Forever House #53

Monday 10th July 2023

Well hello. It's been a good long while... July 2017 in fact since my last post here. Sounds like confession. I apologise for not explaining my absence sooner when so many of you were committed and supportive of my Forever House project... It was largely the interest and encouragement from people reading my blog that motivated me a lot of the time.

Hence my reason for starting it up again - I am about to move into the house and complete the final touches. I believe writing this blog will again motivate me to keep at the work - I do believe this is the final final push.

Following on from the last blog July 2017, I had Ronnie lined up to come back in Nov 2017 to continue the last push of the Forever House. He was attached to the project and willing to come back and help me to fruition.

Me at the time of my diagnosis
Aug 2017 - looking pretty healthy

And then...in the August 2017 I learned that I had Oropharyngeal (throat) cancer. The only symptom, a lump in my left neck. And that put paid to Ronnie and me doing the next stage. I was thinking, after what Jeffie had been through with his brain cancer, that I would just exit gracefully and not go through all the things. But I was told by my tissue pathologist friend that if I had to have cancer then this was the one to have. It was 85-90% curable. He said if I just did what the doctors said then I would be okay. And six years later, I'm testament to him being right. I'm very conscious of how short life can be and am living to the full.

There was another push at the end of 2021 that got the house to lock up. In January 2022 a huge removalist truck took all the furniture I had been storing out to the Forever House and placed it inside. All cleaned up, and with floor rugs and furniture in place - it was amazing to behold. I stayed there on weekends getting it ever more sorted until mid 2022 when I arranged for a couple to caretaker/move in and keep the rats, catsclaw and lantana out while I set off travelling around Australia... 

The final push - thanks to Pete,
and also Hannah, Shayne and Danika xx

Furniture arrives - January 2022

Until now. 

I'm excited that I am about to move out to the locked up and largely livable Forever House in the next week. I get to make the final touches while actually living in the house - which so far is twenty years in the making. I'm looking forward to a balance between work, sitting around fires or tables with folks, walking, swimming, painting, writing and reading.

Of recent times I read my way though this Forever House Blog - #1 through #52. I have to say that, without meaning to blow my own trumpet, I am a little in awe of myself - the drive and energy that I kept up and the amount of physical and creative work I got done is almost manic! I do feel proud to have kept on keeping on and to be at this junction currently. And again so much kudos for those who have helped me along the way - I definitely would not be here if it was up to me alone.

I'm reasonably fit still but will definitely have to work up to being able to work like I was doing then. The nice thing is, the hardest work is well and truly done - now is time for mosaicing the hearth, cleaning and sealing the remaining mud walls that I haven't yet got to, sealing the remaining floors, painting the ceiling. Stuff like that. I think I will follow through on my vision for the bathroom /laundry too. No more digging dirt, or carting large amounts of water by bucket, or laying mud row upon row upon row, up and down Jerri built scaffolding. Thank God. I think that may be a step too far for this 64yo bod. So grateful to my body for keeping up with my busy head all these years. I have certainly expected a lot from it. I will look after it during the next push so as not to do anything to muck up the twilight zone of my life...if I am lucky enough to have one. I have learned that if you get to be an old person and have had a wonderful life - you are a lucky person. Not everybody gets that - we can't take it for granted. We can't put off till tomorrow what we could do today.

So much has happened in the intervening years... Suffice to say there have been moments in between then and now when I may have sold the Forever House if there'd been someone around offering to buy it. I believed I had bitten off more than I could chew; and the dream of the Forever House was dragging on my energy and resources. But I'm happy to say I did not sell; and I get to complete - which means a lot to me. I feel like this house has unwittingly become my life's work. Completion is in my grasp.

windows in the main bedroom

A few dates of note:
23 Aug 2017. The last time I was out at the house before I got sick. I installed most of the panes of glass in the bedroom windows. These windows were originally from an old homestead just down from my house - a bit of Currawinya history.

20 Sept 2017 - Peg inserted in my stomach ready for treatment to start the following week. 

24 Jan 2018 - I completed this mosaic in the cottage where I lived at Tucki Tucki. Lots of friends and family came and did a patch - I love it. Looking forward to doing more mosaic in the Forever House around the new fireplace being installed, and in the bathroom.

