Forever House (#1)

Friday 8th February 2013:
I am sitting in the half light of 6.53pm, in a place that I will share with you. I'm writing on a rickety caravan laminex table with a gold twig pattern. I arrived a couple of hours ago and have been immersing myself in my surroundings. The van is set up with what I brought out with me - food, books, esky, farm clothes, and candles, as I was unable to put my hand on the camplight at home. My cozzy is also packed in case I can't find a window of opportunity for a skinny dip. I usually have the swimming hole at the bottom of my share to myself. You generally have to go looking to run into anybody round these parts. The western sun is sinking below the mountain opposite. The sky whites, blues and greys as opposed to pinks today. I do love this place.

I bought my twenty acres ten years ago, very soon after my second marriage break up. The previous year, the year of our break up, we traveled around Australia for 8 months in a caravan with our two children. It was during that trip that I became a free camper. Pulling up and making camp alongside rivers and in remote places. This experience enabled me to see in Currawinya an opportunity to continue that lifestyle even now that we had returned home and were getting on with the business of breaking up and life beyond that.
The whole property is six and a half thousand acres. Twenty four shareholders have twenty acres each, and the rest is common land. Very few people live here unfortunately, but of recent times more have come, some have left, and the culture of the place is going through transition. In the forty years of it's existence as Currawinya Pty Ltd, this pattern has repeated numerous times. There are one or two of the originals left - four in fact - all men in their sixties now, one of whom lives at Currawinya and three who are interested but rarely present these days.We won a ten year long and painful court case about a year ago that resulted in the departure of one particular shareholder and her cattle. The reduction in the remaining group's stress levels is palpable; we can all get on with our relationships with Currawinya, and each other as and when. The financial contributions we pay to Currawinya will flow into our infrastructure and future rather than into the hands of legal people.

I came here because my first cousin Christine and her family were buying a share. It is about two hours from home, so accessible, although another world completely and a landscape that requires tough cars and people, and a commitment and preparedness to do it tough and live a bit rough. I was so taken with the landscape that I filed the idea of this place in the back of my mind... During the lengthy and rocky relationship I was a part of for seventeen years, I daydreamed about running away to a cabin in the bush. When I was introduced to Currawinya on the second occasion, the Christmas after the marriage had ended, I realised this was the place in my mind's eye.There was a vacant share (burnt out actually) that drew me in - and I offered thirty five thousand dollars for this caravan and annexe under roof, along with a small colourbond shed, and a cement slab on which the burnt out remains of someone else's dream home were scattered. I was feeling pretty free and mistress of my own destiny-ish. It took a year for the owners and I to get the sale together; them coming to the decision to sell, us agreeing on a price, and me waiting for the financial settlement from my marriage. By the time we had settled on the share, the vendors were a bit dirty about the delay - but that is water under the bridge now.

Ten years on, there has been so much water under the bridge. But I have hung on to my plot at Currawinya, and my dream to complete my "Forever House", built from mud (cob) and various other materials, is as strong as ever. I can't give up now, when I have every possible chance of reaching my goal if I make it happen. I have plans for this place when it is finished. Last year I came up with a deadline - a date for the housewarming - as a means of giving the project a wriggle on. The date for the housewarming is the October long weekend in 2014. I have twenty months to orchestrate a long list (shitload) of work. The reality is, I can't do it on my own; my third (and final) husband Jeff can and will come out and help - but not as often as me. There are three new men living at Currawinya who would most likely be able to do some of the work for me at a cost of course.

This trip out to 'the farm' as I call it, will not achieve what I intended when I set the weekend aside. But that's okay. Currawinya time teaches you patience. The cement mixer in which I mix the mud, is at home at Tuckurimba. I tried to manhandle it into the back of my ute on my own. As it lay on its side in the carport, having slid quite gracefully and in a controlled way down the ramp I had put from the ground to the back gate of the car, I was reminded that at fifty four, my body has limits and I must respect those, or pay the painful consequences and risk permanent disabling injuries. So I left the mixer splayed there with a note to Jeff apologising that it was in that state, and headed to the farm cement mixer-less. Without it, I can't make mud which means I can't lay mud. At the point where the mixer rolled slowly off the plank I decided to ask Stan if he has one I can use, and if not, I can dig and sieve more dirt; another job that is always on the list.

Speaking of lists, I make a lot of them - it's the way I get things done. I wrote down a stream of conscious list this arvo then split it up to reflect who will do the work (in this my yet unuttered latest plan). I wrote a list in a previous piece of writing about what I hoped to find in a partner. The tutor marking the piece said that until she got to the list she had felt quite empathetic towards the character, but as she read the list she was perplexed about that character's expectations. Nonetheless, that is not enough to disuade me from including this list.

The Forever House List @ Friday 8/2/12 - to be complete by 4/10/14

Things I can do:

• clear lantana/catsclaw
• Finish Mudding
• dig drain from top tank overflow to pond
• Electric fence - get one and put it up
• Bedroom windows - strip, paint, replace glass panels, put timber surrounds, flyscreens
• Tile bedroom floor
• Bag block wall outside
• Find french doors x 2 pairs
• Find front door
• Tile bathroom/laundry/mud room floors
• Tile behind wood fired heater
• flyscreen for all windows
• paved area along the front of the house

For Jeff and others to do:

• Build loo
• Install gas stove
• Install gas water heater
• install water pump
• put tank (from shed) on house tank stand
• set timber stove in with chimney
• put plumbing in shower, sink, laundry tub, and kitchen sink
• slash
• put corrugated iron around mud walls in shower recess
• Line bedroom walls with Casino timber
• Install french doors and window in lounge dining
• Hang all doors (6)
• Metal frames and corrugated iron above block walls
• Help Donna with bedroom windows
• Cut down closer trees
• Put green tank from top of block on sand bed at right hand corner of house
• polystyrene ceiling