....and what a year it's been! A whole year? Really? Has it really been that long? Yes, it has. I have lived in my van, The Mouse House, for an entire year. 365 days and nights. I have slept in the Mouse House every single night and not surprisingly, I have woken up in many different places but always in the M.H. The journey started even earlier...in March 2018. That's when I sold my house, paid off the mortgage and divested myself of almost everything. I've sold, bequeathed and given away almost every treasure I ever had. I passed on my favourite things (art, antiques and instruments) to my children and grandchildren. This past year I've been very well but I've also been unwell, I've had a stay in hospital with shingles (and visited there a bit with knife wounds as a beginning spoon carver too) I've had several physio appointments for various aches and pains and at times I've been worried and depressed. But...even more often ...I've danced and sung, met amazing vandwellers from all over the place. I've been excited, amazed, and super happy. Lucky for me, when I'm not travelling, I share a bit of land with my dear sweet brother who is very kind and a great (and generous) cook too! Here I can relax and recharge. This year I've grown...and shrunk!! I've moved from a 3 bedroom/office house to a pretty small Mouse House. I've learned how to use a GoPro camera and I've made loads of YouTube vids of my adventures - to share with other 'would be' vandwellers and also to help me remember just what amazing journeys I have been on. Here's the latest one....what tools to have in a van. This is what the Mouse House really looks like from day to day....
I've been asked lots of questions during the last year of Van Dwelling. Here are some answers to the questions I remember being asked.
To end this edition of the vancamerawoman blog here's a slideshow of a few photographs. Thank you for your company this year. Until next time...stay well, be happy.... Clare x To see a lot more of my work (on all manner of fabulous things) please go to...
https://www.redbubble.com/people/colinsart
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First things first.. Well this was actually the third thing. First there was a gate...so I could actually get onto the land. Next there was the surveying... so I knew where the fence would go. And then this week there was the fencing to keep the feral goats and horses off the block so that the grass could grow and cover the bare dirt. Now I can begin to get ready for the spring planting of native trees, shrubs and grasses. It was hard work being a fencers 'off-sider'. There was 1500m of fence to erect - three sides of the 1/2 acre block. We used five strands of high tensile plain wire, seven strand goat mesh and about 1000 hog clips - one on each of 3 wires about 300mm apart....that was a lot of bobbing up and down and squeezing the pliers. No wonder my hands were swollen and sore. It drizzled the whole time making the grassless dirt (can't really call it soil yet) wet enough to fill the grooves in my boots and soak every coat, pair of boots and beanie I own. Eventually I remembered I had a raincoat rolled up in the cab. Doh! A couple of days before this Sandra and I went down to Bellingen to pick up some corrugated from Rah's place. It was bucketing down in Bello and there's only so much a Driazabone jacket can handle. We were saturated! Thank you so much Sandra for bringing the tin out to the block. It will be so useful for the camp shelter. As soon as my hands stop hurting i'll be over to your place to help with the weeding. Next thing to do on my little 1/2 acre is to build a 'camp shelter'. Somewhere I can stretch my legs a bit and hang up wet clothes if I need to.
I've really missed cooking so a bit more room will be fantastic. Might even have a bookcase, a couch even. I like the Mouse House, I really do, but after a year of 'super tiny living' I would like a wee bit more space. Marty (the fencer) and I are going to build a 5m x 4m shelter in the way they were most likely built in the late 1800's when this village was the pumping, thumping, gold rush town with four pubs, shops, schools and an oyster bar! Tomorrow I'm off to 'The Dorrigo Men's Shed' to build a door. I like to be involved in every aspect of this tiny space build so a front door it is. I figured once the door was made, the shelter can be erected around it. Last week, with Graeme, I made a 'humanure' compost toilet. Despite the fellas all telling me it wouldn't work it seems to work just fine. No smell at all and now, with the outhouse in place and a wooden floor in, my visitors can enjoy the view while contemplating and adding to (eventually) the fecundity of this poor old piece of land. One day it will be a little Paradise...just you wait and see. Until next time, all the very best, Clare 😊 |
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