8th Mar 2018 - A visit to Currawinya with my son and his friend for the day. I'd got pretty skinny but was doing okay by then.

15 Mar 2018 - (my late husband J's bday) I got my first all clear from the North Coast Cancer Institute 6 months after treatment started. 

Feb 2019 - Following my cancer, 2019 became a year of celebrating life - I went on four trips. Firstly, my Bollywood teacher, some class mates and I went to India on a Bollywood Dancing excursion

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 2019 - I moved in to my recently purchased house at Patchs Beach. Some of the items I had bought for the Forever House found their way into this renovation - the tiles under the firebox, which had been made for the shower floor at the mud house. And beautiful vintage tiles I bought in Melbourne for the mud house hearth ended up behind the stove in Patchs Beach kitchen.

Patchs Beach kitchen using vintage hearth tiles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

24 Aug 2019 - the second trip was a fund raising walk for Shelterbox to Larapinta in the centre of Australia. We walked 100kms in the most amazing ancient country and raised almost $70k for this great cause. 

Painting workshop in Cornwall

In Sept 2019 - The third trip - I flew to Cornwall in England to do a painting workshop facilitated by an expressionist artist, Paul Wadsworth, who I had met in India. This painting workshop inspired me to continue to paint ever since. I am working on turning my art into an income stream going forward. I believe the expressionist genre was a great way to start loose and the learning has helped me to paint freely and quickly en plein air with oils for the most part. I had an exhibition when I returned from that trip - to help me put together the funds for the fourth trip early the following year. I was scratching for bucks by this time understandably with such a big year of travel. I also rented out my house at Patchs to help me financially.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6 Dec 2019 - there was a fire through Currawinya, which was devastating for all concerned. Many of the shareholders lost their homes, and those who didn't had to fight hard to save theirs. I was one of those blessed to find my Forever House still standing - with the evidence the fire had burned right up to the edges of it. I do know that there were people at my share clearing low bush away as a preventative measure - thank you to those who did that for me in my absence. I lost my shed, and in it all the mosaics made by family friends and myself, including my since departed Mum and Dad. Also lost a chunk of the solar system - the panels were safe and the 4 x 6v batteries (which died anyway due to being left unused for too many years); but the board with the inverter and other solar connection bits and pieces were in that shed that burned. 

Barque Europa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

17 Feb - 22 Mar 2020 - The fourth trip - I sailed on a tall ship to Antarctica as a life affirming belated 60th birthday gift to myself. I wrote three blogs speaking to the lead up to this trip but as yet have not written the blogs that speak of the trip itself. Suffice to say it was the most amazing trip and I am so glad I bit that bullet. Having sailed in my past and had a sailing dream since that time - this trip definitely inspired me further to do more sailing before my body and desire cannot. You'll hear more about this in time as I am following that dream very soon.

Home safe after Covid hit

 

 

Mar 2020 - Covid hit. I was so lucky to make it home from sailing to Antarctica - straight into isolation and as we all know, life was severely impacted from then on for a good couple of years or more. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Main bedroom

Later that year I reconnected with a fellow I'd known as a 20year old and we became an item. Pete, a retired builder, kindly helped me get the Mud House to lock up over summer of 2021. He also encouraged me to get some earthworks and clearing done which provided a grassy front lawn and a view down to the Cataract River at the foot of the block.

Living/dining/kitchen

Mid Sept 2022 - I left work (retired early), and put caretakers into the Mud House as it was no longer a worksite and needed someone to look after it, preventing rats and bush from taking it over. Pete and I headed off around Australia for an unspecified amount of time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

20 Jan 2023 - My family lost our lovely Jude - Mum/Grandma/Aunty/friend at 89yo - she lived a long happy life. 

26 Apr 2023 - I returned from our travel after having a wonderful trip, mainly in Tasmania, but drawn to return to the Far North Coast of NSW to spend my energy on my own dreams, my children and family - time, it seems, to just do me. 

And so, I find myself moving out to the mud house for the next, say, six months, to enjoy the house after twenty years of building it. And, to do the enjoyable finishing touches. And then, to sell it to some lucky people while I go sailing for a fistful of years! Thanks for following along with the next chapter. x