Well – we did finally hit the road and make it out of Samford today at about 1pm …………………. and we made it all the way to Wynnum – about 45 minutes away!

It took us quite a while this morning to get organised enough to get away – and while we are still not packed properly – we do feel like we are a bit more sorted in the camper.  We bid farewell (sniff, sniff) to the Hanstede and Sheil families after finally gathering up the last of our belongings!

Matt’s younger brother James flew back in from five months in the UK today so we decided to have a last night in Brisbane staying with Carla (Matt’s cousin) and Lachie (thank you soooooo much guys!) for a night, who hosted a Fealy/Neary cousins BBQ for us all to catch up.  It’s taken a trip around Australia to make us come over to the other side of Brisbane for a visit!!!

We are very disappointed that our little Toyota Yaris didn’t sell today.  We had a buyer interested from Thursday and he even called at 7.30am this morning to say he was catching a bus from Toowoomba to come and buy it, but after running around to meet him in the city and checking to make sure bank’s etc would be open – he drove it and decided not to buy the car after all – sooo frustrating!.  So we have gone with our plan F – which is for Matt’s little brother James to drive it back up to Far North Queensland for us next week and try to sell it up there for us over the next month or so.  Aaaaargh, so annoying that it hasn’t sold before we head off on our trip – but fingers crossed it won’t take too much longer – otherwise our trip will be much shorter than we expected!  We had hoped that the car would be sold before we left so we could hit the road ‘free agent’s with nothing to worry about, but I am learning (lesson number one for the trip) that best laid plans don’t always come through!!

While Matt took the Yaris into the city – I drove the car and camper to a spot just outside the city (I was not game enough to be driving the whole rig through the city!) and parked to wait for Matt to be hopefully dropped off and the car sold and driven away.  While I was waiting I turned the car off – but did not remove the keys from the ignition which meant the car headlights stayed on.  Consequently, when Matt returned – with an unsold car – he also found I had deadened the battery on the Prado – needless to say we were both happy campers at that point – not!  Thankfully we had the switch to flick over to the second battery and we headed over to Wynnum at last!

The next unfortunate incident occurred as we were parking the car and camper out the front of Carla and Lachie’s house.  Matt was reversing the car and camper up alongside the curb, and due to the fact that the car/camper are now much heavier – we have realised the mudflaps Matt made are too long – unfortunately this meant that as Matt was reversing – he ran over the mudflap and pulled the bumper off the back of the left hand rear tyre.  Awesome.  But we picked it up off the ground – threw it in the car – and decided to think about it tomorrow and enjoy our last night with family.  And that is exactly what we did – a night with family has lifted our spirits.

We will hit the road for real tomorrow.  We have no idea which way we are headed – except the general direction of West -ish.  We think we will just ask the kids in the morning ‘left or right’ as we leave Brisbane and see where that takes us.  We’ll do some more sorting out at our next stop.  We need to find a weigh-bridge as the camper and car feel very heavy and we need to see what weight we are actually sitting at – there may be some emergency dumping required!

It will be interesting to see where we pull up tomorrow! Some photos from our first day ……………

Farewell to the Hanstede family!

Jack and his best mate Connor

Tobe and his best mate Patrick

Farewell to the Sheil family xoxoxoxox

Welcome home Uncle Jimbo!

Madi & Lex with their ‘Tinkerbell’ pressies from Paris from Uncle Jimbo

Spoilt nephews with their costumes bought for them in London by Uncle Jimbo!

Lovely night with the Fealy/Neary cousins – thank you so much to Carla & Lachie for having us!

The Fealy Boys

Lovely farewell message from Toby’s teacher outside his classroom today.

Exhausted.  It is June the 1st tomorrow – a day that we have been seriously planning for over 18mths now.  I wish I could say we are excited – and I know that we really are somewhere in there – but we are just soooo tired and emotionally drained.  I know that we are sounding like big whingers and you’ll all be thinking ‘buck up – get into it!’, but I’m trying to truthfully record this adventure and dog tired is all we’ve got tonight.  That and a whole lot of gratefulness for all the kindness’s we have been shown over the last couple of weeks.

We moved into the camper at ‘Camp Hanstede’ yesterday – in the pouring rain – we even sat down for dinner (kindly made for us by Stella – thank you!) and there was a huge clap of thunder and lightening – what the????  We’re really trying to take that as a good omen!  When I say moved in to the camper – I mean we squeezed in amongst all the bits and pieces that we have no idea how we are going to make fit in here!

Jack reading a bedtime story to the kids on our first night moved in to the camper.

Yep – it is a real mess!

