The past 4 odd years have been nothing short of a whirlwind
We set up cohabitation, travelled, wined, dined and danced ourselves silly, met a heap of great people and generally had a blast.
Now the MOTH has had his share of poor health - but I will get back to that
So during the course of the conversations and amongst the grandiose plans set out before us, two were a standout:
1. Buy a pub and semi retire (sounds great, huh?)
2. Sell up and travel the world - yes....backpack at 60+ years of age
And so the discussion continued over the weeks and months. Great lists were made showing pros and cons of each path, discussion was had over the Universe making the decision for us but all the while and at the heart of it all was the pure thought that we wanted to be together.
Explore together
Discover together
Make our own path together
Love together
And although we can never recapture all those years we lost, we can sure as hell live every day from here on in making the most of what we have!
A Country hotel came up for sale out at Cassilis, about 40 minutes from Mudgee in NSW.
We even drove up there and did an inspection. It was everything we wanted! A magnificent old two story sandstone building on and acre of land, with other buildings and the freehold price was definitely do-able..
We did our sums, we investigated and we almost put in an offer, even though there was some work to be done to get it open again, I could see the MOTH sitting in an old chair out the front, shooting the breeze and chatting to the locals. Remember, I was still recovering from surgery on my arm and shoulder too so we didn't know what that was going to look like down the track.
Well, the temptation to travel proved just too much!
Finally travel won out and so began the planning (I had done a fair bit of investigating and reading about overland travel whilst convalescing)
We didn't want to put time limits on our trip, so the start of the journey would mean buying 2 x one way tickets to Bali and spending a month or so in Ubud just to decompress and slow down (a large task)
From there, the plan was to work our way through Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam etc ending up in Nepal with some time in Kathmandu.
from Kathmandu, we were hoping to travel by train through the top of India, then eventually fly over to England, set up a base and travel out to places like Egypt, Morocco, Spain etc from there, including travelling around England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
From there, the European leg would begin. we had already been to Paris and Prague and definitely wanted to go back.
Like I said, a trip of a lifetime, backpacks in tow!
Now packing up your life is harder than it sounds, especially at our age and especially as we are both collectors and basically have a lot of stuff!
I hired another small storage unit near us and began carefully packing anything we didn't need out and slowly but surely filled it.
Selling stuff was easy and so I began sorting out what we needed as opposed to what we could turn into cash.
Then we worked out where to eventually store all our stuff and hired a large storage unit near my Son, so I knew everything would be safe, then we decluttered the apartment and put it on the market.
Three things happened, almost simultaneously:
1. The apartment sold
2. The MOTH was rushed to hospital with chest pains
3. COVID19 hit
As it happens, these events changed EVERYTHING for us
Suddenly, my darling MOTH was having life saving major surgery and all thoughts of travel escaped my head.
I almost lost him
He was only saved by two quick thinking specialists
They ruled out any travel for 6 months
Meanwhile, the apartment sold and we needed to find accommodation, but also
It was at this time that restrictions were coming into force regarding travel for the covid19 outbreak
Australian borders closed and we decided that our travel plans would have to wait and we would need to purchase somewhere to live
All our belongings had been carefully packed away into storage for the duration.
We were in a panic to say the least. The MOTH, now on a plethora of meds and recovering, was in no state to deal with it all, so we quickly decided to buy a house in country Victoria. We needed to get out the the city, he needed to rest and recouperate and we needed some security.
Currently, there are no plans to allow overseas travel to start up again so here we are, living it large, rattling round a huge house.
Ive got to say though, we are, as always making the most of it.
I guess you would call it nesting.
I am restoring old furniture and he is putting in new light fittings, building a beautiful stacked stone wall to put in a slow combustion stove and we are turning this house into a home.
We have some amazing neighbours - a totally unexpected bonus!
Afternoon teas and impromptu dinners have now replaced our dance parties - but Im ok with that!
Who knows if and when we will be able to travel again, but in the mean time life is looking pretty sweet!
In the meantime
Please consider my virtual arms around you all
