Our family – Greg (38), Shannon (37), Zhane (8), Sarai (6) and Ash (3) have begun our six month to one year trip around Australia.
We have, over the years, thought it would be a great experience to travel Oz and for whatever reason, last year decided to bite the bullet and just do it. In September 2008, we purchased a 2003 Windsor Rapid and a 2006 Ford Falcon station wagon to carry us and all of our gear. Our friends own a Rapid and it seemed to always work well for their family so we decided to go with their experience. We normally camp in a 1976 VW Kombi but decided against doing our trip in it as the whole set up and pack up would have eventually driven us crazy.
The original plan was to leave at the beginning of the Christmas holidays 2009 however somewhere along the line we changed our minds and moved it up to early July 2009.
We have never been great planners so the last few months have been somewhat of a nightmare. All of our personal things, clothes, toys etc were packed into boxes to enable our friends to move into our house and enjoy our home without feeling like we were still there. Greg worked like a maniac to complete building in under our house and luckily, after a debacle with a lunatic tenant, we found a couple to move in downstairs. Hopefully our home will be enjoyed, loved and treated well until we return next year.
Greg is going to use his teaching skills to educate the kids, his musical skills to teach Shannon guitar and his “jack of all trades” skills to ensure we survive. Shannon is going to be honing her entrepreneurial skills to conjure up a business idea that may actually work and do some genuine planning, whilst learning guitar, keyboard and writing a book. Zhane is going to make new friends, be tortured into practising her keyboard and listen to ABBA on her first MP3 player. Sarai is going to nurture every animal we come across, learn to read and practise dance moves previously unseen in the outback. Finally, Ash is going to run wild, look like a boy, catch desert lizards and learn to read also. AND we are going to succeed in at least one endeavour each!!
Anyway, we have finally left Brisbane and hope to have a fantastic trip, enjoying each other’s company, experiencing great things and meeting new people.
We hope you enjoy keeping up with our journey.
Hasta la vista!