House sitting in Australia
Welcome to my guide on house sitting in Australia, how to get started and how to find a dream house in an idyllic location.
I’m currently house sitting at Metung on the beautiful Gippsland Lakes in eastern Victoria, Australia. I’m looking out the office window across to part of the lakes and there’s a marina directly in front of me and bushland behind me. It’s a beautiful setting.
So the pros and cons of house sitting. Starting from the owner’s point of view, it’s great for them to have a reliable person staying in their home and looking after their pets while they’re traveling, whether it’s just a few days or whether it’s a few months going overseas.
It means that they can have peace of mind when it comes to the safety and security of their home and the wellbeing of their pets and other odd jobs as well.
For some of the people that I’ve been sitting for, I’ve actually helped them with little chores like driving them to the railway station to start their journey or delivering an item to somewhere across town and also receiving parcels on their behalf and putting them away securely for them.
From a house owner’s point of view, there are quite a few advantages to it and I think especially with the pets because some of them can be quite insecure and they prefer to be in their home environment rather than being in a kennel or staying with people that they may not see that often.
There are significant benefits for the house sitter. I’ve been on four different sits now with different owners and I’ve enjoyed them all.
They’ve all been slightly different but some of those advantages include obviously the travel because I’ve been to diverse places like Wangaratta in northern Victoria, Bendigo in central Victoria, Hobart in Tasmania and now at Metung on the Gippsland Lakes. Quite a few years back I also did some house sitting in Canberra.
It’s a great way to travel to get around and see, in this case, different parts of Australia. It’s very inexpensive. The general arrangement with house sitting is that you don’t pay anything for accommodation. You only pay for your own food and you only pay for your own transport to get to where you’re going.
In most cases for me, that’s been petrol money to travel somewhere in Victoria. Although when I went to Hobart, obviously it’s across Bass Strait, so I caught a Qantas flight over there using Qantas points so I was able to minimise the expense of the travel. And I suppose for me, it’s just a great way to experience new places at an affordable price level.
Currently where I am at Metung is a holiday resort and it’s going to be absolutely packed over the Easter period. Most of the houses here are holiday homes with people only staying there occasionally or owners letting them out as Air BNBs.
For much of the year, especially through winter, it would be fairly quiet here with just the permanent population which is around 1500. But at times like Easter and Christmas and summer holidays, it’s a really thriving place and there’s no way that I’d be able to afford to stay here at this time of year normally.
I’d imagine that getting any sort of accommodation in Metung over the Easter period would cost around $300 a night. I’m staying in a four-bedroom home that has two bathrooms and all the facilities that I could need. The utilities and the internet are included as part of the house sitting arrangement and that’s pretty standard everywhere you go.
This place, in fact, is really two homes. Downstairs is a self-contained apartment that’s got two bedrooms, a bathroom, and its own laundry and a little kitchenette. Upstairs is the main living area, the main two bedrooms, and the main bathroom. And also the spectacular views across the Gippsland Lakes.
The first place that I went to in Wangaratta was a heritage home. It was very well maintained. It was very close to the Ovens River.
Not many people would think about going to Wangaratta for a house sit, but I can highly recommend it. I used to live in northeast Victoria at Porepunkah near Bright and there’s a lot to see and do within a 50 to 100 kilometre radius of Wangaratta.
I went back to Bright. I went up to the Murray River. I took my electric scooter and went along parts of the Rail Trail around places like Wahgunyah near Corowa and also across at Beechworth. I was looking after a two-year-old Cavoodle who was an energetic little pup named Lucy. She had a lot of personality, she loved to go for long walks, and we had a lot of fun together.
My second house sit was at Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, and it was a beautiful home that was overlooking the Derwent River. Again, it would be so expensive to hire or rent a home like that for a short-term period, and I was very privileged to be there.
It was close to Wrest Point Casino in the suburb of Sandy Bay, not far from the historical area of Sandy Bay, close to Battery Point. It was a walk into the CBD of Hobart or a short bus trip.
I didn’t have a car for that trip, although the owners offered it to me. I just walked around the place getting lots and lots of steps in, and sometimes I hired an electric scooter if I needed to go to the supermarket or somewhere like that.
I was looking after a bigger English Sheepdog style of dog (Barty), who was a little bit nervous at the beginning, had some anxiety issues, but I looked up how to handle that on Google, of course, as you do, and within two days we were really close mates and did a lot of walks together, probably more than it had done previously with its elderly owners.
In fact, we did a five-kilometre walk one day up to Mount Nelson, which is an observatory at the back of Sandy Point, the suburb that I was staying in.
I’ve done two house sits in Bendigo at the same place. The first time was just after Christmas, looking after their cat while they went up to northern New South Wales to see one of the owner’s parents up there, and Basil the cat was a real good companion as well.
He was actually sick at the time and he has since passed away, but I got to see the best of him in the last weeks of his life and he followed me around the house, slept on the bed with me, as the other two dogs did actually, and again we had a really good time together.
Bendigo is a good place for me to do house sitting because I have two of my children there. It means that I don’t need to stay with my son in his little unit.
We can both have our own space and this house, again, was a heritage home, heritage listed in fact, in a gorgeous part of Golden Square close to the Bendigo CBD and close to pubs and cafes and walking trails.
And here in Metung, I’ve touched on that, beautiful views, very exclusive tourist resort style accommodation here, and it’s just a great place to be at the tail end of the summer when the temperatures are still quite warm.
How to go house sitting in Australia
So, how does one get to do house sitting? There are several different websites, in Australia at least, where people can sign up. I’m with Aussie House Sitters. So, you go onto that site, you register, create a profile, pay a membership fee if you want to apply for sitting, otherwise it’s free to search. The membership is around $60.
When searching, you can enter your preferred dates and locations if you want to. That’s not required, but it helps if you’re on a schedule or there’s somewhere particular that you want to go. And when you find a place that you think you’d like, you can send a message to the owners and start the conversation.
Tell them why you’re a good house sitter, what your personal circumstances are, and why you’re motivated to apply for their particular property. Make it friendly, genial, and be prepared to answer any questions that they may have and ask your own questions as well.
I think the hardest part about getting into house sitting is doing the first one or two, because you really need references from other house sitters for your potential application to be considered. And I managed to get that first house sitting done in Canberra, and the second one in Wangaratta, where I got a really good reference.
I think one of the tricks to that is to apply for places that are closing in on their deadline for dates, so they’re getting fairly desperate for someone to sit for them, and perhaps look at areas that aren’t as touristy or as popular as others.
For me, Wangaratta is a good place to base myself, as I said before, because it’s close to a lot of different interesting places, but it’s probably not top of the list for many people.
Don’t necessarily expect to get your first house sit on the Mornington Peninsula or somewhere along the coast. Perhaps look at outer suburbs or regional towns, just to get the first one or two done. Then you get some references on the board, and that helps you to apply for others later on.
That’s my comments on house sitting. I think it’s a really good lifestyle. There are benefits in it for both the owners and the sitters. It’s a win-win situation.
It’s a great thing to do if you’re at a stage of life where you want to travel inexpensively, go to different places, experience new things and you’re fairly flexible about where you go and what you do.
If there are any questions, please let me know.
