BACK TO SYDNEY ONCE MORE

Hello there everyone.  The latest news and happenings since our last blog are as follows:

We’ve rented a house at Holsworthy – one station further south from our old address at East Hills.  It’s around the corner from where the girls are renting and very handy for the station. It took us over a week to find somewhere suitable.  Some of the places we looked at were really old, run down and very expensive.  This place was by far the best we looked at for the money.  It was soul destroying and so tiring looking around all the time.  We also needed one that was immediately available.   Not too many places allowed dogs either. The one we chose is a fairly new 3 bedroom townhouse with a small courtyard/ garden (not much maintenance thankfully). Daniel left some of his furniture and household things that he couldn’t take to Perth with him, so we’ve been able to put them in the house.  We had all the cooking things, linen etc in the caravan so that’s all been unloaded into the house also.  We’ve borrowed anything else we needed from friends and the place is looking reasonably homely now (we don’t want to make it too comfy).  It’s a much smaller house than East Hills and fairly easy to keep clean.

We miss our caravan so much.  It was just so sad unloading it.  It’s now looking very bare and lonely.  We parked it outside a friend’s place in Sydney whilst we were house hunting, in the hope we’d get a place where the caravan would fit also.  Alas, there’s barely enough room for our big Landcruiser in the driveway.  Off street parking is limited and the streets are quite narrow, so parking the van here just wasn’t an option.   We’ve left the van at “Camp Cox” – our very good friends at Warnervale have once again given up part of their driveway so that we can leave the van there until we’re ready to head off once more.  We’ll spend some weekends up with them and also go away for short breaks on the Central Coast work permitting.   Yes, I did say work permitting.  Unfortunately we both have to work as much as possible over the next 6 months.  Richard’s been offered a 6 months contract back at Invocare – the company he was at before we set off on our travels.  They’ve also very kindly agreed to lend him a car for the duration of the contract which is fantastic as both of us trying to work at different places with only one car wasn’t going to work out too well.  He’ll probably start back next week.  I‘m going back to the club Panania Diggers as a casual and am waiting for my uniform to come in and a phone call to start back.  Unfortunately we’re back into the rat race for at least 6 months.

Our aim is to get Adam back to work and finish his apprenticeship in June.  At least then he’ll be earning better money as a qualified tradesman and will be in a better financial position to decide what he’s going to do. It’s also his 21^st birthday in September and we’d always intended to come back to Sydney for it (didn’t expect to be actually living here once more at that time).We’re committed until mid-November now and will reassess everything further down the track.  Adam may join Daniel in Western Australia next year, so time will tell.

In the meantime Adam’s having physiotherapy 3 times a week and has a specialist appointment tomorrow.  He’ll probably start back to work on light duties next week 5 hours a day.  He’s still got a long road to full recovery and has had one third of his cartilage removed from behind his knee as it was too badly damaged to repair.  This means he’ll be more prone to arthritis later in life and shouldn’t (but probably will) go back to trail bike riding and jumps. He’s living with us as he just can’t live with his 2 sisters any longer (it was a nightmare waiting to happen). KIDS!!!!!

Thanks for joining us during our travels.  The blog will now go into hibernation for 6 months until we resume our trek around Oz and head back to South Australia that we absolutely loved and then on to Western Australia.  

Love and best wishes to you all.  Please keep in touch and there’s  a good chance we will catch up whilst we’re based in Sydney.  

Marian, Richard and Sally