Well bloody hell, we did it!
On Friday 30th Jan 2009 the historic moment we had been waiting for all this time finally arrived and we pulled out of the driveway of our beautiful “sold” home, waved goodbye to Birkett Street and to Perth without even knowing if we would ever be coming back again and set off on our adventure round Australia! Bloody hell!
Perhaps surprisingly, there was no real strong sense of sadness to be leaving the home we have loved for these past 4 years. I think for me that gutted feeling had been at its height around Xmas, when the house was looking gorgeous (as it always did in summer) and was working just great for having guests to stay (as it always did). Gordon kept saying there were plenty of other lovely houses in Australia, with even better verandahs (with a view next time!) and with just as good airflow and layout…..but back at Xmas I was a bit inconsolable! But on our last day, with all the furniture gone and our “energy” disconnected, it was just a pleasant “shell” - pretty but no soul anymore and nothing to feel sad about really. Plus we were that knackered by the time it came to leave - too knackered for any sentiment! Our departure marked the final culmination of 3 jam-packed weeks for me at the clinic (and for Gordon, getting the interior of the 4WD ready) and, for both of us, 7 gruelling additional and last days of 6a.m-11pm “non-stop, hard-slog” preparations for leaving. I don’t think we have ever been through anything like that in all the times either of us has moved nor would we want to repeat anything like it ever again! Those last seven days comprised endless to-do-lists and down-to-the-last-minute-timetables; bone-aching tiredness and 2 “emotional meltdowns” from yours truly (aged 2!); sorting and packing for the trip alongside sorting and packing for the removal men/storage (or for yet another skip on the front lawn); still last-minute purchases and errands for things for the trip; the dismantling of all my clinic furniture and then the final tax/admin wind-down to do; sending clothes going into storage off to the dry cleaners….and then remembering to pick them up; doing all final washing for the trip before the removal guys take the washing machine(!); hairdressing appointments, dental appointments, personal training sessions (yes we squeezed in 2 training sessions in our final week and yes, we must have been mad!); all up not very much eating; and, on the very last day (because the rest of the week had been getting ready for the removal guys pre-pack and final pack), we did our own packing, packing and more packing into the 4WD and camper-trailer! And believe me, that little summary doesn’t really begin to describe all that we had to do – and that, in spite of nearly 3 months of solid “getting ready” prior to this final week! Jeeez!
So not only did we pull out of the driveway knackered, we also pulled out with this weird “this doesn’t feel real” feeling – a case of “pinch me, is this really happening?”. Tired out as we were, it was all more about just getting down to our first stop in Yallingup (so we could begin the two and half week “recovery holiday” we had planned for down there!) than it was for “beginning the trip” per se. Not to forget of course that we have spent many a weekend down at Yallingup so why would it feel different really – other than this time we weren’t coming back…but again, we still won’t feel THAT feeling as being real until we leave Yallingup for Denmark ….and probably not really until we leave Denmark for Cape Le Grand National Park, as beyond Denmark everything will be very new and that’s also when we will be doing our first spot of real bush-camping as opposed to campsite camping.
So, the real feeling of being “on-the-road” yet to come and we are looking forward to that although I must say that in the meantime we are very much enjoying our “holiday” first!
We are still pinching ourselves! We know we have dared to truly go for our dream and live it – that is to say, to be free of all housing debt for the time being (in the process right now of selling all our other properties) and free from J.O.B.S and the professional identities and roles we have lost ourselves in for years - and bring one of our true joint passions into the NOW, i.e. traveling and exploring, free as a bird! It has taken Gordon a mere 23 years to finally bite the bullet and leave the world of I.T and I don’t think I have ever seen a man happier with his choice! And it has taken me 4 years to prove to myself that I no longer need to prove to myself that I can achieve a “successful” business! After what has been a very spiritual-based growth-journey since coming to Perth 5 years ago, we have finally decided that financial freedom in the form of “spending the next 10 years getting a big property portfolio that we still need our J.O.B.S to pay for it all until they are positively geared” is NOT the financial freedom or the living that we want. Nor was happily staying in our “comfort zone” good for us anymore (in fact the more we stayed in it actually wasn’t that comfortable really!). It has taken us probably since the first time we met and even long before that, to truly realize that life is meant to be fun and easy and that we do deserve to have what we want AND that we CAN have it! I think the most challenging thing at times has not only been getting clearer and clearer on how we want to live life, but also daring to say ‘yes” to ourselves and to drop some of the limiting beliefs and identities that kept us trapped in a way of living that hid the real “us”. So, we have turned the page of a brand new chapter and we are loving the fact that the pages are blank for us to pen our next adventures!
What now begins is a year at least, of traveling round Australia at the pace we want, doing all our outdoor activities with plenty of time for resting too, eating healthy and well, meeting new friends, and refining our share-trading and currency-trading skills further (so that we can have the choice to fund ongoing travel after our year is up or indeed create our income when we settle elsewhere…..leaving more hours in the week to do all the other things we want to do and contribute in the communities we want to, without being stopped by the obligatory hours of a regular J.O.B).
We look forward to entertaining you on our journey – stay tuned!
