, I don’t get that many repeat housesits with favoured clients, simply because I’m booked at the times they want. The tyranny of distance also plays a part as a lot of Sydney and New South Wales homeowners would gladly have me back, however, I had to turn a few down when I took off to Brisbane in early 2016.

But Samantha and Dan from Wavell Heights got in very early after I spent a month there in July 2016, and booked me in for just the week in July 2017.

It came at the end of a whirlwind two and a bit months on the Sunshine Coast, Gladstone, Rockhampton, Cairns, and Yeppoon, so I fell out of the taxi from the airport late one Saturday morning in early July and hardly moved for a week!

I had one old mate to take care of, and the dog with the best ears in the business (a four-way mix of several breeds with the tell-tale Sharpei crinkle on his forehead) greeted me like an old friend.

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The new girl on the block is a young and slightly skittish young slip of a thing, but I could have written an inter-personal communications chapter or lesson just on my arrival. (The family had left earlier for the airport, so I was walking in cold into the animals’ home.) Continue reading →

[Reference] Algester, Queensland – Two cats with very different personalities

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

Algester is one of countless suburbs I’ve discovered over many years of housesitting whose existence I may have ordinarily remained blissfully ignorant of.

It was a first on a couple of fronts, including the first time I’ve housesat in a ‘gated community’. That sounded very posh and elite at first blush, but you could easily forget that it was any different to your run of the mill townhouse complex.

Algester1My two moggie mates had very different personalities – the female grey and white was initially very affectionate and approachable, but from Day One she opted to make herself very scarce and only turned up for meals and in the evenings for curfew. The marmalade man was the polar opposite – an absolute character of a cat, and always very entertaining and diverting company. I nearly fell off the couch the night I looked over and solved the question of, ‘How many cats does it take to change a light bulb?’ I have no idea what he was up to, and I suspect neither did he!

Continue reading →

[Reference] Machans Beach (Cairns), Queensland – Two dogs, two snakes, seven chickens, many fish

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Cairns

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

2017 has been a year of repeat sits, a few fallow times, and an extended return trip of several thousand kilometres comprising the Sunshine Coast, Gladstone, Rockhampton, Cairns at the zenith, then six nights in Yeppoon before falling into a plane at Rocky and landing back in Brisbane.

As the clock is ticking down on this public library computer – where I cursed my itinerant status and had to plead for an extension to my library card to access this PC* – I’ll just drop in the reference for now and add some other vignettes from the great Queensland north at a later date.

* Brisbane City Council are very wary and circumspect about issuing library cards to tramps, vagrants, housesitters, and other suspicious wandering folk. 😑

Back live.

It was a funny old couple of months, as in funny peculiar, and only occasionally funny ha-ha.

First stop was a handful of nights in Buderim which were ok and uneventful enough. However, much as trying to watch football in licensed premises in Queensland on Good Friday is a wasted exercise, I’d counsel that not try to travel on Anzac Day as in similar company as an exercise fraught with pitfalls. A five minute hold-up by a delivery person as I was leaving the premises threw a $50 taxi fare spanner into the works. Ouch.

From there, it was 11 hours $150 on a bus to go 350kms to Gladstone, and from there the surreal and frustrating just kept piling on. The next few weeks were an amalgam of killing time late night and early mornings in roadhouses, a housesit cancelled one week into a four week stay, then a very haphazard string of nights in caravan parks, youth hostels and even one night couch-surfing with a French Russian and Ukrainian Australian in Townsville.

After a few nights in Cairns itself, I finally arrived in Machans Beach, literally across the road from the ocean.

Cairns

And pretty much stayed there for two weeks!

Continue reading →

[Reference] Upper Kedron (Brisbane), Queensland (One friendly dog who loved his walks, and a cat who sat them out)

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

Last year I began to embrace the existence of the multiple short housesits which had been something of a bane of my existence previously. For a while, the constant moving, packing and unpacking and not staying in any one place for long was beginning to grate, but necessity being the mother of invention, I was beginning to agree with and even welcome the short, sharp, staccato bursts of residency.

And so Upper Kedron came towards the start of a quite a few mini-housesits, not all in a row, and while I thoroughly enjoyed the company of all my charges, I stopped worrying about upping stumps quickly.

Upper Kedron is a strange beast in so far as you’d reasonably expect it to sit cheek by jowl with Kedron.

Not so.

15 kilometres separate the two suburbs, including a fair stretch of railway track and roads, and one sizable military barracks.

ChesterUpper Kedron itself is on one of the many green fringes of the city sprawl. Zip off to the west and you hit the bush and the Samford Valley. It has that feel of being a goodly way out of the rat race, while only a reasonably short train ride from the terminus at Ferny Grove in to Central and Roma Street.

My two companions were a friendly springer spaniel and a slightly aloof moggie who nevertheless rarely strayed far from home.

With the days fairly blisteringly hot after about 10am, we soon got into a routine of going for a walk early-ish and late-ish, with a good deal of avoiding the sun in the middle.

We had a couple of mildly successful visits to the huge enclosed dog park that was virtually over the back fence, but Chester has a little of the alpha male about him, so after the first day we ditched that idea in favour of a regular stroll to the shops where we became semi-regulars at the Poshamocha Café at Ferny Grove shops. The owner in particular took quite a shine to Chester and would always stop to have a chat while lavishing Chester with attention.

DexterDexter the cat spent his days hanging out in the backyard, or curling up a short distance away from where Chester and I were watching the cricket or football or whatever else took our fancy. It was a pretty cruisey week.

The owners returned refreshed from a big family holiday and sent me this by way of reference:

Bill house sat for us between 7 – 14 January 2017

Upon meeting Bill we knew our house and pets were in good hands.

When we arrived home Chester and Dexter were happy, and had obviously been cared for. The house was in good order too.

Thank you Bill.

John and Sarah, Upper Kedron

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