Smorgasboarder_23_Feb_2016-s

LATEST: ARTISTS & GENERALLY CREATIVE FOLKS
“We moved back to the coast and began focusing
on our artistic pursuits again. I started painting,
doing album covers for bands and advertising
work and made quite a name for myself down
here. Joel was full on with her sewing. That is
her expressive outlet. She makes clothing using
materials sourced from Op Shops.
“It was pretty awesome spending all day with
the kids and doing what we wanted to do,
surfing in amongst it all of course. But it got to
a point where we began to get caught up in our
new little world in a conventional way. It was
actively taking up all our time and once again
taking us away from our kids so we went, ‘Well,
let’s just split.’ We had a Combi (I still have it
actually), turned left on the highway and that
was it. That was 2004 and we only got back a
couple of years ago.”
The family headed south and hung out in
Tasmania for a year before eventually making
their way across to Western Australia.
“It was always a bit of a drawcard as I hadn’t
been there before and once there, I figured we
wouldn’t be coming home in a hurry. We ended
up spending seven years in WA going up and
down the coast.
“I think when you are not doing the
conventional thing lots of opportunities come
up that you can pursue. When people are
working, paying off home loans and the like,
they kind of can’t take those opportunities. So
we followed this stream of opportunities that
always arose as we met new people. It was
like a pinball machine, we were zigzagging all
over the place going from one good thing to
the next good thing.”
Through their travels Brett met a bloke who had
a derelict house sitting on 160 acres of pristine
bushland near Denmark (on WA’s South Coast
400kms south of Perth). The house had been vacant
for some eight years and as a consequence, the
bush had just consumed it. He wanted someone
to fix it and look after it but could find no one
interested. Brett and Joel decided to take it on.
“When we got there the roof was falling down,
there was garbage everywhere and the bush
had completely overtaken the cottage. It was
an absolute mess. We spent the next five to
six years living in this house and rebuilding it.
It was a great experience. There were fifty fruit
trees on the property and we could pretty much
live self sufficiently. That house was really
where our kids grew up.”
In the Summer months Brett and Joel would
work the markets and in winter they would head
up north or overseas or “wherever we felt like
going because Winter down in that south west
corner is pretty full on.” That was their cycle for
many years, doing whatever came along and
whatever felt good for all of them. “It was such
a happy time in our lives.”
Their overseas jaunts saw them travel through
Asia and South America, all the while home
schooling their daughters Asher and Alex along
the way.
“We dragged the kids to Thailand one time for a
number of months and then Laos another time.
The last big trip we did was to South America
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SMORGASBOARDER | SUMMER 2016