Impossible!

"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare."

Most people who heard what i planned thought i was crazy. Perhaps... It's true that my plan included alot of 'hope' and 'if' and 'maybe' but what else did i have to work with? I could take the safe road of a mortgage and suffer in that hellhole for another 30 years with a blind, unmotivated, depressed mother or i could take a leap and hope for the best. I leaped.

Sadly, too often in life i see people stagnate, they get stuck in a rut and stay there. They complain about life and the things they need to do to get by instead of changing it. They fear the unknown and the consequences it may bring.

Life doesn't change unless you are prepared to do something about it and most people's fears are completely baseless. Have you ever been without food? Have you ever been without shelter? Have you been fired from a job? Have you defaulted on a debt? If so, what happened? Let me guess, life was uncomfortable for a while, but you survived.... And that's sadly what alot of fear is about, being afraid of being uncomfortable.

Humans have this ingrained survival instinct. If you have ever called upon it, you know what i am talking about. No matter how bad life gets, it could always be worse and there is always a way out. You might not like the path you have to take but you will survive. Once you can overcome this fear, you have the potential to do anything.

I had to decide if i wanted to stay where i was or if i was willing to risk the unknown for a better life for myself and my family. I knew i had a limited amount of money and life would interfere and make that limited amount of money dwindle even further. To pretend otherwise would have been financial suicide. I weighed up my options and created many worst case scenarios. If the worst happened, would we be happy? The answer we came up with was this - If we have some land where the children can play, a roof to live under, power, water and mum had her eyesight back we would be happy. That became my goal, anything else became a bonus.

No one likes to be uncomfortable, it's human nature and stupid to try and fight it. Mum and I developed a list of things we wanted vs things we needed. We discussed costs and options, we talked in length and i did alot of research. I even had people in the sidelines prepared to come and help me erect a kit home if needed.

Taking a leap of faith doesn't involve closing to your eyes to the facts and reality, it's being prepared to hit a brick wall and living with the consequences. We were ready and not without some struggle, we jumped.

Compromise started early, the almost identical house next door was also up for sale, for a lower price. I had researched the housing market, i knew an investor would buy the house, i knew they would want the lowest price and i knew in the market the way it was, we would be lucky to sell within a year. When that investor hit the doorstep, it wasn't a matter of if he would buy the house, it was a matter of how much we were willing to take for it.

The house was put on the market on the 8th of December 2009 and sold less that a month later. I took $24k off the asking price in order to keep that buyer. When i jumped, with my mothers life in my hands, i wasn't ignorant to what i would see on the way down, it was simply a matter of how much it would hurt when i hit the bottom.

Selling the house that quickly meant i had to resign from my job, leave all my friends, take my kids out of school and move my family to another city and i had 45 days to do it.

We packed up the house, the kids, the car, the animals and we left Brisbane for a new life on the 14th of February 2010, we had nowhere to go, no home, just a self contained unit that was costing $165 per night. We of course had no money to pay the bill until the cheque cleared from the house, but hey whats the worst that could happen?

Inside and research

The inside of the house was worse than the outside and i don't have the pictures to prove it. No doubt if i looked hard enough i could find some before photos but i prefer not to. The walls were 4 different colours, ranging from gray to a light-shouldn't have even bothered attempt at covering the gray - white. There were tiles missing in the bathroom, the carpet was beyond repair, the laundry floor was painted concrete, there were literally thousands of nail holes in the wall, bad patch jobs, no light coverings and the list goes on.

So i painted, patched, tiled, sanded, sealed, grouted, replaced and repaired.

By this time mum had stopped driving, i was on 3 months leave from work and i still didn't have a plan, only an idea. I was researching cheap blocks and came up with a few places, Chinchilla, Roma, Tara and Childers. Depending on how far from civilization you want to live blocks start at $15k for a standard house block go to $150k for 50 acres of prime farmland and head upwards from there the closer you get to major towns. We focused on seeking out a 25 acres lifestyle (aka crap land) block 10 - 15mins from Gin Gin/Childers. They were priced around the $80k mark.

The next was housing options. Personally i didn't care if i lived in a tent but i had mum to consider. We looked at caravans, pre-fab homes, kit homes, sheds, barns, removal houses even new houses. Everything was an option as long as it came within budget and i wouldn't know what the exact budget was until we started spending.

It would have been nice to say 'No this is what i will spend and no more' but that simply not realistic. I knew to make this work i had to be flexible. So i looked at everything and was prepared to take anything.

Researching the costs was probably the hardest aspect of assessing viability. Houses and land are basic but when you get into things such as concrete house slabs, plumbing, sewerage, electricity, the areas become gray as each job is quoted specific to it's needs. I worked of averages where i could and added extra for good measure.

An average house slab will cost upwards of $20k, septic $5k - $10k, electricity $5k, plumbing $5k. There there are the extras, painting, council fees, water tanks, engineeers, draftsman, soil tests, transport costs and more.

It doesn't matter where the block is, there will always be things you need to consider. Such as an $80k block is great until you need to place the house more than 50metres from the main power pole outside the block, my understanding is that each pole that the electricity company needs to place will cost you about $20k. You also need to consider water tanks which for a decent size are around $5k each, ideally you would have 3 of these. You also need to take into account that people will charge you more the further they have to travel. Concrete for one can have an added charge per klm.

Kit homes are awesome and i really leaned in this direction. A beautiful 6 bedroom, 2 bathroom home can be purchased for around $80k but you need to take into account that its extra to stump and place a floor or slab it. This boosts the cost, but is still a very cheap option if you have the time and energy.

