Yes, we are on the road!! And for anyone who has anything to do with the lead up, this might seem like a minor miracle.
Many know only too well, but for those of you who don’t, we are those people who always leave things till the very end…Still packing at midnight when our international flight departs first thing in the morning…still having sunset drinks on the beach when we are due to fly home in a few hours time (and we haven’t yet started packing up our hotel room)…wrapping presents at midnight on Christmas Eve after drinking with family and neighbours all afternoon.
Now, we have known since September that we were going on this trip and that we were going to rent out the house while we were gone. At Christmastime, after my brother and sister-in-law left on their trip they gave us the great advice “Start early!!”.
Well, I did suggest to Drew a few times that we should start finding out about pool certification and get onto some of the maintenance issues and he occasionally said “we really should start decluttering”. It goes without saying that it was all a mad, crazy rush in the end.
It turns out that we had to build a whole new fence around our backyard for the pool, move our air-con for gas-compliance, put in a stair railing and a myriad of other odd-jobs that we hadn’t counted on. And anyone who has ever lived in the same house for more than 10 years, might have some idea of the junk we had accumulated – which resulted in not less that 2 dozen trips to Vinnies and the tip.
But, we got there, with the help of our wonderful parents and neighbours. We literally walked out of the house with the last bucket of cleaning stuff just in time to greet the real estate agent and meet our new tenants who were there to get the keys and move in.
If moving house wasn’t enough, throw in end of semester marking and reporting – 3 midnight nights of marking the week of the move and for nearly 2 weeks straight after. It has been a hectic few weeks!!! Lucky for us, mum and dad are very patient and were willing to have our excess junk consume their lounge and dining room – and have us stay – during these past few weeks.
We both finished work Friday and apart from having a break for some farewell drinks on Saturday and Sunday, it’s taken us until today to sort out the left-overs from the house and do those last minute jobs. And surprise, surprise we were still scrambling to pack everything in and away at midday today, when we had planned to leave at 10.00am. But thanks again to mum and dad, who shuffled us out of the house with the promise of cleaning up and sorting anything that was left, we were on our way!!!
Now we are a few hours north – en route to Elliott Heads – and it’s hard to believe that we won’t be coming back south in a few weeks time. Instead we will continue north and start exploring all that this great country has to offer. I think it will take a few weeks for us to unwind and the reality to sink in, but so, so happy to finally be on the road.
The Travelling Dixons 