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.