Last week we caught up with a good friend who is over in Patagonia, Chile at the moment building mountain bike trails through this stunning lodge....lucky bugger!. This is not our friend but gives you an idea of what he's doing.

 

He also sent us a link to another house truck site about a couple in the UK who run a vintage mobile cinema. 

We are a tourist attraction, it's official! Last week a lovely chap called Brian pulled into our paddock. 

He is originally from Norwich, currently residing in Melbourne, Brian and his delightful wife spend a fair amount of time travelling.  Just to name a few places: All European countries, Scandanavia, several African counrtries, most of Aussie and a number of trips to NZ.

They keep travel journals of where they have been and what they did, Brian now does this solely but the marvellous thing is he illustrates his books with paintings of where they are. I was stunned when I read through his current one, the paintings are incredible and so finely detailed.

He asked if he could paint our house truck, which of course we agreed to and here is a photo of what he painted. I love it so much that I have changed my profile pic ...

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The last few weeks has seen the stress ebbing away with friends and family visiting us and enjoying a few laughs in what feels like ages. Finally got around to getting some veges growing again and decided to give container planting* a go this time as we are exposed to high winds and portability helps.

Pete's Mum is visiting from the UK, escaping the snow! Courtesy of the Ohiwa horse hire guys Steve and Mack, we had our first horse trek, awesome fun and great horses. Especially when Ron got cocky and egged Gangsta on to gallop, Ron's 'sideways-off-and-leap-back-on-again' trick was funny! Charlie thoroughly enjoyed riding Shorty and we may have encouraged an expensive hobby.
We've had lazy days at the beach, BBQ's galore, a fantastic Hangi, again courtesy of Steve, with food for days and a lovely gathering of new friends and neighbors to welcome ...

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 At last, for the first time in over 2 months Pete and I have smiles on our faces and we can feel the stress ebbing away. We have moved approx 500m down the hill and across the road to a stunning spot in the middle of Ohiwa Harbour.

I have to note that we have been humbled by the generosity of spirirt of the whole Ohiwa community. Several people offered us an emergency place to park, although most had no power or water; Karl and his fabulous tractor came to our aid and helped us get El Freedom down the hill, video coming shortly! And our saviours of the day could not be more different to our previous landlord/property-owner. 48 hours before homelssness and our neighbours offered us a place to stay for a trial period, but if all works out we actually offer them a solution to their ...

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Sooo, where to start? We were given notice to vacate by Nov 19th. We filed a claim with Tenancy Tribunal and our case was heard on Tuesday this week. We Won! 

But..its a hollow victory as the amount of compensation awarded doesn’t even cover the cost to get the haulage company out here to move our home. Also the notice to vacate was upheld as valid and the adjudicator gave us 5 days to clear out, she didn’t care that we have nowhere to go to or that she has effectively made us homeless. That’s justice for ya!

In the meantime the owner has taken steps to install a power box in his bottom paddock and intimated we could move done there and we can work something out, sounds great huh? But then he added the blackmail element of demanding we pay half the installation cost ...

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You know when sometimes things seems too good to be true? Just as we were getting settled we received an eviction notice and have to leave by Nov 19th. Charming. Seems the owner already has an existing contract on this property so off the the Tribunal we go. Can't divulge too much at this stage but will update you all once we''ve been through the process and let you know the outcome.

At this stage our main priority is to find another place to move to, so if anyone knows of some land for lease with power and water for a house truck, 2 peeps an 3 cats then PLEASE contact me.

A big thank you to all our friends for you support and advice.

The weekend is upon us, the sun is shining, birds are singing and cats are meowing. Its been challenging just getting stuff done as everything is still in relative chaos. We now have running water to the truck, yippee, means I can use the truck shower at last. Don't get me wrong, one of my favourite daily events is the piping hot bath at dusk, watching the sun set, Pink Floyd playing in the background, awesome!

Pete has been busy raking up nuts from under the macadamia trees in an attempt to reduce the nightly foraging of our friendly neighbourhood rats, it’s working too! And the nuts make a fantastic mulch for the compost. Talking of compost, I’ve watched a few videos on how to build a composting toilet, easy! All I need is some ply board, nails, a loo seat and around 12 barrels plus some ...

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