Dissconnected from land, or reality

So here is the BIG dilemma about living on Macleay Island - there is no Bridge.
Some residents are hoping to get a bridge and therefore cause the property market to explode.

Russell Island Bridge - One step forward and one big reality check

Whereas others enjoy the peace and want to keep the island "insulated" from the big chaos of city living. Public ferries offers regular service and run every half an hour during peak times and every hour during non-peak hours. You can use your TransLink Go card and a one way adult fee is $5.35.
Interisland travel is free and includes: Karragarra, Macleay, Lamb and Russell Islands.
If you fancy bringing your own car a barge runs hourly and will cost you about $80 ($60 if you're a local) for a return trip. Online booking is advised prior to travelling as it gets busy on weekends and during peak hours.

Some people own 2+ cars. One to keep on the mainland car (usually a newer or work car) and an older island car (i.e. ute, golf cart or a scooter). We decided to buy a small pre-loved Daihatsu Sirion. We totally fell in love with a rental one in New Zealand a year ago. It is a great reliable little car that you can fix yourself and it can't be hijacked by the CIA:)

We loaded the little car with our kayaks and brought it over to the island on the barge. We didn't have anything on the island at that point, so we had to leave the kayaks with our nice neighbour Kevin and the car lives on the street parking near the ferry. So when we arrive we jump into our cute little car and we can drive to our land. 

The Tree Drama and a Text War

Beautiful trees , Tricky trees 

The three trees, Spotted Gum , far right
 Iron bark, middle , Bloodwood group of trees to the left

Spotted Gum 

We had some really gorgeous trees on our land . We had a spotted gum, an iron bark and a bloodwood. They were beautiful trees and provided us with a whole lot of really nice shade, so we really struggled with the idea that we were going to have to cut them down.  2 of them were actually not in very good positions and definitely had to go, they were going to be right where our house was going to be, so there was really no choice about that. Spotted gums are notorious for dropping huge branches that kill people and destroy your house, so of course I wanted to keep it but Ivan said no. He was the voice of reason as usual, Trudy my neighbour also loved the tree and we actually watched in horror as it came down together. But Ivan said we had to kill the beautiful tree. I mean i didn't want to destroy the house or die, but it was a beautiful 50 meter high majestic tree, teeming with life and i shed a tear when it came down. but then i thought...... OMG there is so much i can do with that wood !!!! 

We hired Jason, the local tree lopper, he came with some young bloke, who looked awesome without his shirt, but i digress. The job was done over a few days, they took off the smaller branches first and then lowered the bigger branches down with ropes, it was really cool .The branches came down with incredible thuds that shook the whole ground and somehow miraculously missed all Trudy's newly planted small trees. Once all the big branches were off it was time for the tree trunk to come down. Now i wasn't planning on taking out the root ball but everyone felt that it would save me a lot of money to have it out then, than need to take it out later. ( that is also called peer pressure), so i was 900$ poorer for it but it is out. The root ball was a bitch to get out and i really don't think it wanted to come out , but the digger was persistent. and the whole trunk and root ball came out finally and fell almost in the neighbour to the other side's house, it was tense, sad and awesome  



  

Spotted Gum in the act of being butchered 

It was made clear to me that i had some pretty awesome wood,  it's grain was just beautiful !  So basically i had saved tree guy the tip fees that that were already included in the price by keeping the wood, for this he promised me a day of chainsaw work , which seems to be a very time consuming process. Cut a little , sharpen all the tiny ridges , start again!! The wood was gorgeous, a beautiful  rich red colour, unfortunately, it was so heavy it was impossible to lift. So it got cut and there it lay.. The wood was wet and would dry and then hopefully we would be able to work with it. It takes a long time to dry, so it needs to be covered and kept out of the sun.  
 We were enamoured with it  all the same. We stained it and dreamed of all the beautiful things we could make!

Ironbark treated with car oil 

Spotted gum with ironbark still standing in the background 

There was only so much that can get done in a day, so being me, paid the tree guy in advance to cut up the rest of the wood, $300, I thought this was a very generous offer. We agreed that the big piece of Spotted gum would be cut up and stained, and then covered  and the little pieces of wood would be disposed of. Unfortunately the tree guy lost his phone for a very long time, so he was unable to call me, go to the land or email. This was a major delay in the the work. Then i guess he kind of found me a little annoying because i started calling on a weekly basis to check when the work would get done. It seems there were a lot of other things that had to get done first. So now it has been about three months and i guess it's kind of normal that we had to have it out. So there were some harsh words , a cut off , a hang up and then of course a text war. nowadays you can't go without a good text war 

Will I ever see that piece of spotted Gum 

I had needed this work done before the excavation started, it's started now and unfortunately, all the wood had to be moved around by the digger and so now it is all in a big heap with the piece i wanted biscuited on the bottom. (See photo above ). So i guess what is the moral of the story ? Duh !!!! don't ever pay till the work is done. You basically deserved to get screwed. Lesson learned or do trusting canadian ladies ever really learn ??  You need to listen to your untrusting suspicious russian husband more !!!

The Plan, Cantilevered home ?

After the heart break of realizing we had to abandon our idea of an earth sheltered home and think and do like normal people, we resigned ourselves to finding a great design . 

