Last week you may of seen the fire at Toodyay. If you have known us for a long time you would know that we owned the property where the fire started. Thankfully no-one was hurt and thankfully we dont own it now and my heart goes out to the new owners. They not only lost Pods Cottage, but they also lost their green houses that they had been growing their lively hood in for the past 5 years or so. We bought our Toodyay home of 700 acres in 1978. Pods Cottage was the one and only building on the home piece of land. Originally owned by Pod Strahan, he had built this new flash cottage for his family and held the roof down by tying the kids beds to the rafters. A few times when the Strahan kids, ( there were 6 of them) called in to see us they tell us the story of waking up in the middle of the night with their beds lifting off the mud floor as the wind lifted the roof up. When we purchased the property, our first job was to tidy up the surrounds of the cottage. John Burns and Georgina Burns were often there to help carry, watch and laugh. John Patrick Carr and Cathy Stewart and Jessie Carr Chmielowski also spent time at the farm in the early days of its development. Rob remembers we slept in the cottage a few times before bringing down his parents caravan and living in that before building our shed. Over the years we renovated Pods Cottage , adding a toilet, shower and laundry and were lucky enough to have some gorgeous people rent Pods Cottage, either as a retreat from the city or as a place to hide away from reality. So there is no more Pods cottage as you will see if you zoom into the third last photo.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 09:23:27 +0000