Glasshouse Country Lifestyle

I live and breath the Glasshouse Country Lifestyle.

Do you sometimes think that city life isn't for you or although living at the coast is great you can't help think there must be a better lifestyle out there just waiting.

Let me share with you what I think is a great lifestyle or like my wife and I say "We don't have much money, but we have a lot of fun".

I would also like to let you know the advantages of country living as well as the few drawbacks.

Living In The Country

Or "the bush" as we call it in Australia. (also the sticks, the back blocks or a prickle farm)

I share my place with my wife, 4 kids, 1 dog, 1 cat, 2 miniature horses, 4 guinea pigs and 4 chickens.

I grew up on bigger cattle properties (a ranch for my American friends) but through some unfortunate circumstances we ended up living on one and a half acres of land in a small house.

But what a lifestyle I now have, living near the beautiful Glass House Mountains, in Queensland, Australia.

The Advantages Of Country Living

Why would someone choose to live in a quiet spot like this when the big city lights of Brisbane are only an hour away or the gorgeous beaches of the Sunshine Coast, which are only about 20 minutes away, would surely be a much better place.

Well I guess that depends on what you and your family like.

We enjoy the peace and quiet around here but, to be honest you can get peace and quiet in a lot of places.

We enjoy the rural feel that this area has but I have to admit it is slowly changing with more and more people moving here, and the house blocks in rural zones seem to be getting smaller.

I can't complain, I moved here and we are on a small block which was sub-divided from a larger dairy farm. Across the road from our place was a paddock with cattle and horses when we moved in, now it is six small acre "lifestyle" blocks.

Good ? Bad ? You decide.

Tree Change

For those unfamiliar with this term it is when you move almost anywhere that is not the city or the coast. So anywhere in the country / bush is somewhere you can move to have a tree change as opposed to a Sea Change.

Here in Queensland probably the most common area to go for your "tree change" is the Gold Coast Hinterland. Here in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland we also have many people moving to places like Maleny and Eumundi, or further from the coast like Kenilworth and Imbil.

But if you choose a Glasshouse Country Lifestyle like we have you might just have your perfect treechange or what I like to call pretend farming.

So Why Did We Choose Our Glasshouse Country Lifestyle

Well to be honest we chose our place because it was cheap at the time because the price rises that had happened in most other popular areas of South East Queensland had yet to make it this far, to effect the Glasshouse country lifestyle.

You could still buy a place pretty cheap compared to other nearby areas.

Both my wife and I had enjoyed the lifestyle of Brisbane / Gold Coast / Sunshine Coast with the nightlife, restaurants and heaps of things to do, like Southbank, the theme parks (Seaworld, Dreamworld, White Water World, Movie World), the casino's, the surfing.

I even spent a year living in a caravan right at the beach at Maroochydore and went surfing every day and worked at nights. What a lifestyle for a young single person.

My wife spent time living close to the beach at both the Sunshine and Gold Coasts where she enjoyed spending a lot of time at the casino or out nightclubbing.

Why We Enjoy It Now

When we decided to have a few kids we thought this would be a great place to raise them and we found out we were right.

We are surrounded by great scenery (the Glass House Mountains and the Blackall Range for a start), productive farmland (pineapples, macadamia nuts and strawberries are the main ones), friendly locals (they really are generally, well most of them), fairly safe (not as much as I would like but you have to live in the real world).

We also have a near perfect spot for natural outdoor activities (except for the when it rains for weeks and weeks like is has lately). If you look at the rest of my site you will see I have lots of info on bike rides, mountain climbing, bush walking, horse riding etc.

But most of all we love it because it is a great place to raise our kids, they have the opportunities to do almost anything with probably too many choices on offer and we get to take them to all of the things like the Queensland Museum and Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane while still being just down to road from the beaches of Caloundra or the rest of the Sunshine Coast. Oh yeah and they get to be pretend farmers (or at least their dad does) with the horses and other animals to look after.

Come back soon, I will have the photos on here soon.....