Every Family Needs A Farmer

Just another sunset here in Far North Queensland!

Yes – the Fealy Family is still alive!!  Aaaargh – where to start???  We have so much to tell you!  Firstly a big apology for anyone who has been missing our posts (surely someone has!), eeeeek – it has been 7 weeks since our last blog entry!!!  I’m feeling excited to be back and trying to get our blog rolling again!  I really, really want to finish off the entries about our trip as there are still two weeks of travelling to tell you about!

So first, the big news  (and one of the reasons we’ve fallen behind with the blog) is that I haven’t been feeling too great …………….  You see, we are expecting Fealy Bub Number 4 in April next year!!!

Fealy Bub No 4

Eeeek – yes – we are a little nuts but we are all very excited to be having one more little member added to our family!  We are now 15 weeks along and I am starting to have more energy back at night and not feeling so sick so time to get the blog up to date!  And if anyone dares to make a comment about ‘so that’s what happens with no TV on a trip around Australia’ – there will be trouble!

Ok – where to start?  Well, the kids are all pretty much settled at their new school/kindy.  It is a big school and things are a bit different up here so it is a big change but the kids are happy so far!  Lexi loves kindy and has already made a great little friend called Moana.  Next week they will begin catching the bus for the first time!  We live not too far out of town – only about 10km’s but a school bus service goes right past our driveway and the kids are keen to give the bus a go.

Kids in their school uniforms on Day 1 at their new schools at the end of August.

After only a week at the new school, the kids all went down with a very nasty bout of gastro!  It seems our three months travelling on the road kept us pretty much out of the ‘germ’ cycle so the poor kids went down hard!  It was an awful week and lets just say that not having a washing machine in the house with three very sick kids, plus ‘afternoon’ sickness, does go down in my book as one of the worst parenting experiences ever!

Lexi alseep in Matt’s office in the packing shed while I ran the boys to school.

But we all survived and the kids went back for the last week of school before the school holidays.  They even made it to the school fancy dress ball – just!

Fancy Dress Ball time!

I will do a seperate post on what we got up to in the school holidays but in brief we had a great time with a few days up at Ben Avon Station and then having the Townsville cousins come to visit our new place!  We also had the Brissie cousins come to visit just last week too!

We picked the Townsville cousies up from halfway at Mission Beach and had a great day there with the Tronson cousies too!

Ute tour of the orchard

Other than that we have done lots of unpacking, sorting and purchasing a new lounge, washing machine and dining table – all items we sold thinking we wouldn’t be needing them for at least 12months!  We were lucky that our shipping container sold in just a couple of days so that funded our new furniture purchases!  We have enjoyed spending lots of time having our families close!

My mum & dad braved the gastro germs to come over for afternoon tea for my birthday!

Matt’s mum hard at work on the weekend helping us get our garden back under control!

On the farm front it has all been happening!!  Matt has had a HUGE learning curve but is really enjoying the new role so far!  He is very proud of the fact that he can now drive numerous tractors, sprayers, forklifts etc and can not only use a chainsaw but can fix one too!  His office worker hands have been taking a bit of a flogging ………

Matt’s whopper splinter from unloading hay – ouch!

We have now had two loads of passionfruit and limes be shipped off to Melbourne – so much hard work goes in to the picking, sorting and packing and it is such a nice feeling to see those boxes head off in the refridgerated trucks bound for the markets!  Matt will do a more detailed blog post on Farm Life soon, but just a few photos for now.

Our first run of passionfruit through the polishing machine

Then the limes turn

Packing the fruit up in the packing shed

Loading our first pallet on to the truck – wahoooo!

It hasn’t all gone smoothly.  We have had breakdowns, a smashed tractor door (don’t talk to Matt about it), a pallet of fruit returned for re-packing and lots of long hours of research and phone calls but we are all learning fast.  Speaking of learning, look who has learnt how to ride the four-wheeler all by himself???

This makes us happy to see our biggest boy riding the four wheeler!

And that is pretty much what we have been up to.  At the moment we have four german backpackers staying here on the farm helping out with all of the farm work such as mulching, pruning and helping to plant the new lime trees which are going in.  Hopefully by December we will be picking Mangos – yum!!  I’ll finish with just a few other photos of farm life over the last few weeks. Life is pretty good!  Hope you are all well!  Stay tuned for the first of our Gibb River Road posts to come!

Running the water lines – a job that has to be done a few times a day to check the sprinklers are working on all the trees

Feeding the orchard birds – in togs – cause that’s how we roll in Far North QLD!

Afternoon Walk

Matt built a chook pen for us!

Laying boxes pinched from Grammy & Grunda’s place

And remember these fluffy ducklings?

Look how much they’ve grown!

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.

Well, as you may have noticed – we have been a bit quiet on the Every Family Needs A Farmer campaign front which you may remember from our ‘Light Bulb Moment’ post.  We did get some stickers on the car (big thanks to Tracey) and we did sign up for the Outback Links program (great tip Aunty Nerida and Uncle Garth) and thanks to my Mum – Peter Prado has been sporting this cow since Winton (great conversation starter at campsites – we have had lots of people come over to us and say ‘we saw your car at such and such a place’ as the cow and the green kayak on top of the cow are easily remembered’).

However, other than that we hadn’t had a chance to do much stopping in at farms along the way (largely because we haven’t really come across any yet!) or had a lot of time to think too much more about our broader objectives of trying to promote rural Australia and Australian Farmers as we travelled.

Our big news is that we have decided this week to take a leap, put our hearts where are mouths are, and become farmers ourselves.  

We have made the huge (and very difficult!) decision that in four weeks time we will be cutting our trip short and heading ‘back home’ to Mareeba in Far North Queensland where we will be taking up the amazing opportunity that has presented itself to begin learning the ropes of how to be Mango, Avocado, Lime and Passionfruit farmers.  Holy Moly!!!

Our new home – 153 acres of Mangos, Avocados, Limes and Passionfruit

We are incredibly excited (and nervous!!) about this next chapter in our lives, for us it is a dream come true to have an offer like this come up.  However, we must admit to being incredibly gutted to be cutting our trip of a lifetime short.  A trip that has been two years in the making.  There were tears at first, but now we are just savouring every minute of the last four weeks we have left on the road and allowing the excitement to build about returning home to our extended families in Far North Queensland and letting our next ten year plan take shape!

It is bittersweet to end our trip of a lifetime early, to take up the opportunity of a lifetime, but this trip was always about ‘the journey and not the destination‘, so we are viewing this as the next waypoint on the Fealy Family Adventure.

So tomorrow we take a detour from our original route plans and cross the border into Western Australia to find ourselves a spot on the beach overlooking the Indian Ocean, to enjoy what might possibly be the last four weeks annual leave we ever get!!