I honestly thought we would have time as we were moving out of the house to be packing the camper at the same time – didn’t happen!  Then I thought – no worries – we will sort it all out while we are staying at the neighbours – didn’t happen.  Now I am thinking that we are just going to jam it all in somewhere, hit the road tomorrow somehow and figure it all out as we get travelling.  It is just time to get going and know that it will all come together.  I thought I was being ruthless with my packing and that we would have no problems fitting it all in – I was very, very wrong!!  Maybe we will just head to the beach somewhere and spend the weekend getting it all sorted – who knows?  We’ll decide in the morning and that is the beauty of the trip I guess!

Matt finally finished work today – hooray!

Matt’s farewell gift from his team at work – he is very happy!

Matt with ‘the FCL Captain’!

The kids had their last day at school, which was surprisingly a little sad for them!  Both the boys teachers did a lovely little farewell for them in class, a big thank you to Miss Jane, Mrs Donaldson and Mrs Blakey – wonderful teacher’s who have all been so supportive and helpful with putting together some materials to help with the kid’s schooling on the road.

We did also manage to get our spare tyre for Peter Prado sorted this week, the tear in the camper wall stitched up like brand new (great Canvas stitching place at Morayfield!) and all done in an hour for only $60, our mail redirection is on and we have just about said all of our goodbyes including a lovely afternoon tea with the Van Schoor family to check out how they have settled in to ‘our house’ – a little strange seeing it with a new family and looking so different, but also nice to see it so loved!  The goodbyes have been tough – we will miss the wonderful friends we have established in Samford sooooooooo much!  Our neighbours and friends have been like family to us over the last few years – particularly as most of our family live away – so big thank you shout out to the Seaborn, Sheil, English and Hanstede family’s who have been a big part of our lives over our time here – we will miss you!

So with all of the hard stuff out of the way, and no more work and school to worry about, things should start to feel a little easier.  Off to bed now for some sleep and to wake to the start of our adventure, let the freedom begin!

PS. And finger’s crossed for sunshine in the morning so we don’t have to load up in the rain and pull the camper down wet!

The Day has finally arrived!

Where to start?  I can’t really believe that this time next week we will already have spent our first few nights on the road!  Very surreal that something we have been planning for two years is actually happening!!!  I don’t think it had really sunk in that we were leaving until we saw the tow track struggling to lift the container filled with all of our belongings, onboard.  Even more surreal is the fact that container is now sitting in Far North Queensland waiting for us to relocate up there at the end of our trip!

Filled to the brim!

Padlock on for the first time – we unlocked at least three times to squeeze in last items nearly forgotten!

Unloading in Far North Qld

Last week was a huge week filled with the final (hooray!) packing and cleaning!  I must say a huge thank you to my Mum who did the lion’s share of the cleaning of our house while I finished the packing and ran around after the kids.  We were soooooo lucky she was here – it was a huge job in the end – we hadn’t realised how big our house was and how much wall space, blinds and windows there were to clean, and how lacking my housework had been!!!  I don’t think our house has ever been cleaner – it was tempting to just move back in and live in it all sparkly and fresh!  We managed to squish all off our belongings in to the container but only just!!

We enjoyed the last moments with our fireplace – pizza picnic on the last night in our house – we spent our first night in our house this same way five years ago!

We moved in to our neighbours house last Friday, which is where we will spend most of this week, house-sitting, petsitting and childminding while they are away.  The kids are having a ball but I am finding that washing, making lunches and breakfasts and dinners for five kids is testing my organisational skills hehehehe!  We were so appreciative though to have a house with a fridge, beds and carpet, a shed to put the camper in and dump all of our yet to be packed stuff, after camping out in our house for the last ten days or so!  Eeeek – I am now a bit worried about how I am going to last on the road if I felt this grateful to be in a fully functional house after only 10 days of ‘semi camping’!!!!!

Fealy & Sheil kids at ‘Sheil Farm’

We handed over our keys on Saturday to the new residents of ‘our house’, which was a relief on one hand that the packing/moving was over but sad to being saying goodbye to our home on the other.  It was very strange seeing a removal truck there today and turning into the driveway across the road is very strange too!!  Saturday afternoon was spent enjoying the freedom of not having a looming deadline and a mountain of work to do!

Kids final play on their fort

On Sunday we headed to the local pub for a very laid back farewell lunch with friends and family.  I need to write a seperate post on how grateful we are to all the friends and family that have been soooooo good to us over the last 5 years that we have lived in Samford.  We feel so thankful to you all and hope that you will know how much we appreciate your kindness and support as we have prepared for this trip!  We got some very clever and thoughtful gifts including some handmade place-mats for each of us to use in the camper, itunes cards for the kids, a care package of snacks, wipes, and pencils, along with some lovely cards.

