Growing up I was always a little bit baffled….. I loved growing up in London, it was a magnificent, wonderful concrete jungle full of excitement and adventure. I truly thought that I was a city girl through and through, however I always had this constant yearning for something different, to be close to animals and nature.

From an early age I knew I loved animals, it didn’t matter if they padded, trotted, flew, slithered, hopped, wiggled or swam, I just wanted to be close to critters.

Although I lived in a flat on a housing commission estate, with no garden only a balcony, my wonderful mum always supported my love of animals.

The family home was always filled with a menagerie of different critters, ranging from guinea pigs, rabbits, cats, goldfish, budgies, snakes, mice, gerbils and more. Just to confirm the mice, and gerbils were not food for the snakes, they ate earthworms and fish fingers!

My mum did draw the line on dogs and ponies though, however this only encouraged me to befriend every canine and equine that I could find!

It made me so happy and content being with the animals that I spent the majority of my time them. I loved their individual quirks, twitching whiskers, soft padded paws, slithery strength, fluffing feathers and shimmering scales.

Even though I was content and happy with my animals, I still had a yearning in my heart to be closer to nature, rolling hills, rivers and lakes.

This yearning was fulfilled when I met my besty frweindy at secondary school, we were instantly kindred spirits and spent our teenage years traipsing, meandering, wandering and adventuring around the beautiful mountains, hills, lakes and countryside of Scotland, Wales, and Northumberland. We had wonderful and sometimes risky adventures, but these fabulous times just confirmed my need to be in the countryside near nature.

Our teenage years went by far too quickly, and the time to be adults was upon. The choice Uni or job, my mum wasn’t in the financial position where I could go to uni so I ended up getting a waitressing job in London. It was with a heavy heart and unwavering awareness that things had changed forever when I hugged and said goodbye to my besty as she headed off to Uni in Wales.

For a while I worked and spent time with my animals but I knew that I wanted to escape the city, that I wanted new expediences and adventures.

So at the age of twenty one I booked a ticket to Australia. After 24 hours and a milk run of a flight with 25 layovers, I landed in Australia and knew that I was on the right continent!!!

How couldn’t I be in one of the best countries on earth……..a country filled with rain forests, snow capped mountains, cosmopolitan cities, deserts, sun kissed beaches, inhabited by weird and wonderful critters such as kangaroos, koalas, weird lizards, emus, bird life, whales, dolphins, sharks and what the hell is a whale shark…. and every other critter that can potentially kill with one little nibble…. I was in heaven!!

So for the next two years I traveled this extraordinary country, had wonderful experiences, saw amazing things, fell in love, had my heart broken (a couple of times) and had wonderful adventures.

A few months before my visa was about to expire and falling in love yet again I decided that I wanted to stay and study art.

So after a few months, some immigration headaches and one citizenship ceremony later I enrolled in a Fine Art Degree at RMIT in Melbourne.

I spent four years studying art at RMIT, I loved it but it could also be intense, brutal, and deflating.

So after graduating and yet another heartbreak ( I really needed to review my taste in men) the urge to travel was again upon me. With no plan in place, and only a vow not to fall in love I hit the road (not literally, I wasn’t going to take my heartbreak out on the tarmac).

It was a week and half into my travels. I still had no plan, I was just travelling where my nose pointed, it just happened to point in the direction of a rather lonely figure walking alone the motorway (or rather highway here in Oz). This lonesome figure was clearly not hitchhiking, no thumb to be seen or waving down of cars, just plodding one foot in front of the other. So with no plan in place and all memories of Wolfe Creek long forgotten, I pulled over to ask this lonely figure if he wanted a lift. All it took was a wound down window and a pair of kind hazel eyes peering in at me for my vow to rapidly disintegrate.

It only took me minutes to discover that my lonesome figure had no plan in place either and I was inviting him to have no plan with me!

I have discovered that when people have no plans they tend to be lot more impulsive, because my lonesome figure didn’t think twice and jumped in the car!

From that moment we started our travels together, driving through South Australia into Western Australia across the Nullabor before before landing in the beautiful coastal town of Broome.

Broome with it’s golden beaches and pristine turquoise waters of the Indian ocean is considered by most to be true paradise.

And for a few years yes it was paradise to us. However, after a few years of being so remote and isolated, looking at red pindan, turquoise oceans, we started to yearn for green countryside and meandering rivers.

So once again with no plan in place we packed up our lives and with fur babies in tow hit the road in search of another paradise.

Six months, five states and 5000 km's later, paradise presented itself in the form of a small township nestled on the mighty Murray River in amongst the green, lush vineyards and rolling countryside….perfect for us!!

We had found our slice of paradise but where to live, originally we had thought about buying a run down old cottage on a couple of acres, where our fur babies could run, I could have a pet pig, chickens, and possibly llamas.

So after days and days of scrolling through real estate ads with no properties grabbing at our heart strings, I stumbled across an ad for a houseboat.

A houseboat on a real estate site, that’s a bit strange! But with strange comes a glimmer of hope, intrepidness and opportunity.

He knew, my beloved just knew when I turned to him and said “Hi darling, look at this there’s a houseboat for sale, I reckon we should go and have a squizzy, just out of curiosity, I don’t want to buy it:” that our lives were about to change!

One viewing of the cute little cabin on the water and not a lot of sense later, I turned to my beloved with bright, excited eyes and said… “ Ohh darling how cute the boat is, it’s gorgeous, and just think we wanted to be near the water again but if we lived on a house boat we would be on the river not just near it”

So once again, with no real thought or plan just an impulsive whim we bought our cute little cabin on the water.

At this point I have to say we both probably had an idealistic romanticized idea of living on a houseboat, don’t get me wrong we absolutely love it but there have been a few challenges along the way! No hot water, no heating in the middle of a Victorian winter is not much fun… an off grid, blocked toilet also takes thing to the next level, throw in a couple of stormy days with 40 km winds and torrential rain gets the boat rocking and rolling (not the fun rocking and rolling that you may be thinking off).

But despite these challenges the fantastic most definitely outweighs any negatives, we both love living here, feel content and happy, every day we wake up in paradise surrounded by a menagerie of wild critters, magnificent scenery and meandering waters.

And that is the story behind how a working class lass from London ended up living on a houseboat in Australia!

I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world!!!!