Ever since mid-2005, I’ve been on the move. It all started when the Boom hit Perth, and I learnt from the estate agent who managed the block of flats I lived in that the owner was going to kick everyone out at the end of the year so he could renovate the block (and, of course, re-let the flats at a grossly inflated price).

People were pouring into Perth from the eastern states, lured by the prospect of work in the booming mining industry, so rents were on the up and up. I couldn’t complain – my second husband and I had moved to Perth with our family in 1985 so he could take up a position as a Training Officer with the Argyle Diamond Mines. For the first time in our lives one of us was earning good money! I was able to go back to uni, first to do an Associate Diploma at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and later to do a BA in Religious Studies at Edith Cowan University.

But then the marriage broke down and I was forced into rental accommodation. In my late forties I found myself looking for a job – and couldn’t get one: Australian employers, by and large, do not like employing older people. By running a market stall at weekends and taking what casual work I could get in between, I was able to scrape by. But pretty soon the pathetic amount I got from the joint resources of the marriage almost ran out, and I decided to use the last of it to fulfil a life-long ambition to travel.

And travel I did, for three and half years. By living and working in religious institutions and hotels, I again scraped by and did a bit of research for a master degree that I hoped to undertake when I got back to Oz.

But when I did get back, three and half years later, I found the course had become one that required fees up front, so I couldn’t afford it. Once again I found myself running a market stall and doing casual work, and struggling to pay the ever-increasing rents in Perth. The last straw was having to leave the comfortable little flat I had in a cosy, leafy suburb only five minutes by train from Perth city so the owner could renovate. The Boom had arrived and rents were skyrocketing.

I undertook a three-month house-sit for friends of relatives in South Australia, then to my relief I was offered a flat back in Perth for only $120 per week. However, it was only temporary – the lady who owned the block did not really want to rent the flats, preferring to keep them for herself and her numerous goods and chattels. In 2006, accommodation in Perth being well beyond my means, I was obliged to move to Mount Gambier, South Australia. That was when I started this blog.

About then, I had a stroke of luck. Kind relatives in England and Germany paid for me to visit them, and I had a wonderful time exploring the old country and the Rhine Valley. (I covered this period in my early posts to this blog.) When I got back to Australia, I was offered several house-sits in Perth, and thus my peripatetic lifestyle of recent years began. If you follow the above link and keep clicking on 'Newer post' each time you can read about my travels in England and Germany.

I really preferred Perth to Mount Gambier (a pretty place, but very cold and wet for many months of the year) and I missed my friends and activities in the West. So every time I was offered a house-sit of any length I would head back to Perth. As luck would have it, I got a lot of house-sits, varying in length from ten days to three months. I was spending almost as much time in Perth as in Mount Gambier, and finally, early in 2011, I decided to cut loose and rid myself of my worldly goods, because I had a full year’s house sitting lined up in Perth.

It hardly seemed worthwhile to pay rent in one town while living in another, so I packed my bags and took to the road. The year stretched to eighteen months and included two six-month sits, so I wasn’t quite as unsettled as I might have been.

Actually, I’ve been lucky. Apparently some people in Perth are living in their cars because they can’t afford the crazily elevated rents of recent years. These days, a flat like the one I had in Daglish would set me back several hundred dollars a week!

I've come to realise, however, that I will not be able to continue this lifestyle for much longer. With one hip dicky enough for the doctors to be mumbling about a replacement, walking dogs and looking after gardens are not nearly as much fun as they used to be. I put my name down at two retirement villages, but was told I would probably have to wait up to two years to get rental accommodation.

But now the house-sits have run out, and to be honest, I am tired of being on the road. Last week, I rang one of the retirement villages and begged them to find me somewhere to live, since within the fortnight I would be homeless! And I don’t even have a car to sleep in. I was starting to have bad dreams about having to sleep in shop doorways.

Miraculously, the village had a bed-sitter vacant. I went to see it and was pleasantly surprised to find it was self-contained with a nice kitchen and bathroom, and in a clean and neat apartment block.

So I am packing for what I hope will be last move for some time! I move in on Saturday and will let you know how things pan out. Believe me, I shall be so happy to put my feet up in a place to call home I will not mind that it is barely big enough to swing a cat!