JULY 2005 : A Retrospective - One Year On

(forgive all the links on this one page - but it is a retropsective after all, dahlinks)

Twelve months ago today, 6th July, Tom and I rode into town with boat and dog, and removalist truck following close behind. Farewell Sydney, place of my birth - Hello Agnes Water!

During our reconnoiter two months before, we had contracted a rental house and storage shed in Agnes Water, so settling in was easy. We quickly discovered the better places to eat and to shop. And best of all were 'found' by people with whom we have become the best of friends.

We had also bought our land prior to coming permanently to live in Agnes Water so the primary task on arrival was to find the right builder then get started on our new Sea Change home. Within a month, we:

In absolute truth, I do not believe that either Tom or I knew how much we would love living in Agnes Water 1770, nor how easily we would adapt to the life style, the climate, the people and the unseen benevolent force that permeates the whole region (aka Titan).

On May 13, 2006 (under 12 months!) we moved into our dream Sea Change home and you may think me all mushy if I told you just how magical it is living here on our own little hill with view to the sea and the mountains. But at the risk of your scoff, I will confess that every day, I greet our home and our land and tell them how beautiful they are and how happy I am to be with them. Every sunrise, I gasp at God's latest unique artistic creation (he can be such a showoff!) which is shown to me unfiltered by any smog. And every night, I gauk at those huge sparkling jewels in the sky and the awesome clarity of the sweeping Milky Way.

By September, I had started this blogsite 'The Greens of Agnes Water' from which I derive a great deal of fun and pleasure and am tickled pink with the hit rate and the average stay duration - 12 minutes - are you all slow readers or wot?! By far the majority of emails (excluding from locals) I receive from the site, ask about buying property and/or getting employment here and I notice that 50% of the search engine quiries relate to the same subjects. Is there an invasion coming?

We hope so, as more people actually living here is just what is needed, as I keep mentioning. In some respects, Agnes Water reminds me of this horse - great assets but lacks body (or in this case bodies). How to snare folks to live here though..that is the question, eh, Hamlet?. Tom has totally vetoed my road block on the Pacific Highway idea.

Agnes Water will never be the next Noosa, that sales pitch is hogwash for all the logical reasons. Can it be another Port Douglas, though?

Possibly, but lets look at the comparisons, We are double the distance from an airport and the drive is dead boring. So that's two strikes against us. And we don't have the indecently lush Daintree rainforest or Diane Cilento. Three strikes so we're out? Wrong.

For one thing, we have a road named Sir Raphael Cilento (Diane's Dad of course). I recently read that he was right into ley lines and he had built a 'stargate' at 1770 headland way back when as he had figured a ley line ran through there. So I felt quite chuffed, maybe my Titan was a ley line by another name? Plus we have surf - that's gotta be worthy of a few pioints. And we have the biggest night stars in Australia. How come no one mentions that?

Of course there is the James Cook landing as marked by the memorial cairn at 1770 - how I wish you could see the sea from it though! Just bushes. Same as at the Agnes Water Life Saving Club - it has to have a sign telling folk which way to the beach cos you cannot see the surf from it, only the bushes. At least the folks buying all the new beachside apartments wont feel left out - all they can see is the bushes too.