here is our journey (part three)

hooray! the final part of our journey in pictures has made it onto my page!

these are a series of photos i took on the beach and at our apartment in esperance. this was our final night 'on the road' and even though it was the final leg of our trip, the beauty of esperance was so real that i could easily have stayed longer. esperance definitely has a high ranking on our list of "must-go-back-to-one-day" places!

and after six days of limited freedom, eamon let loose on the beach. he was wild! enthralled by the sand. he loved it, and he was such a delight to watch and photograph :)

and that, my friends, is the end of our journey here... an early start the following day led us to a late afternoon arrival at mum & dad's house and a very happy mum welcomed us there. so good to be home!

the end of our journey but merely the beginning of our new adventure here. much much more to follow!

here is our journey (part two)

okay... about time to share some more photos from our trip over.

my last post shows the photos from the first and second days, until we got to ballarat in the evening of the second day. there was a bit of a lull in the photo-taking department after that, so between ballarat and adelaide there aren't any photos. there was some pretty countryside but i think i drove most of the day and was pretty intent on just getting to point B!

between adelaide and ceduna there was... well... ...not a lot, but i felt a bit more inspired to take a few pics.

we stayed in suburb just out of adelaide on ben's advice. his theory was that if we stayed to the west of adelaide we wouldn't be fighting the peak-hour traffic in the morning. lucky for him he was right, and we cruised out of the pretty city with no dramas. it would have been nice to explore adelaide a bit, but with a little kiddo in tow and a seeker love keeper gig to get to on the 28th, there was no time for dilly-dallying around!

from adelaide we passed a whole lot of nothing, including a place called iron knob. strangely named and very, very quiet. despite there not even being a petrol station or a shop in sight, there was however a playground so little e could stretch his legs and ben could test out his monkey bar skills. no grass though. very red and very dry. hmmm its all making me thirsty.

many, many country towns later we finally arrived in ceduna, where we were just in time to see a beautiful sun setting over the ocean. it was such a relief to have arrived at this point. we figured we were making pretty good progress. and eamon had been pretty amazing for us, considering! he had his moments, but i have more postive memories of our time in the car with him than negative ones, so i guess that's saying something!

we woke up the next morning to day four, our most epic day yet. we had something like a 12 hr day ahead of us! ceduna to balladonia - oh i well never forget it - especially the 90 mile straight! we actually only stopped three times that day, so we didn't do too badly but it's something i don't want to do again for a very long time. it's pretty lonely out there.

i love this photo of eamon. i think he wished he could take the plane the rest of the way instead :) i don't blame him.

the best thing was finally crossing the border in wa - hooray! less than best though, was the epic poo disaster eamon challenged us with at our lunchtime stop eucla. ugh. yeah, some big memories that day.

even though balladonia was tiny - just a road house and a few motel rooms - and a little primitive, we were incredibly glad to have arrived there at the end of the day. somewhere to eat, shower & sleep.

the next morning was foggy and surreal. we were only a couple of days away from reaching our destination. we could have made it home that day, but we decided to divert through esperence as neither of us had been there before. more about that next time.

i'll leave you with this one of eamon helping us pack the car in the morning before we left balladonia :) so helpful x

here is our journey

hello!!! (its been a while) ...

here we are - we made it. we're now on the other side of our historic move to WA.

it's nice to finally be able to touch base again. the last few months have been an incredible journey... in the literal sense, yes we did journey and it took us roughly a week to drive here with a few memorable stops along the way. more of which i'll share with you in a moment.

yet physically getting here was really just the beginning, and past three months (yes, its been three already!!) have been a crazily busy time of settling in, unpacking, organising and re-connecting with friends and family. now that i'm back doing the things i would normally do (i.e. blogging, among other internet-based, time-wasting things) i think i can safely say that i have officially settled in. it doesn't take long!

in eamon's case it only took a few weeks - oh to be a toddler! it wasn't long before he was running around in his shorts and t-shirts and thongs following his nana + pop around the place. i hope he doesn't forget tassie altogether and something jogs in his memory when we go back there to visit one day :)

we've been having a brilliant time catching up with friends and family - sometimes i have to pinch myself to make sure that i'm not dreaming! its wonderful having them all so close after the long distance for those five years. you can't really top having your mum living only twenty or so metres away - its very convenient for child-minding purposes! oh and for other reasons too of course - cups of tea, chatting, 'borrowing' ingredients for cooking/baking, ironing (oops did it say that? no, she doesn't do my ironing... not yet anyway).

and now that my dear sister is getting married (!) we are especially glad that we are here to join in all the planning + fun.

life generally, is 'normal' and we are very thankful for that. some things here have changed, but mostly things are quite familiar. living here now with a family, though, is quite different compared to how life was as a relatively single person five years ago. we are looking forward to an exciting next couple of months, also as we step into the holiday (and, in our family's case, the birthday/wedding) season.

anyway.

here are a few pictures from our journey here. we had a great drive which all went very smoothly. afterwards ben and i both agreed, that as much as we enjoyed the experience, we wouldn't be taking a long trip like that again in the near future. its a long drive for a toddler and by day seven we were running out of ideas on how entertain the little guy! i really think the dvd player saved our sanity most days! but we did see lots and there was something really special about driving across the SA-WA border into our new home state together as a family.

these photos are from day one and day two! more to follow :)

we said we would - and now we are!

that pretty much sums up the last six months (or more!) of our family's life.
lots of long chats about which state we'd rather live in.
lots of procrastination.
MORE procrastination.
and then a decision (HOORAY).

and then all that follows a decision to move states.
organising...quotes...phonecalls...packing...de-cluttering...shipping the child off to baby-sitters...more packing...throwing lots away...late nights...early mornings...socialising...having fun (oops i don't think that one belongs here).

but here we are - we've made it! with the packing all done (if not, its too late now!) and ben in the car with little mate, revving to go, there's nothing more to do.

what a feeling! so excited and nervously thrilled about what's to come, yet a little sad and sentimental about what we'll be leaving behind.

dear little tassie - we will miss you. and all that you've brought us over the last five years. its been a full and happy time; we've made some incredible memories that we can't forget.

for me, tassie is where it all began - my life with my darling husband, and our life as a little family with our boy. tassie - you have brought us SO much, so thank-you. thank-you for just being you - i have really learned to love this place - seasons and all!

to our dear friends and family in tassie - thank-you all so much for the blessing you are (and will continue to be) in our lives. will miss you a lot - so there'll be plenty of visits i'm sure :)

now, as we pack up the life that we know and head west, my heart breaks for what we'll be leaving behind.
but every part of me is excited to start a new one, filled with the promise of family, friendships and more good times.

xxx

busy (making memories)

over the past few months life has taken a rather busy turn - the most obvious cause being our preparations for our relocation to WA.

Less obviously, we have been spending our time trying to experience and re-visit our favourite places on this dear little isle before we leave. when we made the decision to leave Tassie we had no doubt in our minds that we wanted to see some more of the pretty place we've called home for the last five years. so we made a bit of a list...

...and we've accomplished an unbelievable number of scenic adventures over the last few weeks - a weekend away at our dream tasmanian destination cradle mountain (that one was kid-free - yay!), a day in the snow and an afternoon at hollybank forest reserve just to name a few - and have just been loving every minute of it. and when you know that its probably going to be your last time at these places for a while, you really try and make the most of it. and autumn/winter are really not a bad time to explore this place :)

king billy walk - cradle mt lodge

cradle valley

a snow-streaked cradle mountain

eamon at the snow, arthur's lake

arthur's lake (edges were frozen!)

eamon at hollybank forest reserve

the avenue, hollybank