‘As One Door Closes, Another Opens’

It is so hard to believe it is all over.  This time last week we were camped at Mt Surprise having our last night on the road and tonight we are spending our first night in our new ‘farm house’.  Our trip honestly feels like it happened a million years ago now which is sad, but we are very excited about starting this new adventure in the Fealy Family saga!

Our last week on the road was filled with so many mixed emotions.   We were sad not to be seeing so many of the places we had wanted to get to.  We were disappointed not to keep going as we really felt like we were only just starting to find our rhythm – the kids were just starting to know what was expected of them and become a little more independent.  But we were excited about seeing our families again, and finally getting to check out the house we would be living in and seeing the farm we would be working on.  We feel a little bit strange when we pass caravans and campers in town and wave without realising we don’t have the camper on anymore – we are no longer part of the camping and caravaning crowd heading off to the next camp spot or tourist attraction.

We arrived in Ravenshoe, where my parents live, last Thursday at about lunch time, unhitched the camper and reluctantly spent the afternoon washing off our ‘proof of an adventure’ dust.  Peter Prado was transformed back in to a town car once again, no longer a ‘roadtripping warrior’.

Washing the proof of our adventure away

The next day Matt flew to the Gold Coast for the weekend to be the MC at his cousin’s wedding (congratulations Ant & Tran!!) which was a real culture shock after so long away from the city life!  The kids and I relaxed and were spoilt rotten by my Mum (Grammy) with meals and baking and washing done for us!   Jack got to show off all of our fossicking treasures from the trip and spend a day in the shed with Grunda learning how to ‘facet’ a gem.

Fun at Grammy & Grunda’s (sorry about the laundry trolley Grammy!)

Jack in the shed with Grunda learning how to facet a gem

And now we are here, in Mareeba, unpacking our container much sooner than we expected to be.  So far we have only managed to unpack about a third of the container and to date we have only really been happy to see about 2 items each (Jess – the coffee table and big frying pan!  Matt – his speakers and work boots so he doesn’t have to wear his sneakers around the farm anymore and look like a real city slicker fish out of water!)  Even though we only had 3 short months on the road, we definitely have realised how little we really need.  I absolutely could have just tossed out most of what we unpacked today!!!  Finding our pre-trip whiteboard ‘To Do List’ was a little bit of a spin out ……………………………………………So – looking at this photo of our container unpacking reminds me that I really better get back to trying to locate the kids lunch boxes and school shoes in preparation for their first day in their new school tomorrow.  They are all excited but I am a little nervous for them!!  Enough procrastinating via blogging for one night.  I still have the last 2 weeks of our trip to blog about, they were really awesome so hopefully I will have some of those coming through soon.  I’ve really enjoyed the blogging, thank you to everyone for commenting and following along – it was heaps of fun reading what you had to say on our trip and we got some great advice along the way too!  I’d like to keep blogging, but not sure what form that will take yet – stay tuned!

I’ll leave you with just a couple of shots Matt took today here on the farm.  We had nine little ducklings hatch this morning which was a lovely sight for us ‘newies’ to see mama duck wandering around with her little ducklings following.  We know that this life is not going to be all ‘fluffy ducklings’ but for now we are enjoying these little moments and the kids are in heaven!

Brand new ducklings – yes – Tobes may have a little work to do on his handling skills yet – don’t worry the duckling was fine!

Meet ‘Mr Turkey’

First taste of passion fruit – straight off the vine

Feeling happy and lucky to be calling this home.