A few weeks before we were going, I managed to crash the car on the way to my Mom's house! Some silly cow pulled out on a main road in front of us, so I swerved to avoid her and hit the car head on coming the other way! It had been raining and there was a lot of traffic, so it was fairly slow, but we still skidded and ended up in the middle of the road! We were towed back home and the car was in a very sorry state!!
After about 6 weeks, we had it back
We landed in Brisbane, picked up our upgraded camper and spent a few days meeting with friends made through British Expats in Capalaba and Morayfield. We travelled up the coast as far as Maroochydore and then back down to Sydney and home.
We liked Brisbane very much and were keen to pick it as our preferred destination. I had popped into a company and they seemed pretty positive regarding employment opportunities. However on the drive to Sydney, we passed through Port Macquarie. There are some beautiful places in Australia, I have seen a fair part of the place following the visits I have made but as we drove into Port, we were both in agreement "This was a nice place."
We stopped for the night in a holiday park, we were pushed for time so only had one night to spare. On the way out of town the next day, I picked up the local Yellow Pages and looked under "Air conditioning" companies. I entered the first one into the Sat Nav and drove there. After an hours impromptu interview I exited the building with a job offer.
We returned to England a few days later and waited for the confirmation email.
The email arrived a couple of weeks later, we had SEVEN weeks to return.
So...... The house was up for sale but not going anywhere fast and It was also too high maintenance for rental. We had a car and a hot tub to sell and two lambrettas in the garage. The house needed lots of finishing, garden needed work and then just the little matter of getting all our possessions sent to Oz. Sh...t how the hell are we going to do this??
My plan was to do as much as I could in the seven weeks and to come out on my own, leaving Rach and the kids to finish off and come out when they could. I still had to hold down a job which I did until one week to go and only had one day off which I used to help with the shippers.
It took three weeks to sort the garden alone.
I managed to get the local builder to flatten the ground and then Rach and I turfed the garden when the rain stopped. We sold the car, hot tub and eithe
r sold or gave away the stuff we couldn't take. We worked on the house, painting and freshening everything we could and all those little jobs I should have finished ages ago.
Our nice new lawn!
The shippers came and everything went leaving us sleeping on an inflatable bed, Jacob in a sleeping bag and Jess in a travel cot for our last four weeks. The Lambretta was packed away first, of course!
For a few weeks we were using a cool box where we had a rotation of ice packs on the go from the village store over the road but then our friends took pity and lent us a fridge for the last two.
We managed to rent the house out to a lovely couple for a minimum of a year and carried on getting the house ready, right up until our friends came to drop us at the airport. IT WAS THAT CLOSE!!!!
Our mothers and friends were invaluable in helping us to sort it all out and I still can't believe we managed to do it all in such a short period of time.
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