Four months into country life, I’m discovering that the things I love most were the things I never thought to look for.
It has to be said that there was some trepidation on my part about moving to the country — and more specifically, moving to a small country town. If you haven’t followed along from the start you can see the start of my journalling of it here.
We all visit lovely regional areas and spend the first few days sipping wine, admiring the scenery and discussing whether we could live there.
We imagine what we would do, where we would live and how lovely it would be to escape the city.
Then we go home to our everyday lives, sit in traffic and start planning the next holiday.
Moving permanently is a slightly different proposition.
But now that we have been here a little over four months, there are some unexpected things I am loving about living in the country and the way of life it has created for us.
It is a mixture of life moving at an incredibly fast pace — because there is always something to do, fix, organise, plan or investigate — and a slower, more relaxed way of life in general.
There are plans being made, plans almost finished, plans not started, and plans that have now been moved into the category of “perhaps next year”.
And then there are the things that simply have to wait.
Usually because something else has broken.
We moved to Roseville, not just to Guyra
For a small country town, there is always something going on.
And I don’t necessarily mean in the town itself.
I remember when the discussion became about the possibility of being here more permanently and I said to Jaime, “Can I do it? Can I live in a small town?”
He looked at me and said, “Suzy, you are moving to Roseville, not just to Guyra.”
For perhaps the first time, I was stumped for words.
Because he was right.
Roseville is a sanctuary. It is a place of beauty, wildlife, gardens, and endless possibilities. It is also a place that seems to encourage you to continue creating, improving and maintaining the beauty within our fences.
Every day is filled with promise.
There is the patio to finish, the veggie garden to start, and the ongoing responsibility of making sure Toast hasn’t somehow made his way into the sheep next door.
Although, now that there are sheep over there, I am not entirely sure we will know which one is Toast.
Then someone drops in.
A load of wood needs to be moved.
We end up at the coffee shop for an hour longer than we should because four people we know have also dropped by and it would be rude not to catch up on the week that was.
A pipe bursts.
We lose the dog.
There is also a never-ending amount of weeds and gardening that needs taking care of to keep everything looking the goods.
Or we spend another hour filling our phones with flower photos because, as I mentioned in my last post, every day something new has flowered or started to bud.
It is a very busy life.
Just not always in the way you expect.
The birds have their own social calendar
The bird life here is incredible.
I have mentioned it before, but the king parrots have their morning bath and meeting, the black cockatoos arrive for a few days, drop approximately one million pine cones and then disappear again.
A week later, they return.
I thought someone had lost a budgie, only to discover that it was another type of lorikeet.
And now there are more than one.
I am slowly becoming the sort of person who can identify birds by their appearance, their sound and their general attitude.
The bees at the moment are incredible.
Every tree and flower seems to be absolutely brimming with them, which is wonderful.
They are evidently much more productive than we are, by the sounds of it.
Dad’s daily inspection
Dad is here most days to help out with the endless gardening and check in on what we have achieved.
He is also here to give us grief.
Particularly because, after buying a Mercedes less than a year ago, we have now decided that country life is not especially suited to a Mercedes and have bought a LandCruiser.
The fact that neither Jaime nor I change cars very often makes Dad enjoy this development even more.
“No one drives a Mercedes in the country,” he tells us.
There is a lot of eye rolling.
Mostly from me.
Although I suspect Dad is quietly delighted that we have finally accepted the importance of owning a proper country car.
Things I never expected to learn
I have learnt all about electric fences.
And it turns out it is not as simple as running a line and putting a solar thing on the end so that it works.
There are apparently many things to consider.
There are wires, connections, power, batteries, gates, animals and an alarming amount of information that I previously had no interest in knowing.
I have also discovered that deciding what to wear every day is much easier when your wardrobe consists mainly of the same old jumper.
In Sydney, I had a lot of corporate clothing.
I am now not entirely sure what to do with it.
Here, you put on a jumper, add some boots and get on with the day.
Nobody cares.
If you go to the pub for dinner, most of the men are wearing dirty jeans and an old shirt because they have just come in from a day’s work.
They are happy to catch up with mates, have a beer and enjoy a good steak at the local.
There is something very refreshing about that.
Nobody seems particularly concerned with looking busy, important or impressive.
They are just getting on with life.
What did I use to do with all that time?
These are things I never stopped to think about before.
Even on my one-hour drive to work every morning and evening, I now wonder what I actually thought about for all that time.
I must have thought about something.
Although, if I am honest, it was probably traffic, work, what I needed to buy and whether I was going to get home in time to do everything I had planned.
Now, the things I think about are whether it is going to frost, whether the cows are where they are supposed to be, whether Toast has disappeared again, and how organised we are for photo shoots and garden visits and have we bitten off more than we can chew.
It is a different kind of busy.
And I like it.
There is more happening than garden walks and coffee
We do have plans.
We aren’t simply wandering around the garden, taking photos and drinking coffee.
Although, to be fair, we do quite a lot of that too.
As you may have noticed on the website, there is now a new section called Gatherings.
We are so excited about this and are currently planning, brainstorming, and having meetings to get something off the ground that we really hope will be wonderful.
It isn’t about becoming the next big function centre or having bookings every weekend of the year.
It is about sharing this space with people.
Sharing the gardens, the history, the beauty and the feeling that Roseville gives us.
There is a lot happening behind the scenes, and it is starting to feel as though all the hard work and planning is slowly taking shape.
We are not quite ready to tell you everything yet.
But very soon, we hope to start opening the doors a little more.
The unexpected part of country life
Country life has surprised me so far.
It isn’t what I expected at all.
It is busier than I imagined, quieter than I imagined, more complicated than I imagined and somehow much more enjoyable than I imagined.
There are endless jobs, unfinished projects, dirty boots, electric fences, disappearing dogs and more discussions about cars, bobcats and fences than I ever thought possible.
But there are also morning coffees, beautiful gardens, birds in the trees, cows in the paddocks, people who stop for a chat and a sense that life has become a little more connected to the things that matter.
I don’t think I knew how much I needed that.
And perhaps that is the biggest surprise of all.
Roseville is not just where we live.
It is becoming the place where we are meant to be. And very soon, we’ll be able to share a little of that feeling with others.
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