Welcome

New year, new blog, new country...well old country, but I am getting reacquainted with it.

Ok, I have written a brief introduction in the previous post, so where have I been? I mentioned that I had moved. Yes indeed, it is true. Let me explain....

Some weeks ago my family and I moved from Canada, where we had been living for the past three years, back to good old Australia - the country of our collective births. Why? God only knows. It is hot and dry here! No seriously, we moved for work, we moved back for work. It's a whole switcheroo kind of thing. I liked Canada, I really did. It was green and lush and the landscape captivated me and grabbed me by the heart strings. But alas, I am not there now, and I need to get over it. So here we are....



It wasn't the easiest move back over (self funded...eeek!, but that is not the worst bit). The purchasers of our Canadian residence wanted to move in earlier than we had wanted, so we have been living temporarily in various locations since early October. I have two small children AND two dogs, so finding short term, family and dog friendly rental has been quite difficult, but in the end, with perseverance, something always seemed to work out for us. This run of good fortune briefly took a vacation, which decided to coincide with our arrival into Australia.

Imagine turning up to the property you blindly booked online, to rent out for a month (at an exorbitant rate mind you), believing the property was a nice hotel that you were familiar with, only to find that you were terribly terribly wrong and in fact, she's a bit of an inadequate hovel (Similarly named on the same street - GRRRRR!). Then imagine making the snap decision (after having flown 17 hours on a plane) to drive around town with no phone or clue, panic stricken with a terse husband, two grumpy and over-tired pre-school aged kids and 8 bags of cursed, worldly possessions, searching for appropriate, CLEAN, available and, dare I say, affordable, lodgings. Believe me....it wasn't fun.


For a start we discovered there was a week long car rally in procession, which inadvertently caused most of the hotels in close proximity to convenience to be booked out or to be suddenly and ridiculously over-priced. Example: after many hours and in desperation, we looked at a caravan park and were told that a cabin room was going to cost us $200 a night, no Internet, and the kids had to sleep on the floor. Eff that!


After a near nervous breakdown and 8 hours of helplessly driving around (crying, pleading children somewhere in the back seat shrouded by luggage), we decide to chow down at MacDonald's, buy a cell phone and peruse the yellow pages in search for the nearest hotel that had Internet use chucked in. It was a stressful and costly day!


We managed to persuade my brother into allowing us to stay at his place for the next two nights while we assessed our new situation. In the meantime miracles happened and we stumbled upon a tiny advertisement wanting someone to house sit for 4 weeks while they went interstate for medical treatment. It just so happened that the rental period was the exact time we required and was required to commence in two days. We met the woman and she was happy for us to stay in her house without concern for our lack of references and what not. It was squishy; just a two bedroom unit, but we didn't care, if fact we were thankful to just have a place.

We moved in on my birthday, which no one but my brother bothered to acknowledged. Since then we have covered a lot of clerical and practical territory; trying to set ourselves up and find a permanent address. We are presently staying in a property we agreed to rent for three months, after which, we will move into yet another property; one we have bought. We relieved that we will soon be able to settle.


I am not good with stress. I like my life and my surroundings to be calm and tranquil. I am getting back to that now. Now that the foundations have been laid and have dried off nicely, I have found myself starting on the framework: kids schooling, social groups for them and fitness for me. Having been so lonely over the past three years, it has been nice to re-connect with beloved old friends, chat and take in a coffee with them. My new years resolution (like everyone else's) is to be fit and healthy; so far so good. The brickwork begins......