To have a builder erect a kit home for you, you are looking at approximately half the purchase cost, this is the same for sheds and barns.

I then started looking into removal houses and struck gold. You can pick up a 3 bedroom house for around $50K including stumping and transport. Most will need a little work and extra costs still apply. With the budget i was working with it was looking extremely possible that i could make something happen. After a few more calculations it was time to talk to my mother about seriously considering giving up her only possession in the world and putting a whole lot of faith in a series of averages and guesses.

The Backyard Battle

The next nightmare was the backyard. The fences were full of termites, there was a massive bougainvillea, there was 15 years of jungle lining the back fence, weeds in the gardens taller than me, dead trees, messy gardens and junk everywhere.




From those pics it looks pretty tidy, don't be deceived. It was a fire hazard waiting to happen and at this stage of the works it was being cleaned up to accommodate a potential granny flat.

I love Bunnings, they sold me the chainsaw i had to learn to operate and the mulcher i have come to treasure as part of my family :-D




Everything that would fit in the mulcher went into it and it all went back onto the gardens, so much easier than trying to shift it down the driveway. All the stumps that were too big to mulch were cut up for firewood and a given to a friend. Anything that couldn't be burned or mulched was hidden from view behind my nice new shiny retaining wall.


I started the job in winter which meant the grass had died back some from the nice lush green that it had been, but it grew back nicely.

A few things i learned from this task was do no let anyone plant anything, ever if they do not fully grasp the growth habits and under no circumstances plant anything with spikes unless you never plan on moving it. Trust me, i have the scars to prove it.

The bougainvillea ended up staying right where it was, i had planned on coming back to it at a later date when i had overcome my hatred of all things spiky, but alas the house was sold before that happened.

I also learned that my poor male neighbour was a tad intimidated by a woman with bigger power tools than him :-D

Where do i start?

The house was a mess. I had been living life for the last 10 years and mum was unable to maintain the house so it was a shambles. How was i going to get this place into decent condition without spending money i simply didn't have? Baby steps, that's how.

The first thing was the guttering, it was non existent out the back. It had to go, so i called in a few tradies for quotes. HA what a joke. We had the guttering, all i needed was someone to put it up. They quoted me thousands of dollars to do nothing. It was then i decided i had some learning to do.


I searched all over the net to see if it was possible to fix this nightmare on my own. After a few weeks i decided it was, so i set to work. The guttering we had been given by a neighbour was metal and too heavy for me to lift on my own so i decided to use PVC. Sure it's only plastic but it never needs paining, won't rust, looks tidy, was easy for one person to install and its cheap. I all brought the tools i needed, including a ladder plus all the guttering, downpipes, brackets, joints and various other bits and pieces for around $600



Pulling it all down wasn't so hard except it weighed a tonne. Putting up the new stuff was were the learning came in. You can only learn so much by reading, there are things that the helpful DIY guides don't tell you. For instance, the fascia board is is really, really hard wood and don't even bother trying to nail the brackets in without first drilling a hole because it just won't work, no matter how many times you try. Trust me... Also, do not use a cheap rechargeable drill, they don't hold enough power to do the job. Get yourself a decent corded drill and save yourself the headache. Cordless may be cute and at times handy but, just don't.

After several weeks, yes it took weeks as i was battling heat, rain, work and family, it was finished, it went from this...



To this...



Girls can do anything!

Back where it began

This journey first started as a dream in my early 20's. I dreamed of the quiet life, with a little bit of land, a vegie patch and minimal reliance on the modern world. If you had of told me then, that a little over a decade later it would be happening, i would have laughed you out of the room.

It was late 2008 that my thoughts began to once again stray from the path. Eat, sleep, work, be a mother, rinse and repeat. I was a 30 year old single mother of 2 living in a small 3 bedroom house with my mother. I was working part time and enjoying being part of the human race again (that's another story) when my mother's health started going downhill in a huge way.

I was living with mum for many reasons, i could give my children a better life without the burden of paying rent and mum would always have family close by. We had been living in Queensland for 14 years and she still had not made any friends and her health took a turn for the worse after a fall which damaged her knee.

Through the end of 2008 and most of 2009 my priority was keeping my mother alive. I was sure that she would end up talking herself to death. She was rapidly losing weight, stopped leaving the house, stopped doing pretty much everything. Her falls were becoming more frequent and depression was setting in. By October 2009 she was also virtually blind due to cataracts in both eyes.

Early in 2009 i reached out to family for help. I put mum in the car and drove to Sydney to see my uncle who is a professor/surgeon at the RPA hospital in Sydney. I turned around shortly after arriving and drove home. There was no help there. Granted there wasn't alot that could be done. Mum's thigh muscle had wasted away due to inactivity and badly controlled diabetes. This put extra strain on her already weak knee, the problems were compounding.

Mid 2009 things weren't improving, mum seemed very stressed that we were all living under the same roof. She wasn't the only one who was going insane but i couldn't leave. The driveway was impossibly steep, she could not get the mail or take the rubbish out. Who would be there to pick her up if she fell?

So i hit on the idea to fix the house up a little and apply for a loan. That way we could either extend the house or put in a granny flat. We were pre-approved a loan for $144k which would have been more than enough to do what was needed. Until i realised we were in a shitty suburb, in a shitty street, in a shitty house and the last thing i wanted was to spend another 30 years there paying it off.

That's when the research began. What were my options? Where could we go? How could i create something from nothing. I needed to find cheap land, cheap housing options, i needed to allow for 2 x cataract operations through the private health system because well... that's another story. I also needed to get mum a car and do it with a minimal amount of money because i knew for certain the house mum owned would not sell for much. So began my journey into the land unknown.