Living Off-Grid in the Rainforest

It’s the end of April 2019 and what seems like a lifetime ago since I wrote on these pages. A lot’s happened and we are finally settled into what we believe to be our forever home. The kids are now 5 (Isla) and 3 (Harlan) and have a social life of their own with pre-school and family daycare. They seem to like the company of other kids than me most days now.

I guess they are growing up.

Roy is still working for at the two power stations here in the Northern Rivers, this is the job he left Papua New Guinea for when Isla was 1. It’s keeping him busy but now where we live one of the power stations is close and the other an hour drive away. He still does shutdown 6 weeks of the year where they turn off the site to do maintenance. But that has just ended for us this year, so now we can all just chill and relax again.

Me, I am keeping busy as always. These days I am helping small businesses grow online and improve their marketing, I have a podcast which is super fun plus I am putting on a biz conference in Byron Bay in June. Most people would not expect anything else from me but a full plate, but honestly I don’t feel like I work that much.

I have found gardening again.

Down the road from where we live about (1km) we have a community garden that we share with two girls who live down the road. Over the past two months, we have been plodding along at bringing it back to life. Digging in the dirt with my hands, showing my kids how to pick beans, chasing chickens and watering is so ingrained in me.

I missed it.

Like, REALLY missed it.

And now I have it again back in my life. And I feel all of a sudden like I have my sense of purpose back.

That is why I finally feel I can bring Strayed from the Table back to life. Plus Roy and I are hoping to put travel back on to our agenda’s now the kids are bigger.

Okay, you are probably wondering about our house.

We ended up in Burringbar on a little community where Roy grew up. We actually bought the house next door to his parents. Convenient YES! The property is an MO (multiple occupancey) There are 7 shares – which is 7 houses on one title there is over 200 acres and its lush subtropical rainforest, so you can’t see much but trees. Lots of trees.

Our house runs on solar, no power poles near us at all, we are self-generated with a battery bank that needs replacing sometime soon but still does the job of keeping us in power. I have a fridge running every day but had to cut back on kitchen appliances so that was a little sad but its just like a normal house but we don’t pay for electricity. Our only set back is when we run out of power if we don’t have sun for 3 days and we have generators to keep the lights on at night and top up the batteries. It’s taken a little while for us to figure it all out but we keep our power consumption to a minimum.

Our water is from a spring and gravity fed to our house – once again no mains near us at all. Over the past year or so now Roy has been slowly fixing pipes and maintaining the water system for our property so we all get our tanks filled. Especially this year as we have had hardly any rain. It’s dry here for the rainforest.

hmmm, what else might you like to know…

The Northern Rivers is an amazing place to live, I think we have just about done all the walks, markets and adventures around and we have scoped out some of our favourite places to visit. I think we have really settled into living here, the lifestyle is chill, and now we have the opportunity to start stretching ourselves a little broader afield with the kids being older.

We are all in good health and I thankful that we are surrounded by nature every day.

I will have to show you the garden next, perhaps in the next post.

If you are reading this now, thanks for sticking around for the past couple of years, it was hard for us to leave the farm on the Sunshine Coast. And I think Roy and I have finally hit home (well for him – literally) and are ready to start chapter 2 of our gardening, travel and food adventures.

Got questions, hit me up in the comments

Lizzie