Category — Pre-trip

So we finally made it onto a plane on what I think I’ll call our “pre-journey” to Brisbane.  For those of you who have asked, our extremely old Silky Terrier, who we had serious doubts about how he would handle the journey – arrived in great shape – we think the adrenline rush actually did him good!  The kids were looking forward to seeing our 2 cats who had flown off 3 months earlier.  Bastian was very happy to see us but Puddy showed that 5 hours in a cat crate gave her plenty of time to build a very deep grudge, which I’m sure will only improve when we leave her again tomorrow.

We drove up to Mundubbera (about 4 hours NW of Brisbane) to see my Grandparents.  The kids all had an absolute ball – plenty of room to run around, chooks to feed, eggs to collect and my aunt with a quad bike!  By the end of 2 days they were asking why we couldn’t live in the country and have all those things.

 This only escalated when we went on to my cousin’s place where they swam in the dam, ran around with the dog and for Caitlin & Georgie – the absolute pinnacle – got to drive!

It’s been about 10 years since Paul & I have had the chance to go back and reminded me how much I’ve always loved it.

For more photos click on the thumbnails to the right.

As a bit of a getaway we decided to make use of the school holidays last month and take a last trip to one of our favourite places in WA – Monkey Mia. It’s a beautiful place but unfortunately requires a massive 10 hour drive through some really really interesting scenic areas (not!)

But it’s so worth it when you finally get there – it may have been cold and rainy in Perth – but here it’s beautiful, sunny & warm.

But of course the main attraction up here is not monkeys but the wild dolphins who come into shore every morning to be fed by the park rangers and then other times during the day they might swim casually in beside you.

Caitlin & Georgie had this one swim right up behind them.

Early morning start for a fishy breakfast!

 

Besides sitting watching dolphins and building sand castles, we also went on a wildlife cruise out into Shark Bay.  This is a protected World Heritage area due to the large amount of rare sea creatures and sea grass meadows not found anywhere else in the world.  We saw numerous dugong, turtles and dolphins.  

 It was a short break but very relaxing and got us excited for our next adventure in a couple of weeks.

We are feeling quite relaxed, now that the  ”To do list”  is a lot smaller.   We had a huge garage sale a few weeks ago

We’re still amazed at how much stuff we managed to accumulate!

Michael was the only one who really struggled with his separation anxiety (from his toys).   On the days leading up to the garage sale, he would come home from school, only to find his bedroom becoming more & more bare.

I think the final straw was when he came home to find he had only a mattress on his floor for a bed, one train set & a few toy cars.   Funny though,  a week later and he was more than happy with his new sparce surroundings.  Perhaps this is our lesson number 1: We need less stuff.

Speaking of separation, here are our 2 puddy cats, before they were to board their 4 hour flight to Brisbane last month.

 Well our last big financial hurdle was cleared today – we have rented our home. The tenants take possesssion the day we leave!  Big relief. 

And here it is – 6 peoples lives for a year, all to be packed into 6 backpacks, 1 electronics gear pack, 2 day packs & 2 sachels (for homeschooling).  It has taken alot of time, planning, research & online ordering to get to this stage.

All our clothing is lightweight, quick drying, moisture wicking & UV / Mosquito protectd.  We all have a pair of keen’s sandals, converse joggers & thongs.

We have a lightweight fleece each, Gortex rainjackets, thermals, shorts, T-Shirts, long pants, a smart long sleeve shirt each & bathers.  In the electronics department, we have 3 x 9″ notebooks, 3 x cameras, 1 x movie camera, 2 x portable harddrives, 6 x Nintendo DS, 1 x I-Phone, a secondary phone,  2 x walkie talkies & (1 x hair straighteners!!)

We have school books to take, knives, forks & a spoon each. A plate & cup each.  A penknife & a steripen (for water treatment). We have foldaway water bottles & of course the first aid kit / pharmacy.

……So with under 3 weeks to go, the countdown continues.

It was  a Saturday in August last year, that Amanda & I sat at our kitchen bar & started writing a “Bucket List” , ie: 100 Things to do before we die!

Amanda was madly writing things down & after about 5 minutes was up to No 21 and counting. Meanwhile I was sitting in deep thought being stuck at No 5, “Travel around the world for a year”.

So that was how it started.  Amanda’s first reaction was, “You idiot!”, 12 months travelling around the world with 4 kids, you must be insane.

But in typical Amanda fashion, over the next 4 days she quietly researched the web & found other real live people (especially Six in the World) & started to also dream the possibility that we could trade our “normal(busy) existence” & for a year decomplicate & downsize our life, and hopefully gain a fresh perspective.

So 12 months later, here we are with 4 months to go. The “To do list”, still has 74 things (& growing!) to be ticked off, but at least some of the big ticket items have been ticked, ie: business sold & the office leased.

Over the next 4 months, we still have to sell a car, rent the house, have a garage sale, attend to some legal things, ship a car & the animals,buy more “stuff” (so we can downsize our life…..go figure!). Have a farewell party & somehow Monday 14th December 2009 will arrive & we will be off!

When we first started talking about travelling and the places we wanted to visit – we knew immediately we would like to go to Uganda to visit the Watoto children’s village in Kampala.  About 2 years ago the Watoto Children’s choir sang at our church and we heard all about Watoto for the first time.  We also saw a photo of a little boy named Edward who was looking for a sponsor and we signed on.

It’s a brilliant concept – Uganda has been ravaged by AIDS and a whole generation of children have been left orphans with no one to look after them and no hope of ever becoming anything – just living to survive.  Watoto builds villages and places these children in a home with a “mother” and teaches them how to live in a family again.  They have health care, church and school and they are loved. [Read more →]

We started out travelling around on the weekends taking public transport – just to see what it was like to drag all these kids on buses etc.

Then we decided we needed to get more adventurous and took a 6 hour train from Perth to Kalgoorlie and stayed at the local backpackers.  The train was great – the backpackers was, well – interesting..

But we were convinced that some of the places we would probably stay in Asia would be worse.

Kalgoorlie as usual was HOT!  About 42C.  But we had fun.

Oh, did I mention the backpackers was directly across from the brothels?  Interestingly enough they all offered tours – one actually offers free coffee & cake on their 11am tour..

We then took on the adventure of long distance bus with a 4 hour ride to Esperance where we stayed for 2 days before taking the 10 hour bus back to Perth.  We loved every minute – the kids survived and we were rearing to go.

It’s true what they say about the Esperance beaches – they probably are the most beautiful in the world and the sand really is squeaky.    

After many months of reading other RTW blogs that are fantastic – we decided we just had to have one of our own for our trip.  I lay the blame at the feet of the Andrus family at 6 in the World, whose blog let me think we could actually do this crazy trip with 4 kids in tow.

Then we came across The Wide Wide World, Von Zweck Trek and 4 Suitcases and suddenly we realised there were real live people out there doing what we could only dream about doing.

So here it is, after 3 days of fiddling with code and finding my way around WordPress -  the first blog.  It’s still not perfect but I guess it’ll do for now.

To Craig at The Wide Wide World and Marc at 4 Suitcases – my compliments to you for your brilliant websites and apologies for stealing your ideas!