At the end of January 2023, we had been living on the Gold Coast for 19 years, but most of our family (including 2 adult daughters and now 4 grandchildren) were living in South Australia, so we travelled down there a lot to see them. For the first 10 or so years, we had somewhere to stay, but as our daughter’s families grew and circumstances changed, we started to pay for our own accommodation and our family visits became really expensive.
All those years, I never dreamt or even realised that pet owners were always looking out for pet lovers to care for their fur babies while they travelled away from the pet’s home. DUH! All this time, I could’ve been getting free accommodation, in return for my house and pet sitting services.
So, before Easter 2022 I applied for a “job” looking after 2 cute little dogs in a tiny country town. That first experience was fun! I loved keeping the dogs company and playing with them and they seemed really happy.
A few months later our daughter was getting married and our grandson had his 2nd birthday coming up. This time, John was coming too and we stayed in the Adelaide suburbs looking after 3 sooky cats! The house was really nice and in a great location! It was actually the next suburb over from where we had owned our own property and lived for 20 years.
When we got back home, we decided to do house and pet sitting full time for a year or so – put our belongings into storage and reduce our expenses so we could save up for our retirement years!
The best way to get longer sitting opportunities, is to get decent reviews, so we did quite a few short sits around the Gold Coast, while looking out for long sitting assignments in South Australia, where we planned on spending most of the following year.
We got our first longest sitting assignment for 7 weeks in a country town interstate, close to where our eldest daughter and 3 of our grandchildren live. This sit was for May – June, so I needed to “fill in” all the other months of the year. Eventually, most of the dates got filled in and we obtained assignments from February upto mid November with a few gap days/weeks in between.
In the meantime, we were “downsizing” considerably – selling, giving away and packing the rest for the removalist to take to Adelaide and put in storage. Finally, the last day arrived when what was left had to be squeezed inside the car! That was the hardest part and in the end we had 3 different piles – one for the next door neighbour, one for the rubbish bin and one that HAD to go in the car. The last pile kept getting smaller because we couldn’t fit anymore in the car. We left behind a lot of stuff we were going to take. In hindsight, we should’ve bought a small trailer to take with us.
So… we took 3 days to drive 2,000 km drive to the south of Australia and had a few days to spare before our first house sit began.