We spent a lot of time at the library looking at books about architecture and trying to figure out what we liked. It was awesome a great array of so many choices, we just had one problem we had to agree.  We looked at some pretty weird and cool houses and would love to do something really eco friendly and modern. We homed in on cantilevered houses, that looked a bit like these .  

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We started off with some sketches and ideas and over a nice vegetarian meal with Curlew designs. They presented us with a few designs and the one we chose was similar to the one below. After some tweaking and a lot of advice from Paul Racine ( Mr Worry )  it became the design we finalized on. 

Underground home, realistic home or climate change death scenario planning ?

At first the plan was to just sit on the land, save money and build the house when we retired. Seriously though, who can be so sensible, I mean who knows how long we will be around and it's just way too exciting to build a house, to not build a house. The plan was to do it cheap! We were thinking of container homes. What a god send this crazy idea was, because it brought us to Deidree and Darren from Curlew homes.  Great architects and now our awesome friends


                    http://www.curlewhomes.com.au/#!about/c1x9v


 We were initially thinking about container homes, but after some discussion with Curlew homes we decided that the containers themselves were a little limiting and not that cost effective. Even though they were definitely fun to think about cool designs with..

So then I decided to go against everything everyone advised me and pursue the idea of an earth sheltered home. I had seen some drawing of an architect here in Australia and my dreaming began.
 Of course my very careful suspicious husband was totally against the idea, but don't worry that didn't stop me. I wanted an earth sheltered home and I would not be happy unless I had one. Of course this is a very cool idea. Now in retrospect i can see why it wouldn't have worked for us .it would have been great on a different plot, ours was just not wide enough.

 So the dream lived for a while and cost us a few thousand to work up only to discover it was not going to work . I  know the architects too would have loved this project to have worked. My heart was a little broken but i realized i was just one step closer to being a normal person who did things the normal way .

1) wrong setting land not wide enough
2) wrong climate not enough extremes in temperatures and too humid
3) would not take advantage of the view or the breeze
4) bank would have never lean't us the money
5) conservative council would have never accepted
6) not enough light or ventilation in the middle of the house
7) neighbours would have thought we were insane  

Making the commitment, doomsday prep or following the dream?

So this is us ! happy couple eh?

 January 31st 2015, It all started when our friends Carolyn and Luke told us about Macleay Island and how there was some really cheap land to be had . So here we are looking at land. There were many, many blocks and they all started to look the same after a while. We managed to drive three different real estate agents insane on different occasions. One promised us there were no mosquitoes on the island, when she had a spray of mosquito repellant in her glove compartment, very sneaky. But  this is Vin from LJ Hooker. He took us to this block last of course, across the street from empty council land, fronting the ocean., 1024 SQM, sporting some damn fine trees too, a 50 meter high, blue spotted gum, an iron bark and a blood wood. The angels were singing as were the Kookaburras laughing, were we making a huge mistake, just embarking on a test of faith or were we just trying to put some money we had into something tangible, because of was worried about doomsday predictions of economic collapse,  i had read about on twitter, Who knows? After some back and forth about different blocks, The decision to make an offer on this one was made. 32 Beelong
BOY oh BOY were we ever bummed when our first offer was.......... accepted ! We bid too high! the land was ours, the first commitment we had ever made, to put down some roots, to commit to a place and on an island of all places. what were we thinking?

bCatalina and Bas come

 to see the land febuary 2015, before they head back to europe 

Vivek and Ivan prove themselves riding their bikes from Ferry to the land .16 km return , Poor boys !

Cleansing of the mind by building a house! Will it work ?

This is the story of how we come to live on an island. Will we ever get there, we wonder. There seems to be so many things that can happen to prevent our dream from coming true, How can we ever really dream of living in this house. Luckily something has happened, i have shut down the constant Twitter feed that has spewed ideas of economic collapse, world war 3 destruction, Gmo poisoning and a host of other terrible things to worry about. I  am going to focus my attention on one thing only and that is building the nicest house, i can. A house that i long to live in and work on for the least amount of money and the highest quotient of happiness factor. So not only is this the story of the building of a house but it is the cleansing of a mind that has been held for too long by external factors beyond my control .This is about pleasure, pure and simple, this is the greatest project i will ever do and it's almost coming to life .Wish me and Ivan  to have the happy project we want. Here we go !!!

Phase 1 ( as my father would love me to say )
Shutting down twitter Ap (will delete ap from the phone)
Unsubscribing to Brasscheck emails,  my friends of 10 years now.  Who have taught me alot of things, mainly to distrust the government and never believe the media.
Goodbye Forbidden knowledge, Oh how i loved all your crazy ideas of aliens, alternate energy systems and other strange things. I look back now, how you convinced me to buy a telescope and fly my parents from Canada here to Australia,  because you told me  that a meteor was going to hit the earth. It all seems so crazy.
I will continue to allow myself to listen to Democracy Now podcasts and maybe even Counterspin, Otherwise i would die of boredom while i drive around during my job as a community nurse.
  I  think this is a major big step I am taking, who will i be now? Will i be a normal person who likes Britney spears gossip and watches the Kardasians?

So that's the plan!