24th August 2009

Dear Diary

It’s getting close now. Just 7 days before we leave! That’s just 9 days until we show up on Nanny and Poppy’s door step!

It’s also getting harder and harder to keep it a secret. Many people know now. People here in town obviously know, many of our old friends from Melbourne. My Mum and Dad. My girls.

The only people that don’t know we’re coming, are Nanny and Poppy and Tim’s sibling’s and their families.

A lot of the posts I’ve put up since the day we decided to come, has had something to do with the move.

My Rabbit Proof fence came about because I thought to myself, yay…now I can own a rabbit! Not that I want to, but it made me think of Michelle. A Melbourne friend.

My Lost in a paper bag came about because we’ve been discussing how much Melbourne has changed since we left in September 2004. New over passes, new highways that weren’t even in the planning stages before we left. I thought about how long it’s taken me to get to know this town. It’s only really this year that I’ve learnt the really important roads, and I’m terrified of how Melbourne is going to be for me. We bought a Tom Tom. I’ll be right.

Our BBQ was a Farewell BBQ. We posted it as our anniversary BBQ simply so that we could post about it. I wrote “I will miss you when you go Nikki” not because she is leaving town, but because WE were leaving town.

My over it post had nothing to do with finding something to write about, but finding something I COULD write about that didn’t involve this move. Almost everything we’ve done over the last two months has been something to do with this move!

In my “Boating” post, at the very end I wrote that I was so tired because we’d had a massive weekend. Well, that weekend we’d had our garage sale. Tim and I decided that because we wanted to sell everything we would start early. Unlike the one’s that start at 9am, we started ours at 6am. I spent the entire week in the garage and sorted through our crap throughout the house. We spent 9 hours in the sun, nine hours of haggling with tight ass Warwickian’s who wouldn’t pay fifty cents for something that in store and new would cost hundreds.

Not only has blogging become hard because I couldn’t put the real story here, but facebook and talking to Nanny and Poppy too.

On facebook I couldn’t write my status the way I wanted. While we were busy writing up Tim’s resume and sending them in my status would appear as “doing very important stuff”. When I was packing it would be “busy doing…stuff” I had to delete countless messages or replies there when people screwed up and said something about the move or Tim getting a new job. Tim’s brother and sister are on facebook and I didn’t want them seeing our secret.

Talking to Nanny and Poppy would have to be the hardest part about this. I don’t know how they’ve done it so many times. I’ve slipped up many times now, but I don’t even know if I recovered myself well enough for them not to notice.

When Poppy told Tim he’d got a few more books for our collection and would send them up last week, I told him he should save his money and we would bring them back with us when we came for holidays in September. They think we’re going down in November. Not only that, we told them we were flying down in November, not driving. So when I said we’ll take them back with us Nanny said “But you’re flying down?”

Then we were talking about Tim having holidays. Nanny said “That’s great, it will get you away from work” and I muttered under my breath “That it will” since, Tim had already put in his notice and was due to finish up in three days.

The most enjoyable thing though, has been baiting them. Saying things like “Oh Nanny, we need a break, can you have Jaxon for us” and knowing that she would automatically say “In a heart beat, I’d have him any day of the week”.  Tim would be sitting there writing secret messages to me out of view like “careful what you wish for”

We’ve asked them a lot of questions, for things we needed to know. Using other excuses to get them to talk about it. We needed to know how much rego would cost for us in Melbourne for the car. So we told them OUR rego was over $800 for a year…what did they pay? We asked Poppy, the GPS/Sat Nav go to man, what was the best one to get…so we could navigate our way aroubnd Queensland. But really, so we could find our way around in Melbourne.

But most importantly. We were worried Nanny and Poppy would be on their way up for a surprise visit while Tim and I were already on our way down. So we pestered and pestered them for about a month, to try and get info out of them. First they said “Wont be until September”.  Well that didn’t work for us! Then they said it wouldn’t be until the end of the year. But could we trust that they weren’t just saying that? Then it became “we wont be there until Jaxon’s birthday” which is next year, and could they really hold off from seeing us that long??

We had to find a way to make sure they wouldn’t come up while we were packing. Or when we were already gone. And every week I would get Tim to ring them on random night’s to ask stupid questions. Just to make sure they were still in Melbourne. In the end, we had to tell them that WE were planning a holiday and that WE wouldn’t tell them when it was because then if they really were coming to see us they would have to tell us when, or risk coming when we were gone.

I sure hope I don’t fuck this up. We’ve come too far.

Our plans are BRILLIANT and so bloody exciting!

23rd August 2009

Dear Diary

The trap has been laid. The In laws are none the wiser. It’s just 8 days before we rock up on their door step unannounced. I hope their hearts are in good nick.

I’ve got to tell you, that before today i was really quite sad to be leaving. I’ve been packing for 6 weeks now yet nothing seemed real until yesterday. On Friday (21st) Tim finished work, so yesterday was the day we started not just packing, but dismantling furniture for the move back to Melbourne.

Now it’s all so real.  Just one more week before our things are picked up and taken away.

And then, we go.

