My brother did this and it was a mistake. He was badly let down by the workmen he hired.
A cautionary question for you, if you are of appropriate age: what if you were to get pregnant?
A group of us purchased a drug rehab centre from the Scientologists so that we could renovate it and use it for housing while attending university.
We obtained a building permit, and pulled out all the windows, all the doors, most of the flooring, many of the interior walls, all the plumbing, all the wiring, and the furnace. Then the city told us that we had the wrong type of permit, shut down our renovation, and put us into a process that took an entire winter to sort out until we could bet back to renovating.
In the mean time, we lived in the place, despite not having an occupancy permit. No heat, light, or water, and druggies and cultists wandering in through the open doorways at all hours of the day and night. And yes, here in Canada the winters are very cold.
bwahahaha …
Max the Cat vs the Thyphoon
puts rescuing the cat into perspective=)
All that and more.
My motto now is:
Charm is cheap. Floorboards cost.
How hot does it get? I am currently working for my family by helping to renovate our house in Florida. It gets over 38C here.
Erecting scaffolding up thirty feet only to clamber on later to strip paint in the sweltering heat… it takes some getting used to.
If this is what you REALLY want, then go for it. Just don’t kid yourselves.
Getting tradies out there going to be a problem? When we bought this old (100+ years old), uncared for terrace getting tradies out and getting them to do what we need them to do was horrendous, and this was in Sydney (“Nah, sorry mate, I don’t cross the bridge.” WTF?)
You going to be able to get tradies out there in the back of beyond? 
Other than that, go for it, but just remember to add two to four weeks on any date they give you they say they’ll be finished by. I cried when I walked into here thinking “Dear lord, what did we BUY and for HOW MUCH?” but we love it now.
Course, it’s in Sydney. Not the back of beyond. 
Cheers,
G
Oh wow, ours was like that, except for the pests and foundations (we had both.) I checked with the man from Flick before we bought the place. The toilet is…marginally…attached to the house, but we just did enough to live with it and keep the wet and bugs out until we knock the back end down in a year or so.
I did fall through the kitchen floor…I can lay floors, paint, sand, swear, fall down, swear, sand, paint, get dirty, get mad, cry, sand, paint, lay floors, lay tile, swear, wash walls, put concrete in cracks, swear, cry, lay floors, nearly electrocute myself, cut down trees (fucking privet), put up a fence, sand and swear…and hire tradies for the really hard stuff.
Cheers,
G
Tree change, eh?
Two things: (1) Gas for heating can be mighty expensive off the grid. Several multiples of city prices. And remember, those prices are going to rise when we get an emissions trading scheme.
(2) Fire. It’s a big issue in summer. There’s the fear, and then there’s the meetings and cake-stalls.
Our rural ‘estate’ required some work. I poured new foundations in the back, jacked up the house and rebuilt the sill and floors, removed the bathroom, fixtures and florrs and walla and all, and rebuilt accordingly, tore out the kitchen, plumbing included, and rebuilt from the floor up, building new counters and relumbing. We refinished the floors, repainted it all, and have cleared, fenced, and landscaped at least 2 acres. This has quite often been a strain on the love, but the place is rather nice. I hired someone for the HVAC, but the rest has been up to us. I recommend an cheap pickup truck, lots of patience, and an understanding that one must take a break between projects and often during them to remain sane.
Friends were dumbfounded by the place when we got it, now we are the envy for our $65,000 gamble.
Go for it, but be prepared to live without certain necessities on occasion.
My fiance and I renovated a house in downtown Ottawa, Canada. I don’t know how much of our experience is translatable to you in Australia, but I’ll give you all the advice I have. We bought ours last summer, and moved in two months ago.
We found our lovely shit-hole in a downtown neighborhood. We both rented in the neighborhood, and we knew we wanted to stay here, but housing prices were sky high. We knew we’d have to find something that needed some work, just to be able to afford it. And we both knew we wanted an older home with character, not a newer build.
So we bought an old two-story house from around 1910 or so. When we took possession of it, it was an up-down duplex, with a tiny two bedroom apartment on each floor. It had been rented by students. We had to give the tenants sixty days to move out. It reeked of rotten beer. The previous tenants left a dumpster full of garbage in the house. It was disgusting. But, we got a pretty good price.
One of the things we did, (and something I think you should definitely do,) is get a building inspection. We found out the structure was solid; no problems in the foundation or the joists or anything like that. However, it needed entirely new plumbing and new electrical. All the bathrooms and kitchens (because there were two, one on each floor,) needed to be replaced, or in the case of the 2nd kitchen, removed.
We interviewed a LOT of contractors. We called probably about thirty, and interviewed ten. We had it narrowed down to two, when one of our “finalists” hanged himself. “Ok, I guess that solves that.” It turned out he was in massive debt and hadn’t paid his subcontractors in a while.
The reno actually went pretty smoothly. I got frustrated a bit with the incredible amount of choice available in a reno. There are 19,000 different models of plain white toilet, 10,000 different models of tubs, etc. Just give me a plain white toilet, jeez!
We ended up spending a bit more than we wanted. And in the end, we decided that somethings we could do ourselves, like installing countertops, doing the tile back-splash, landscaping, painting, etc. It’s still not finished, but we have complete bathrooms and a kitchen, it’s the cosmetic stuff that’s left to do.
Having done it, I can honestly say I would do it over again, in a heartbeat. I LOVE my house, and my fiance does too. I love having a backyard, and a huge south-facing bedroom, and an upstairs balcony, and a downstairs deck. When we converted it back to a single family home, we found we had enough space for five bedrooms! I’m really really pleased with it.
Feel free to send me a PM if you have any other questions, or if you just want more encouragement.