Saturday, March 21, 2009

Mozzie Hill

While we back in Oz on our flying two week visit to family and friends, J and I dropped in to check on our little beach shack in Tasmania - Mozzie Hill. We have been renting it out for the last 6 years or so while living in Coalcliff and Norway. For a while it was privately to friends and friends of friends, but now it is with an agent and 2 new tenents. After being a rental property for so long, of course any gardens we had have returned to wilderness, but we were pleasantly surprised that inside the house was holding up okay. Well as good as expected for a shack :) It was so lovely to see the place again and so sad to think about all the things we would do with it if we were living there again. One day I hope... For those of you who have not seen our shack before, I introduce you to Mozzie Hill! Filled as it is with other people's furniture and in the state of disrepair that only a long term rental property can be in... :)

Here it is as seen from our sandy driveway in the collectively owned estate behind the dunes of Clifton Beach.
I think we may have an aboriginal midden in our front yard...
Here is the house closer up. The little yellow shack on the side is called the mozzie hut - with mosquitos painted on the little glass windows on the front! It is basically just a little room with polished boards and power inside. We used it for storage and as a spare room for drop ins :)
Downstairs you have a lounge room with an open fire place and a kitchen with windows around your knees :)

Downstairs you also go out the back of the lounge, through the laundry to the bathroom, with a real bath! Oh how I miss living in a house with a bath...

To get upstairs you have to take on the radical stairway we have. The old part is from the last doubledecker tram that ran in Hobart. Museums and documentary photographers have been interested...and then J and his Dad created the lovely blackwood stairs at the bottom. Must be handled with care when pissed.
Upstairs is just one big room with sliding doors out to the balcony at the front. I would love to put a new edge on that balcony one day, and now it is rusted through and definitely needs it, but who knows when that will happen. It could be a lovely place for soaking up the sun and listening to the surf though.
The view from the end of the balcony, and out the window over the bed, is towards the sand dune. Walk over that little baby and you find yourself on a gorgeous, scallop shell covered, kms long surf beach.
The upstairs room is really quite large. It also has an open fire place and used to have bees nesting in the walls!
The backyard has a couple of water tanks, a couple of tin garden sheds, a wood pile, a compost heap, a few veggie garden beds and a bunch of trees. The way it is at the moment, you just see a bunch of trees...and J :)
From over the dune on the beach, the view is across the water to Nubeena on the Port Arthur peninsula.
Seeing this little place again and the beautiful beach it is on...
had us starting to wonder why we ever left...
At least it is always there for us to go back to :) xxx