The Property

Today we exchanged contracts on the property, after many delays caused by excessive paperwork in the system. We're now officially committed to this crazy idea. No backing out, no changing our minds - we'll just have to make a go of it!

The property itself is 25 acres of grassy slope, facing almost due north (very slightly to the east), in a (relatively) high rainfall rainfall area just outside of the town of Braidwood in NSW, Australia. The commute to work in Canberra will be just over an hour each way (an hour was what we considered our upper limit when looking for a block, though over time we hope to shift to working more from home/part time).

There's somewhere between 5 and 15km of unsealed road before the gate, depending which direction you come in from. The driveway itself is unsealed, and had quite a few weeds sticking up the first time we went there.

It's one thing to see '25 acres' written down on paper and quite another to walk it. We knew this was a problem for us going in to a property search, having been city kids we really had little concept of the scale, but thought it would be quickly solved once we were actually there. It wasn't with this one, as the property is almost completely treeless (nothing to give a sense of scale) and the hills are such that there's no one place you can stand and see all 4 corners (or even just opposite fences).

The view is very nice though - we think it looks better from a bit further down the hill. I've always been quite critical of people who buy a nice block then build a house right at the top of the hill, thinking "you're going to die in a fire" (I'm not being malicious with this thought, just commenting on the fact that so many people seem to prioritise scenery over bushfire safety in a country that's rather prone to fires). We like that our view looks nicer from further down, which is where we'd choose to build the main house anyway. Plus we intend to plant lots of trees so things will look different over time anyway.

At the bottom of the hill it flattens out again for a bit, before a small but apparently permanent creek.

The creek is just a little too wide to comfortably jump across. At some stage we'll build a little bridge, I guess. Perhaps a flying fox? It's easy to dream big when the work to get it done is so far ahead of us.

There are a few small patches of what looks like blackberries by the creek - they've clearly been sprayed before and are only just growing back, so we'll progressively rip them out.

When we went back to visit a few weeks after this first time, to confirm we still actually liked the place before committing to purchase, we saw something poke it's nose out of a small burrow at the edge of the creek. It could have been anything really, but we think it was furry rather than scaled and prefer to hope it's a platypus rather than admit it's probably a rat. We've also seen a very respectably sized lizard, probably a blue tongue, sunning itself by the creek.

We've seen a fox every time we've been there, so one of our first tasks will probably be to remove said fox. As sweet as it looks it is destined to become an ex-fox long before it has the chance to threaten our chickens/ducks or, more importantly, possible platypus.

There are, however, wombats.

There's probably twenty or so burrows in the hillside, all down by the creek and none at all further up. We know that wombats can be destructive to anything put in the way of their habitual pathways, so we figure we'll have to find out if these burrows are still active then build our pathways around the wombats habits. We'll see how we go.

The far side of the creek is a much steeper hill. Technically the property boundary is the creek itself, but it's difficult to fence a creek so when the property was created by subdivision the fence was put at the top of the hill opposite. In terms of agricultural land, this little section of no-mans land that we've incidentally acquired by virtue of the fence is not particularly useful as it faces almost entirely south. We won't be able to build any structures on it, but I thought that planted with a few things that will thrive in the shade it may be a good sheltered spot for bee hives or some such. Kyle's terribly phobic of wasps (for what I consider fairly good reasons on the basis of a very unfortunate prior experience involving a large angry swarm and a slow-moving cherry-picker) and finds bees a bit too similar for comfort, so the hives themselves will need to be out of the way a bit.

Not including the no-mans-land across the creek there are a grand total of 3 trees on the whole block. Looking back up the hill at them gives a little sense of the scale of the place.

Perhaps close-up helps a little more, for comparison?

We've got a good spot for the little house near the driveway up the top. Easy to get materials in, don't need the added expense of putting in extra driveway until later on, but a slight disadvantage regarding a head for water pressure from tanks. The big house will go in a nice hollow in the hill about a third of the way down the slope. There's no building envelope (set location where you have to build a house within the property) so we have free reign on where to build.

This property ticked off all of our requirements, plus a few of our 'not necessary, but nice' list:

• big enough for veggies + livestock of some sort + workshop + house(s) + whatever else we think of down the track
• building entitlement, prefer lack of established building envelope
• zoned appropriately for pigs if we want them later on
• gentle slope (for control of water flow across the site), preferably north/north-east facing (for good sunshine)
• few established trees (council's are fussy about cutting down trees, we prefer to be able to choose the type of vegetation on the property which we hope will grow to be extensive, so grassy was best)
• internet available by 3G/4G or fixed line (because we're tech-heads)
• max 1 hour commute to work (over time we'll lessen our commitment to work in the city)
• established dam, or potential dam sites
• (bonus) reasonable annual rainfall
• (bonus) electrical mains in the vicinity (just in case)
• (bonus) potentially abundant wildlife
• (deal-breaker) "feels right" (such an indefinable quality, but so necessary)

Initially we were looking for blocks under $200,000 - this one came in at just a bit over, but we like it so much we think it's worth it.

Settlement is officially the 14th of September. This is the day we will make the shift from the 'planning' stage to the 'doing' stage, and we expect the pace to speed up quite a lot from there.