But now I’m totally pumped. I’m excited mostly, to see the looks on Nanny and Poppy’s faces when we show up. They have no idea. They think we’re headed up North. They think…we’re 1600 kilometer’s away.

We’ve already been to Australia Zoo.  Tim took a sickie last Wednesday and we went for the day. This was part of the master plan. We got photo’s on Tim’s mobile of Jaxon and I all throughout the zoo. And a few hours before we leave Dad’s to go to their house, we’ll start sending them those photo’s. Just to trick them in to a false sense of security.

Because of course they may well have some suspicions that we’re coming. We don’t know. But they think we’re leaving on Thursday, 27th of August. By the time it gets to Monday surely they’ll have given up on the idea of us coming to see them and just be thinking we really HAVE gone up North, instead of down South.

Then of course, if we can keep our big mouths shut for a day or two, we wont be telling them we’ve MOVED back. We’ll let them recover from the first shock of having us visit first.

I just can’t wait.

21st July 2009

Dear Diary

So we have our little list of things we need to do before we go. Sorting through crap…deciding what to take and what to sell. Deciding when Tim’s last day of work will be and when Jaxon’s last day of EDC will be.

Now I’m sad.

Nothing in this world could stop us from going now. Just as there was nothing that could have stopped us coming to Queensland in the first place.

The difference being that we had things we were running from when we left Melbourne. Traffic and a few other choice things. We were sad and scared and all that stuff. But we were excited too.

This time, we have nothing here in our life that we’re running from. We LOVE our life here. We love everything about it. We love the house we’re living in. We love that Tim only has a 3 minute ride to work.

But mostly, we love our friends. We have some really good friends here. Granted, we don’t have a lot of friends, but the one’s we do have are golden. They have welcomed us in to their lives and we have shared many good times together.

I am extremely sad that we’re leaving them. No matter how good the reason is that we’re going, I know that we’re leaving some of the best friends we’ve ever had behind.

6^th June

Dear Diary,

We’re moving back to Melbourne. No one knows about this, so this won’t be posted right up until we’re there.

Well, my Dad knows. Because he’s probably going to drive up to us and then drive back down to Melbourne with us. This is good. I’m looking forward to it.

Tim and I have been here in Warwick now for coming on five years. The day we decided to move way back then was like any other day. Tim was working in North Melbourne. We lived about a half hour drive from there in moderate traffic. But this night there’d been a major accident on the free way. Two people died and everyone was stuck in traffic going both ways for hours and hours.

When Tim finally got home, five hours after he should have been home, exhausted from work and annoyed about traffic the first thing he said was “Call your Mum, let’s move to Queensland”

There wasn’t even a second thought. We had doubts of course. But from that moment on we knew that we were going. We didn’t care what it took, we were getting out of the city. You could say that we moved specifically for the traffic. But that really was just the breaking point. There were so many other reasons for us to move away. Most of them I can’t put here. But they were good, I promise.

From that day, to the day we left Melbourne…was 21 days. There hadn’t been a conversation beforehand…we hadn’t thought about it once before that heavy traffic day. We sold almost everything we owned and went. We’re like that. We make up our minds, and we go.

We moved up here and we lived next door to my Mum for a while. Then we moved in to town. And then we had Jaxon. But two years ago Mum got a job in Darwin and left. So we found ourselves left in a small country town, with no family.

We have a few really good friends here. We love them very much. It’s taken us this entire time to make those friends. Despite being open and quirky people…we’re really guarded and take a long time to open up and make friends. But there’s nothing like family.

Everyone visits. Nanny and Poppy visit at least twice a year and so do Grandpa and Grandma. While they’re here, my heart breaks. Jaxon loves them SO much. When they’re here we see him blossom. We see his eyes light up when they come through the door. He yell’s and screams in excitement and it’s just such a joy to see. It’s always a very sad few days for Jaxon when they leave. He really misses them.

This is mostly what made us decide to go back home. Tim’s Mum turns 60 next year and I suggested a week or two ago that we try to rock up on her birthday as a surprise. They do that to us all the time and I would just love to do it to them, especially for Nanny’s birthday. But the plan was only to go for a visit.

Then last Thursday, Nanny had to have an operation on her hand. It sounds really simple but she’s had problems with anaesthetic and her heart has stopped once or twice before on the operating table.

It was an awful day. We worried and worried. I kept thinking…what if? What if Jaxon doesn’t get to see his Nanny again? What if he grows up and all he knows is those few short visits where he got to have a Nanny hug and kiss and shower him with love?

I grew up in a very close knit family. Our extended family wasn’t so close, but my family unit…my Mum and Dad and my brother Terry, we were really close. I want that for Jaxon. I’m giving that to Jaxon. But more than what Tim and I can give him, I want an extended family for him too. I am sick of missing birthdays, and BBQ’s and Christmas Days.

While we waited for the call that said Nanny was ok, I lay in bed thinking. And when Tim came home the first thing I said to him was “Instead of visiting for your Mum’s Birthday, let’s move back to Melbourne”

And so it will be. We are going home. There has been no second thought. There was no discussion, no compromise. It is time for us to return to the place where we feel we belong now. Where once we needed to move away from the city and everything else that we were moving away from, we now move back for something much more important.

Family.