‘We finally found the place we’d call ‘home’ after 14 moves’

My wife, Jacqui, and I have been married for 60 years and during that time we have moved home (and sometimes even country as well) about 14 times. We have lived in single storey homes (called ‘bungalows’ in England); two storey homes, one of which had the living area upstairs and bedrooms downstairs; and we have lived in flats. We have even lived, for short periods, in a couple of caravans! Some of our homes have been in cities, some have been in the country, some by the sea and some many miles inland; one or two have been semi-detached and a few others have been stand-alone, with plenty of garden around them!

I think we can justifiably claim, during our many years together, to have pretty well covered the field with regard to the types of ‘average home’ we have owned or rented. There’s been nothing too grand — especially the caravans, which were only used short-term while waiting for other things to happen, like the period between selling our house in New Zealand and passing the time until the Oriana arrived to take us to England, or the time we sold our house in Melbourne to go ‘grey nomading’ up north.

We stopped off at a little town called Yarram, about 200km away and put our trailer in a caravan park there because we thought it would be nice to explore the area a little before moving on. After all, with the life we were going to live we were in no hurry to be anywhere. We never got any further! I don’t quite know to this day how it all happened, but our short stop stretched into some months when the park owner asked us if we would be prepared to move into a house of theirs, rather than them letting it to fishermen who might gut their catch inside and permanently stink the whole place out! It was a brand-new house so we thought, ‘why not’.

Before we knew it, I was roped into Lions by our landlord, who was a member of that organisation, and then a few months later I was asked if I’d stand for the local shire council as the area’s representative, an election that I was utterly astonished to win. Many other things of a similar nature happened over the next year or so, until both Jacqui and I were involved in most of the activities that were going on around the neighbourhood.

To to cut a long story short, we are still in Yarram to this day. We are almost locals now after 22 years of occupancy. Though we have stepped back from most of the activities we were involved in, we aren’t losing touch with anyone, just enjoying the quiet life.

Which brings me to the point I wanted to make when I started writing this little piece. Of all the places we have lived and loved, this little town, tucked away in the heart of Gippsland, Victoria, is easily the best of the lot, especially in this day and age! We feel safe here, we feel we have true friends here and we feel uncrowded (our present home, right in the centre of the town, has about a quarter of an acre of garden around it). The traffic here is considered heavy when there are more than 20 cars cruising down the town’s main street; we can go out for an evening without locking the place up, not having to worry whether our television will still be there when we get home; and we can park our car right outside the particular shop we wish to visit, for as long as we need and without a parking meter charge. There is just one set of traffic lights in the town, controlling the pedestrian crossing in the main street, a street that still virtually closes at midday on a Saturday afternoon, leaving the town even more peaceful.

On top of this we also have all the necessary facilities we need, like a decent little hospital, two pubs, five coffee shops, (yes — five!), two garages, a country club, a very nice golf course and a 90-mile- long beach just 20 minutes away. As far as Jacqui and I are concerned, having tried all sorts of living, you can keep your city dwellings because this little place suits us right down to the ground. I just hope we can stay here for good.

Have you found your ‘forever’ home? What is it about your local community that makes the living easy?

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