Moving to Australia: It’s Two Years Since We Left England

Two years ago to the day, almost to the hour as I write this, (its 6:30 p.m. here in Australia, so it’s around half eight in the morning back in the England), I was waking up in the UK for the very last time.

So today I am celebrating two years since we left England.

Two days before we left, we took a trip down to the park I used to play in when I was a small child. That’s when Elizabeth, just 3 1/2 years old, took her first ever photograph using my camera.

Mummy and Daddy

Good effort, I thought! She needs to work on the focus. And those coats? We’ve never needed them since.

But we haven’t yet lived in Australia for two years, we will reach that milestone on Saturday. Because whilst we left on the 12th of November 2007, we didn’t arrive in Australia, due to the time differences and the 30 hour flight, until the 14th.

So I get two celebrations in two days!

Tonight I shall raise a glass of ale to old Blighty and on Saturday we will be doing something special to celebrate our second anniversary of life in Australia. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

Then on Thursday the 19th of November we celebrate 10 years of living in our new house…

Our house

So I get three celebrations inside of a week!

But the real celebration is living here, we still all absolutely love it. Although my wife has reminded me that the first three months were quite tough. No furniture, no friends, the house needed lots of work doing to it and I had no tools to do it with. And workers, when we asked, hardly ever showed up.

On top of that, the house, which had been empty for around five months, had been taken over by creepy crawlies ALL of which frightened the life out of us. We thought every one of them was a potential killer.

But it didn’t take us long to snap out of that! After the furniture showed up, things just got better and better:

• My wife went to a playgroup with Elizabeth and met lots of new friends.
• Elizabeth started kindie (playschool) and she met lots of new friends.
• Elizabeth had her fourth birthday party and I met the husbands of my wife’s friends and the fathers of Elizabeth’s friends.
• Hey! We’ve all got friends.
• We went on an Easter egg hunt with friends.
• We went to Surfers Paradise with friends.
• We had a picnic on Mount Nebo with friends.
• We went to Riverfire with friends.
• We shared Christmas with friends.

And that’s just a very quick snapshot of year one. In year two:

• We went on our Australian road trip.
• Elizabeth started real school.
• We went to one of our friends daughters christening, with my wife named as godmother.
• We went to Mooloolaba with friends.
• We went camping on Mount Tamborine with friends.
• And just last month, we hosted a pretty good Halloween party.

Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, people ask me how I am doing in Australia. In true Australian style I say to them…..

“Yeah, good mate”.

But inside, I’m shouting “YES!”