Stephen, left, and Anthony: We laid that plywood floor!
An Update from Stephen and Anthony in Myocum, Australia
After Cyclone Alfred and with your help, Stephen Cook (left) and Anthony Morrison (who helped create and build this blog) landed on their feet (no pun intended). They’ve purchased a small what I called a “starter home” (they call it a “tiny home” in Australia) in the region of the country they most wanted to live in.
The story of how that fell into their hands for almost nothing is in itself a miracle. (1)
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Stephen: Firstly, a HUGE thank you again to everyone who so very kindly assisted our tiny-home story: those who gave so kindly to the original call after we were uprooted by Cyclone Alfred and, those who joined Steve and Suzi in their personal project to assist our move.
Well, it’s eight weeks since we got here to our tiny home in Myocum – and, boy, have we had an interesting time.
Firstly, dealing with solar power issues: due to the fact it has been heavily raining here for weeks, we’ve spent some time with no power, and even more time gently asking other locals if we can use their electric power outlets to re charge our battery.
The day one of the bulls got loose
In that time – and in the same spirit in which many of you came to our aid – we’ve been blessed by the owner of a burger cart, two young girls at a gelatto bar, a major supermarket, and even our local gas station, to get us powered up again, on various occasions.
The pathetic part about living off-grid here in Australia is that you get no solar power rebates or assistance, despite governments here crowing about their solar power rebates. This means we have now spent several weeks organising to get ON the grid, so we can then apply to get solar rebates so we can then get back off the grid.
Ridiculous, we know. But hey, what government anywhere doesn’t support the electric power giants. Certainly, not here in Australia!
Thus, today, we very ceremoniously turned on our electricity for the first time, simply to charge our solar batteries, after yet another cloudy, wet day. To do that, we had to climb the fence into the bull paddock – with one eye on them – and make our way cautiously out to the meter installation box – because, for some reason, the electrician put the meter box in the middle of the bulls’ domain!
We’ve already had two encounters with the handsome, cream Charolais bulls. One curly-haired stud even made his way right through our fence to eat the greens on this side, before he got very agitated. After an hour or so of cajoling, we, and a local farmer, managed to get him back into his paddock. With our farmer away, the local farmer then kindly got his twitcher to fix the fence for good!
Our tiny tomatoes to match our tiny home
This week we also ran out of water. Bizarre, considering we have had so much rain. But we currently only have a tiny tank, and it simply ran dry (yes, Anthony is learning to have short, quick showers!). After three quotes, we chose a lovely fellow from Water Please! (yes, we loved the name, too), who came and filled our tank yesterday afternoon for a very good price.
The other thing we’ve had to do is learn to live in a VERY cramped environment. We were sleeping in our kitchen, until it had to be re-built following the previous owner’s flood. So now we sleep in a pod that was designed as a small office and we have to go outside the windows and door to lean in to make our bed as there is no room around the bed to be inside AND make it.
But, despite having to watch and respect every cent we spend, we have adapted very readily – and amazed ourselves with our ability to rise to a challenge and get through it.
We’ve also learned the weather here is VERY unpredictable. One night, we had howling, almost cyclonic winds – which brought instant fears of what happened in March when the cyclone came and THAT tree came through our bedroom roof where we were staying.
Most days it has rained, which is also a spirit dampener when you have such little living space.
We’ve also had to travel some 2400 kms south and back to cull our former household and belongings. We were very quick decision makers and knew we simply had to get rid of around 80 per cent of our previous (tired, worn out, old-energy) furniture. This was both arduous and cathartic.
Our removals happened last week – thanks to those wonderful souls who donated to Steve’s project to get us moved! Now we have dozens of boxes of clothes, linen, ornaments and shed stuff from our old ‘normal’ house piled into our shed and shipping container to cull for tiny-home status.
It was just too hard and stressful to do it all in the old storage warehouse where it has been for the past three years. Yet, we now feel consolidated and can start to sort things out at our leisure.
We have also impressed ourselves with our skills – putting a cheap plywood floor in our shipping container; building a shed that the instruction manual (if you could call it that!) said would take 2 people 2-3 hours but took two people four, head-spinning days to complete. But we did it.
We’ve also surprised ourselves at how well we’ve coped with a simple, portable camping toilet. But maybe that’s too much information!
That said, we LOVE it here. It is the first time in three years that we’ve truly been living back in JOY. And we are creating what we need every day. We’ve even been trading our tiny tomatoes and delicious, giant pumpkins for cucumbers and other things with our neighbours. We’ve even got a 30th birthday party to go to next month!
Another spectacular sunset!
The sunsets have been wow – fully amazing. The locals are happy and smiling and kind. The farmers’ markets are full of people only too happy to help new arrivals. We’re loving connecting with everyone we meet. We’ve also found several old friends and work colleagues we haven’t seen in years live very nearby – and all have been thrilled to hear we are now here too.
The welcome has been warm and genuine.
We KNOW we are in the right place. The vast majority of the populace is very awake and aware. We are living in New Earth. THIS is our HOME.
As we’ve said before, we couldn’t have done it without the huge support of this blog, Steve, Suzi, and you all. We are very, very grateful.
So, thanks again to everyone who assisted in allowing us to find this place, provided donations for our land lease, and also those who assisted greatly in helping us to pay for our movers.
Thank you all from deep within our hearts.
Stephen and Anthony
I said I’d restart our campaign to send Stephen and Anthony a total of USD $5,000 to help the two of them build the needed additional rooms (right now they sleep in tiny quarters and have no toilet).
Right now we stand at USD $2801 plus a donation yesterday of USD$364 = $3165. That’s USD $1835 to go!
I should add that I see both Stephen and Anthony as having a big role to play in building Nova Earth, internationally, as they demonstrated when they worked with us here on what was then the 2012 Scenario and later the Golden Age of Gaia.
Step right up, ladies and gentlemen! Anyone can be a part of their houseraising bee! You’re welcome to donate via [email protected] (and Stephen will let us know for the tally).
Footnotes
(1) See “A Big Thank You from Stephen and Anthony in Australia,”