pet sitting

[Reference] Corlette, New South Wales – Two energetic Cavoodles

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

Corlette, New South Wales
Corlette, New South Wales

My house-sit in August to September 2015 was in a locality I’d never heard of until I saw the ad. This happens quite often!

Corlette, New South Wales is at the end of a peninsula above Newcastle, bounded by Port Stephens and the Pacific Ocean, about an hour’s drive to Newcastle and two and a half hours to Sydney. Outside of the peak holiday times, it’s got the laid-back feel of a coastal resort, with the demographics skewed to the older echelons.

It was quiet in my street, though the daily fly-overs from the nearby air force base were noticeable.

My charges were two Cavoodles, one a Cavalier cross toy poodle and one a cross miniature poodle. Corlette, Nelson Bay and Salamander Bay are very popular with -oodles of all varieties and we met many out and about on our walks.

This was one thing that really struck me about the region: I’ve never met so many friendly dog-walkers so up for a chat. Some people said this was a characteristic of a rural area, but I’ve been in some country areas where people are hard-pressed to give you the time of day.

Either way, I got to talk to scores of people out and about during the five+ weeks I was there.

Apart from the regular walks to the marina at Nelson Bay and around the hilly streets of Corlette (much of it new and under new development), there was the enchanting Tomaree National Park. A walk to the top of Tomaree Head was breathtaking but worth it.

Tomaree Head
Tomaree Head

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Bill The Housesitter – New website

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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…

Bill The Housesitter

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