Gallop-Inn: Life begins again at.... 50?

And so it begins. 2013 was a year of change. We sold our home, we've had our first experience at renting, our son was married, we had our first overseas trip (to said son's wedding) and our adult daughter moved home again. Its been a year of slow recovery from the disastrous effects of the worst economic times, working out where we wanted to go from here, and could we make our plans for the future before the GFC, still come to fruition.

After months of discussions, both sober and otherwise, on December 18th, we became the proud owners of 5 acres of land at the back of Hervey Bay. Funnily enough, it is one of two blocks we looked at 7 years ago before everything fell apart.

So lets go back to the beginning and tell you about Rick and I.

We are a quiet couple, have been married 25 years (nearly 26 now!), have two adult kids (one married one just returned home) and have acquired a staffy, a malamute, a cat, a horse and two fish. Pretty normal average stuff.

Rick is a local builder of 10 years in the "Bay" as its affectionately referred to by locals. Speaking of locals, he's a 4th or 5th generation Bayite, and I've been here since 1980 so I reckon we can be classed as locals. We named our business Mikiah - which is a mashup of our kids names, Michael and Kiah. Funnily enough, someone once told us that in one of the African dialects, it means my home.

We're just a little family business, doing only a few homes a year, I work part time each day as a medical receptionist and help Rick with paperwork and clients with selections for their home and colour choices etc. In my spare time, I help run a social horse trail riding club in the area.

Back to today. We've decided to give you all, an insight to our next adventure and let you follow along with our progress, highs and the inevitable fun and games that comes with building. Just because we are the builders, it wont be all smooth sailing. The nature of the beast is that things can and do go wrong. As builders, we try to shield the client from most of that. One of Rick's favourite sayings is, there are no problems, only solutions.

Now this wont be the normal process time. We have a lot of work to just clear the property (once council approval has been obtained of course). We also have to learn about sustainable developing of this property, to prevent over use of areas that the horse/s (there's never just one horse!). We want to develop healthy vegie gardens, chook shed and a whole lot more. We also have to build homes for other people too!

The wish is to create a lifestyle that will take us through to retirement. Somewhere the grandkids will learn the benefit of growing your own food, and playing in the dirt. Somewhere we don't have to spend all day cleaning and tidying, that suits our preferred outdoors lifestyle and living, and generally somewhere to pull up a chair on the verandah, hang our hats, kick off the boots, and have a cuppa. I hope you join us for the adventure.