Response rating:
Preferred locations
Northern Rivers, Tweed Coast, Adel Southern suburbs, Adel. Inner suburbs
Additional Info
References available, Police check available, Non smoker, Experience with Domestic Animals
About
We are a married couple, both retired teachers who
sold our large 2 storey home over 4years ago to downsize.
Our apartment build was delayed for over 18months, and we ended up doing more house-sitting than caravanning as we had intended!
It started in the first few weeks when we house-sat for friends travelling to Europe for 4 weeks. Then another friend asked us if we could look after their dog and chickens for a couple of weeks, a friend’s neighbour went to India for 3 weeks….. etc etc.
Once we’d done a few, we realised we loved house-sitting: new areas, new coffee shops, and best of all, new pets! We have had pets throughout most of our married life: dogs, cats, guinea pigs, but had lost our last pair of dogs several years prior. It was a conscious decision not to replace them so we could travel in retirement, but we missed being a pet-friendly house-hold.
We joined a couple of house-sitting sites, and it went from there: we’ve been able to look after every sort of dog imaginable - Bernese Mountain dogs ( twice), Golden Retrievers, Labs, Jack Russell, Labradoodle, small dog of unknown parentage :) , Samoyed, Bull Mastiff….Then there have been several cats, a multitude of chickens (with lovely fresh eggs), and a few small and very large fish tanks.: we loved being able to be foster-pet parents!
We always treat any of these pets as you would expect: they’re family members who need care, company and lots of love and attention, and we are happy to give that.
We are also very respectful of your home- we’ve been serial renovators throughout our married lives ( 5 houses in total!), and have enjoyed creating welcoming family homes. We can therefore appreciate that homeowners would want their own home to equally be well cared for.
We have been settled in our new apartment now for just over 2 yrs, so have decided to start the occasional exploration of the Eastern parts of Australia
Originally we always headed towards the Northern Rivers area in NSW as our daughter and young family live in Lennox Head. They are in the process of moving at present, destination unknown, so we’re more open to other areas as a result.
We lead fairly low-key lives in retirement : Jan with cooking, reading, quilting, “shopping” and catching up with family and friends, Jeff with riding his E- mountain bike, snorkelling. and catching up with friends. We’re definitely not night owls! Our combined daily interest though, is having a great coffee somewhere, whether with breakfast or cake is optional :) , but we love finding new cafes.
We are both non-smokers, light social drinkers, and are fully Covid ( and everything else!) vaccinated.
We are more than happy to supply references from previous sitters if you would like ( none on this site as yet),
Regards,
Jan and Jeff :)