A little taste of my part of the world

Last night's sunset from the front of our house. Just beautiful.

My husband and I live in a small rural town located in the Goldfields region of Western Australia. There's not much here; a small supermarket that I refer to as the corner store because they don't have much of a range of products, and rarely have things I need or use, a community/recreation center, an aquatic center (swimming pool that the town has gone without for the past 2 years because it's been undergoing renovations - and it gets REALLY hot here - last summer it got to almost 50 degrees Celsius and THAT'S hot!), a pharmacy (that we call a chemist), 3 op-shops (go figure - 3!), a newsagent, a hairdresser (which the town didn't have until recently), a police station that's only open between the hours of 9-5 - any emergency that occurs outside of those hours police have to come from the next town which is 70km's away, a fire station, a doctor's surgery that costs the earth (so we go to the next town if we have to see a doctor), an ambulance depot, and a bottle shop where you can buy alcohol as long as it's not on a Sunday because they're closed, and a gas station (we call it a petrol station that's only open from 4am to 10pm). Oh - and a rubbish tip that's only open certain hours on certain days. That's about it. Want shoes? Go to the next town. Want clothes? Go to the next town. Christmas shopping/birthday shopping? Go to the next town. Need a bank? Go to the next town. Here, almost no one has a garden. There's red dirt everywhere, ants, and flies galore. But it's peaceful. No sirens (except for the usual police, ambulance, or fire trucks if there's an emergency), and everyone knows everyone else's business, regardless of whether you want them to, or not.

But we wouldn't live anywhere else.

We couldn't live back in the city where our daughter, two sons, daughter-in-law, and our new little grandson live (it's a 7 hour drive) - when we visit them, we can't stand the rat-race, and noise of city life.

Our place is an oasis in the middle of a desert. Everyone in town knows who we are, even though we don't know many of them. Our place is known as "The black house with the beautiful gardens". Over the coming weeks, I'll post some photos of our place so you can see for yourself.