We are a recently retired, non-smoking, Australian professional couple, following our dream of travelling the world.
House sitting opportunities will often decide the direction and location of our travel. We aim to really experience the places we visit by staying longer and getting to know the locals, the neighbourhood, the local cafés and markets, and by becoming involved with community volunteering, where possible.
Carol’s background is in nursing (operating theatre) and she was most recently a nurse lecturer at both university and college levels. She has been fortunate to have experienced travelling and volunteering through two international NGO’s; Medicines Sans Frontiers in South Sudan and One-2-One Cambodia. Both experiences were life changing.
George is from a banking and financial planning background. He likes to work around the home and is a great handyman and gardener. He has been heavily involved in our home renovations. We have owned our home and gardens in the city of Perth, Western Australia, for over thirty-five years. George volunteers in several local sporting clubs and has a long history with Rotary International.
Our two adult children are both working and travelling in Canada, so we would like to spend some time exploring the northern hemisphere, where it will be easier to catch up with them more frequently.
Over the years, we have opened our home to numerous international exchange students, some living with us for a few weeks and some for a whole year. We have been lucky enough to have had fabulous students and, more recently, have enjoyed visiting them and their families in India, France, Brazil and Japan. In 2016, our whole family attended the wedding of one of our past students in Brazil. While in South America, we took the opportunity to tour Brazil, staying at several properties and meeting many interesting people along the way.
Over the last three years, we have been fortunate to explore our own ‘backyard’ in the state of Western Australia (WA). We joined a four-wheel drive club, and have discovered amazing, isolated places in The Kimberley, The Mitchell Plateau, The Gibb River Road, The Bungle Bungles and the remote district of Kununurra, in the extreme north of WA. We have camped in the outback, and on cattle stations, beaches and in National Parks throughout our beautiful state.
We are both animal lovers and have looked after numerous friends’ properties and pets while they have been on vacation. In our travels, we prefer to stay in homes, rather than hotels, to really experience the daily life of the town we are in. We like going to the local shops and cafés, meeting the ‘locals’ and chatting to people. Housesitting with pets is a bonus, as it gives us our ‘animal fix,’ which we miss while we are travelling.
To look after your home would be a privilege and an honour for us and would allow you to relax and enjoy your holiday. You can be confident that your home and pets will be well looked after, your gardens will be cared for and everything will be just as you left it when you return.