Julie and I have often said that our special happy place is our block of land tucked away in the Wolgan Valley where we have been going for 20 years to escape the city and enjoy the magnificent bush of Australia.  We usually camped there but our long term plan had always been to eventually build a home on the property which would allow us to spend up to half our time there after retirement.  We even staked out where we wanted to build our dream holiday home which would take advantage of the grand views down the valley.  But in trying to build this new home we learned nothing is as easy as it should be and there are always forces out there trying to get in your way. 

The story starts in 2015, five years ago now, when we began to investigate through the local Lithgow Council what was required to build a home in the isolated Wolgan Valley.  We knew before we started that due to its location our home would be completely off the grid and we would not be able to access any services.  We would have to catch rain water from the roofs of our house and shed and store it in a rainwater tank.  We would need to install solar panels and large batteries to provide our power.  We would rely on large bottles of LPG to power our hot water heater and stove. And we would need a gravity-fed underground septic system to deal with our waste. 

We also saw another challenge – our ‘driveway’ from the main road to our property line passes through both crown land and state forest and passes over a small dry creek via an old loggers bridge and up a steep slope.  We also knew that because of the ever-present risk of fire the Rural Fire Service (RFS) would have some input before Council’s final approval.  We knew some – or all – of these issues might pop up as barriers to fulfilling our dream. But we were up for the challenge.

In fact, the issue of building in a fire zone was significant and our site was rated BAL 29 which is basically a high fire risk, meaning there could be no wood in our house frame or exterior and the windows had to be double-glazed. All of this added considerable extra cost.

I won’t go into the awful details, except to say they were awful, and when we finally received our approved Development Application a couple of years had passed and it included 49 conditions, some of which were impossible for us to meet.  More endless battles with crown land, state forests, the RFS, the kit home supplier, Council, various consultants who represented these parties, geologists to measure the soil content, engineers to analyse the sturdiness of our bridge, consultants for the RFS that said our road was too steep and much more. The whole process was a stressful test of patience and dogged perseverance.

Finally, after the passage of another two horrible years of problems and delays, almost by magic, in September 2019 Council issued us with a Construction Certificate (CC) which meant we could begin construction.  Ben, our builder, a local guy who was easy to work with, professional and reliable, began building our dream home. 

The biggest challenge for us during this phase was access.  Because of the bridge and the steep hill large delivery trucks could not access the site and we had to call on our good friends and neighbours Nick and Maria to allow all the large trucks – cement mixers, water trucks, 12 metre flat bed trucks, anything that couldn’t get up our hill – to cross through their property before getting to the building site.  Without a doubt we simply could not have built our home without the generous support of Nick and Maria. 

When Ben’s work was about three-quarters done we were hit with the awful bushfires in December last year that swept through our property and tried to burn down our shed and partly-built home.  I wrote extensively about this traumatic event here.  Following the fire there were further access problems into the valley itself and with getting suppliers and tradies to continue their work.  But Ben stuck at it and by March of this year he finally completed the work, much to our satisfaction, relief and delight. 

Then it was back to Council to get our Occupation Certificate (OC) which basically says that the house was built in accordance with the plans and local Council building requirements.  Yes, it was, thanks to Ben, but no we couldn’t have our OC because we hadn’t complied with all of the conditions of the original Development Application from many years past.  And so it was implied we had to loop back to some of those original issues about the bridge and the steep hill plus a few new issues as well. 

More patience, more perseverance, more help from Ben and our consultant Brad, and finally an overworked and understaffed pandemic-affected Council agreed we were all in synch and issued the illusive Occupation Certificate. 

This is a sugar-coated abridged version of the whole diabolical process and I’m not even going to go into the ridiculous problems of getting the wood heater approved, the panic when we found the kit home supplier had shut up shop and disappeared, only to reappear some time later in a new location with a new manager, the absurdity of a tree near our house being okay when the CC was issued, only to be too close to the house for the OC after I had reduced it to a large stump while fighting the fires, the problems with delivery truck drivers and about a hundred other issues.  We were tested, that’s for sure.

But at the end of a five year battle for which no rational reason could be applied, Julie and I have our dream holiday home complete and we look forward to spending many happy years sitting on our rocking chairs on our deep veranda watching the kangaroos come into the home paddock, the ducks on our dam, the birds in our graceful gum trees and the stunning escarpment all around us.  And most importantly, for our family and friends, and their next generation, joining us in what is truly our happiest place in the world. 

 

Once again, our unmeasurable gratitude and thanks go to the key people who made this all happen – Brad our consultant who stuck with us from the very start to the very end and guided the whole process, Nick and Maria who generously allowed access for the big trucks across their property, Jose from Valley Kit Homes who made sure all the components of our home were constructed and delivered to the site, and Ben our ever-reliable and professional builder who built our dream home under conditions that would have had others run away in horror.  To all of you, thank you, thank you, thank you!