Join our friendly family with near beautiful walks in the Blue Mountains, Wentworth Falls, Australia

Details

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  Description

  We live in a stunning part of the world, the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia. We are a retired couple. Paul is from Philadelphia originally and JoAnne is from Cleveland. Our journey involved a few countries and Queensland, Sydney and now the Blue Mountains in Australia. We first visited the Blue Mountains in 2014 and decided to retire here. We bought this lovely weatherboard house with guest annex in 2015. We have a very sociable border collie named Bronnie and we often mind our neighbours pets. So sometimes there are a couple of extra dogs around.
  
  We enjoy meeting people from everywhere, having been hosts for our guest suite for several years. Learning about visitors and their experiences and culture, providing excellent hospitality and sharing our love for the beautiful area where we live are the main reasons we are trying out Workaways.

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  Types of help and learning opportunities

  Language practice

  Light gardening

  Creative DIY projects

  Creating/ Cooking family meals

  Help around the house

  Light maintenance

  House & pet sitting
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  Interests

  

  Events & social

  

  Pets

  

  Movies & TV

  

  Languages

  

  Gardening

  

  Cooking & food

  

  Drawing & painting

  

  Animals

  

  Nature

  

  Outdoor activities

  

  Yoga / Wellness
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  Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

  JoAnne is very involved with the local bird club and visitors are very welcome to come along on walks and attend meetings.
  Paul is very involved with the local dogs and their owners. He takes our border collie for an early morning "work out" at an excellent dog park about ten minutes away. He is always happy to have others come along.
  We are very happy to have guests who want to practice their language skills with us and we would be very pleased to practice our Spanish language skills with our guests.
  Food is always a wonderful cross cultural exchange - not just recipes, but routines and practices from other places in the world (such as sobremesa in Spain).
  There is plenty of bush walking including lovely lookouts to visit quite close to our place.
  Although we are not located in an urban area, there is the opportunity to hear local music and attend local festivals.
  JoAnne also does yoga and tai chi and can recommend opportunities for visitors to participate.
  We enjoy meeting others and learning about their home countries, where they have traveled, and what their future plans are.

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  Help

  We need help with various tasks around our place and are very flexible depending on the guest and their skills and preferences. The help can range from help around our private home, cooking, light gardening and occasionally looking after our pets. We will often be doing things along with our guests. We do have various one off projects from time to time. Paul will be able to share his gardening skills (he is a master pruner) and JoAnne is a pretty decent cook and loves to experiment with meals. She can share her knowledge about native birds and local bush walks.
  
  Both of us have been involved with volunteer tasks of various sorts including humanitarian tasks and happy to share that knowledge and experience with visitors who might be keen to do that sort of activity.

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  Languages

  Languages spoken
  English: Fluent
  Spanish: Intermediate
  French: Beginner
  Chinese (Mandarin): Beginner

  This host offers a language exchange
  JoAnne has revisited her Spanish skills the past several years and is now at a high B2 level. She very much wants to gain confidence in speaking Spanish with others. Both Paul and JoAnne have volunteered extensively with refugees in other countries where English was not their first language. We are patient and happy to support language skills development for others. We especially like exchanging jokes in other languages. :-) We are happy to host people from all over the world speaking any languages.
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  Accommodation

  We provide a private guest suite with bedroom, lounge, bathroom and kitchenette. It has its own entrance and patio so visitors have privacy when they require it.
  The guest suite is a very nice offering, with screens on the windows, kitchenette, fireplace and sparkling clean.
  We invite visitors to join us at our meals. We can cater for vegetarians and vegans and gluten free. Please let us know about dietary needs and we will do our best.

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  What else ...

  There is a bus stop right outside our door that comes 1x per hour during the day. The village is 1.6 km (1 mile) from our place and usually a pleasant walk. You can connect to the train there.
  Most people visit to spend time in nature. There are lots of walks including fire trails, tracks in the National Park and local Council tracks. For the more adventurous, there is abseiling.
  We do get up early and go to bed early. We live in a very quiet neighbourhood and ask visitors to respect our neighbours so no loud parties.
  If visitors have a car, there is plenty of parking quite close by.

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  A little more information

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    Internet access

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    Limited internet access

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    We have pets

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    We are smokers

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    Can host families

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  Can host digital nomads

  If they are working nights or very early mornings, we ask that they are mindful of our neighbours who might be sleeping next door. This means leaving the windows closed and using headphones for calls or meetings.

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  How many Workawayers can stay?

  Two

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  My animals / pets

  

  Bronnie

  Bronnie is a very friendly border collie. He has lots of human and dog friends.

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