In the 1990’s there was an ad for Don Smallgoods where the tag line was “Is Don. Is Good.”
The relevance of this is that Danita and I have now moved to Don, an outer suburb of Devonport. Outer being 10 minutes from the heart of town.
Since we keep kosher, this has created some interesting challenges for us.
Don is a manufacturer of smallgoods which are pretty much all based on bacon and ham – clearly not on our list of preferred products.
Also, (according to Wikipedia) “Devon is a type of manufactured meat product sold in Australia and New Zealand. It is usually served in a sandwich, often with tomato sauce and can also be fried in slices.
Typical commercial preparations list the major ingredient as ‘Meat including Pork’. It is usually composed of several types of pork, basic spices, and a binder.”
Prior to our arrival here I had a real issue with living in a place called DEVONport and we were expecting to be in Ulverstone, the next town along the coast.
However, like the saying “never say never” the Universe has a way of making us come to terms with our biases.
Having resisted the idea of living in a place associated (in my mind, at least) with ham products, I now find myself squarely in the heart of pig-based products.
But, it’s not all weird – we’ve found a wonderful place which meets all the requirements we had on our wish list:
– modern house
– solar panels for electricity
– rural environment but close to a population centre with all the facilities, including great food and entertainment, we want
– involvement with interesting activities and people
– wood fire
– amazing views. We can see Bass Strait and mountains which we are yet to identify.
– rain water tanks so we are using pure water and have no water bills.
– gas heating
Here are some photos of the house we are now living in. (NB: these photos are from the real estate listing and the furniture isn’t ours)
A large part of the property has been allocated for house agistment (nothing to do with us) and so here is a photo of one of our co-tenants.
One of the things we are now doing which, as house-sitters, we haven’t done for over five years, is shopping for household items.
We’ve needed all sorts of things which we haven’t needed for a long time – like a fridge, vacuum cleaner and other furniture.
Our shopping list also includes a ride-on mower and chain saw – looking forward to those.
That’s been exciting.
The other thing we’ve been doing is getting rid of “stuff”.
There are a lot of things we’ve lived without for years and we’re now wondering why we kept them.
Some of them have sentimental value but we’re on a mission to simplify our lives and part of that is eliminating clutter.
So, many things we’d packed up (including the dust) are being discarded.
It somehow is a cross between liberating and “but that was a gift from …”
We’ve still got a long way to go with that but this has been helpful.
It’s also been exciting to be re-united with some of our special things – like our bed.
Here’s my take on “making the bed”.
See, I can be domestic.
And here’s the made bed. (Danita has requested that I put in a caveat that we haven’t yet found all our linen).