Miriam Endres Team Australia introduction

Team Australia Introduction

I was born in the year 1969 in Australia to dairy farming parents. They were older parents, mum was 42 and dad was 52. We had most of our food come from the garden, eggs, and meat from the chooks (hens and roosters). My mum knew how to preserve and cook jams, to be enjoyed later on. As many parents, they instilled a number of values and habits into their children. I value what they have shown me, although I didn't necessarily know it at that time. That is the lifestyle that I am planning to return to. Brenda Schoepp, an American motivational speaker who's passion is agriculture, has said, "My grandfather use to say that once in your life you need a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman and a preacher, but every day, three times a day, you need a farmer."

I remember telling my parents that I wanted a house in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere for a constant summer. At around the age of 15, I noticed the temperature of Darwin was always around 33 degrees Celsius. I moved to Darwin in 1995. I have moved away from Darwin a few times but I have returned. Over the time it has got hotter and with what my partner and I want to do, it is near impossible to achieve. We are planning to move to the Bundaberg area in the next few years. The area has better soil and a milder climate, a wide variety of fruits and vegetables are already growing in that area. The chance to grow most of the fruit that is in this fruit salad.

This was done for Christmas Day 2014. It has 35 different fruits some doubles eg white and red grapes. It is a lot of chopping, nothing else added.

In 2013, I became committed to a wonderful gentleman who had a dream of traveling around Australia on a motor bike since he was 20 years old. Now in his 40's with no major commitments, he told me about his plan, before we became committed. I thought to myself, "What right do I have to tell him not to go when he has been wanting it for so long." He went around most of Australia in November 2014 to February 2015. I caught up with him twice. Once for a weekend where his mother's side was having a reunion. The other time was for three weeks where I was on the back of his motor bike from Melbourne to Brisbane. For me, it was a time of stiff legs and needing to park near the curbs to give me a little bit of assistance in getting on the back of the bike. We are living to tell the tale.

After the trip, he started expressing an interest in becoming self-sufficient. Something that we are unable to do in Darwin.

The search was on. The area had to have job prospects, warm climate although cooler than Darwin (I have lived in Darwin 20 plus and my partner 30 plus years), be able to grow different fruits and vegetables, roads to enjoy riding on, and hills which we could build an underground house on/in. We will be setting it up so we can be mostly self-sufficient in our retirement. The Bundaberg area ticks most of the boxes.

Within that area, they currently grow 40 different fruits and vegetables. There is an equilateral triangle between Bundaberg near the coast, Gin Gin inland to the north and Childers inland to the south, the distance is around 50 km. The area around Gin Gin and Childers is much more hilly and offers better topography for the underground house. I have already checked with the local council to see if we could build this style of house. They are willing to let us do the underground house. Jobs are available there. Over the years both of us have built up a number of hands-on skills that can be useful in a wide range of situations.

In mid-June I got a real estate agent involved and he gave an appraisal of the place in Darwin. It will be on the market by early September 2017. Since June we have been getting rid of stuff, packing, and cleaning. I work full time and part of my job is cleaning for 4 weeks the cleaning was for 40 hours now it has been reduced to 25 hours of cleaning as my school term role has recommenced. Darwin has also had two consecutive weekends of 3 days in the weekend. These longer weekends were where I did most of the cleaning of the unit. I did push myself hard, it took around 9 weeks to do the unit. A few weekends I was told not to do anything, as I was burning the candle at both ends, my body has to rest.

Where do I go from here? It will be more of a waiting game. We may have the situation where one of us gets a job in Bundaberg and the other stays in Darwin until the unit is sold. We may both move down there and I rent out the unit. The unit may be sold soon after being put on the market, and we move within a month. It is also a time to start saying our goodbye to our friends.

My passions

Supporting local/Australian farmers. I do this by purchasing a number of food items online as the supermarkets don't often stock the quality products that I like. Although I have cut back to the very basics. Also, some products are very difficult to find, eg Australian grown sunflower seeds.

Cooking from scratch—a muffin for me contains 18 different ingredients.

Active lifestyle—push bike riding mostly on Sunday mornings before the sunrise.

Interesting thing about me

I have been a human lamington. After a lamington drive/fundraiser, the left over chocolate mix and coconut was poured over me.

8 ) infinity happiness