Ramblings and meetings and greetings - tasting the country life

I'm excited.
Truly ruly excited.
We're escaping to the country. Or, given that we already live in a small regional town, I should say that we're escaping to the even-more-country.
I think I've mentioned it before.
Perhaps a hundred times.

But I'm mentioning it again because stuff is happening.
You see, up until now, everything has looked like organised piles  of dirt and blocks of concrete and stacks of timber with a fetching port-a-loo sitting to one side.
Now, however, it looks like someone is building a house.
A real, live, grown-up house.

There's a complete skeleton with walls and roof.
The builder calls them frames and trusses. But I always think of criminals when I hear the 'frame' and hernias when I hear the word 'truss'. 
I don't want to think about crime, unless Inspector Barnaby is nearby. 
And I certainly don't want to dwell on hernias. (Or dwell under hernias, as the case may be with roof trusses!)
I want to think of a sparkling new house with a view across the hills and the cows.
And now I can, thanks to the fully formed skeleton.

It's incredibly exciting to wander through the skeleton, naming rooms - bedroom, study, kitchen, servants' quarters...
It's even more exciting to see that  our plan is looking quite sensible. 
We have discovered only one design fault so far, and that's to do with the doggy door. It's a tad high. And when I say that it's a tad high, I really mean that our whippet, Olive, will need to take up pole vaulting if she wants to let herself in and out of the laundry. Or we could install an itty-bitty doggy escalator. Which could be quite fun. Although a little unusual.

We're getting to know the neighbourhood. We've tramped along country lanes, ogling dead trees - they might make good firewood one day soon! We've waded across grassy paddocks, spotting flame robins and pardalotes. And a few weeks ago we went for a hike around Mount Alexander. It's glorious - granite boulders, fern trees, towering gums, rock wallabies and stunning views across the central Victorian landscape.

'Spotto! There's our house!'

We're enjoying the seasonal changes - the golden-grey grass greening up as the weather cools down, the ewes giving birth to fresh white lambs, the cows growing their fluffy winter coats, the chilly days where the fog hugs the hilltops until noon,  the port-a-loo listing to one side as the winter rain turns the soil to mud.

We have a growing cache of friends in our new neighbourhood - salt of the earth locals and fellow paddock-changers like ourselves. And there are rumours of other fascinating folk dwelling amidst the granite rocks, who we will surely meet one day - the one-eyed water diviner, the fully sighted cheese-makers and the nudist.

But best of all is the aaaaah-moment that we experience every time we step out of the car and set foot on our soil.
'Aaaaah,' as in, 'Aaaaah, look at that view!'
'Aaaaah,' as in, 'Aaaaah, free from suburbia!'
'Aaaaah,' as in, 'Aaaaah, smell that fresh country air with a slight essence of manure.'
'Aaaaah,' as in, 'Aaaaah, the dream is becoming reality.'

On top of our hill, breathing in the fresh country air and looking
out for friendly cheese-makers and water diviners that might be
 scuttling between the he rocks.

Having a cuppa in the study.
Solid walls and ceiling still to come, but the floor
and the vision is there.