Farewell lunch

Friends, family and fun

Very hard to be leaving my little sister behind – we love ya Kate – you’ll have to find someone else’s pantry to raid on weekends now!

Goodbye Johnson Family – thanks for the good times!!

This week is still super busy!  We need to pack the camper – everything is currently in our neighbour’s house or shed and now needs to go into the camper – there still seems to be a lot of ‘stuff’ depsite my best efforts to be ruthless in my trip packing!  I hope it all fits in!!  Today we had the roof racks for the car replaced by Tigerz11 as they were rusting!  Hopefully this one will be ok!

Rusting roof racks!

Tomorrow we need to take a panel of the camper wall over to have a tear repaired, as well as have our spare tyre fitted to the Prado rim we were generously given as a loan for the trip.  Other than that lots of small jobs like finalising our mail redirection, last meetings with the kids teacher’s, finalise car and camper insurance, buying a new camping chair each for Matt & I, some grocery shopping for the road, haircuts. beauty treatments, organise a present for Lex for her birthday, birthday cupcakes for kindy and oh I don’t know, heaps more stuff that I can’t remember!!  Oh, and the small detail that we still haven’t sold our little Toyota Yaris which is the petrol money for our trip – very stressful!  And we still haven’t found a home for our cat Slinky yet either!!  Nothing like going down to the wire I guess!!!  We are still planning to leave Samford on Saturday, the 1st of June, but will probably only make it over to the other side of Brisbane at this stage as we are hoping to say hello to Matt’s little brother who is flying back in to Australia that day after nearly five months in Europe.

So close now and we are getting very excited!!!

Anybody able to adopt or foster our cat Slinky?

Slinky – 5 yrs old femaie desexed

Very child friendly cat!

Or want to buy our little car?

http://www.carsales.com.au/private/details/toyota-yaris-2010-14833838

Not many days to cross off now!

Well, thought I’d better do a quick post so you all know we are still alive – just – and we haven’t decided to call the trip off just yet!  We have however, spent the last week arguing over whose dumb idea it was to head off around Australia in a camper van for 8 months – especially heading off in the middle of winter!  We have decided that we never, ever, ever want to do this moving gig again – the next move will be it!

Having said all that – we are getting there – the container is just about full, the house is mostly empty and we are probably a third of the way through the cleaning.  It hasn’t been all bad – I am finished up at work – yippppeeee (I will miss you though BMR crew!!) and my mum is here visiting (ok – not so much visiting as slave labour, but nice to have her here all the same!) and it does feel good to have done a bit of a sort of our life possessions (probably not ruthless enough)!  We have been feeling very grateful for the kind friends we have around us!  Big thanks to Michelle for dropping over a yummy batch of freshly baked muffins on the weekend, it was a big lift when I was feeling pretty over it all and wondering how on earth we would get it all done!  Also thanks to Luke for giving Matt a hand to lift the really heavy stuff after I went on strike, cried, and said ‘I wasn’t a man and I couldn’t lift any more’!  And thanks to Luke and Duncan for the loan of the trailers again – we should have bought shares in those trailers!!  We really appreciate all your kindness neighbours and friends!

With hopefully only a few more days of stressful cleaning and packing to go to make our ‘handover keys’ deadline on Saturday – a little bit of excitement is starting to creep in!  I can’t wait for next week when we will just get to focus on finalising all the packing into the camper!  Less than 2 weeks to go!

The muscles are very sore from all the lifting and carrying and mum and I have to get back to work – tackling the walls in the lounge room tonight so must drag ourselves away from the fire and get back to it!  Hopefully the next post will see us all moved out!!  Anybody got any good cleaning tips for us????

Spoilt on my last day at work with a farewell morning tea, lunch, card and gift!

Awww – lovely farewell cards!

Watching Grammy’s plane arrive!

Mum & I hard at work late one night packing up the kitchen.

Packing chaos!

Container, camper, rubbish – piles going into each!

Empty container

Matt is very good at Container Tetris 

Halfway Mark

Trailer load off to Vinnies

Camping out already – at least we have a fire in the house though!

Camping out in the lounge room – enjoying the last days with our fireplace!

A quick trip out to Bribie Island to see my Aunty Glenda who is visiting from New Zealand. And to meet my Dad’s cousin Cheryl.

Packing, packing!

Grammy slave labour – the things you have to do for your kids!

Giving his chooks some quality time before we go!