 |
| Fishing on the Mornington Peninsula |
I will summarise the last two years in a few short paragraphs below.
We had completed our return to the 9 to 5 lifestyle.
Then there was the 2 months Paul worked in Perth leaving me feeling quite abandoned. He left in around October 2013 and did not return until before Christmas. The weather in Melbourne was really crappy until just before Christmas and our flat was cold and damp, Then I experienced my first 40 degree Melbourne day which can only be described as being placed in a fan assisted oven. I knew how that turkey felt now!
Meanwhile Paul was working for a psychopathic Irishman building a trampoline centre somewhere on the outskirts of Perth, sharing a house with a load of blokes who bickered constantly and were barely able to scramble a meal between them (which meant cooking duties invariably fell to him unless it was barbecue night and he was knocked over in the rush to reach the burger tongs). The weather was very Perth like - warm and sunny all day every day. It rained once. On the one day he chose to go fishing. Which kind of summed up how our luck was going.
He returned to Melbourne at the same time as friends visited from the UK. I was feeling lonely and isolated and had missed him more than I will even admit today. Having spent nearly a year constantly in the other's company (and probably getting on each other's nerves by then, to be honest) he had then been wrenched away to the other side of Australia (a four day drive and as far from Melbourne as Cairo is from London) leaving me behind feeling increasingly lonely and isolated.
Our friends turned up at about the same time as Paul returned and it was not the best environment in which to try to reconnect. While the time apart had undoubtedly done us good we needed time together. We were still coming to terms with the end of the trip, the upheaval of starting a new life at our relatively advanced years and living in a strange country. Suddenly from being lonely I was surrounded and we both felt like running away again.
I had also committed to a week's holiday in Queensland with my friend, snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef (I had to hold my tongue to stop unfavourable comparison to Indonesian reef) and the Daintree Rainforest where we had an amazing day out with Billy Tea tours (with a guide whose name escapes me but whose knowledge of the area was second only to his penchant for conspiracy theories). I am glad I had the opportunity to visit this part of Australia but found it tailored very much to British tastes made more obvious by the number of Brits on holiday or retired there.
When our friends returned to the UK we regrouped and subconsciously set about doing our utmost to settle in and make the most of what we kept telling ourselves was an wonderful opportunity. I embarked on a yacht crewing course for a few weekends which I enjoyed but shyness prevented me taking it any further.
Paul started a site manager's course at huge expense but in an attempt to fill in the gaps in his CV and in an effort to secure a more supervisory role (which he had the experience for but not the piece of paper).
I also attended Chinese classes at the Confucius Institute at the University of Melbourne and Paul joined me for a second term - this was probably the most enjoyable time we had as it conjured up memories of our trip and encouraged us to think about future travelling.
Paul invested rather a lot of money on fishing gear and we also splashed out on camping gear. We went camping a few times but discovered that, unless you are prepared to drive for 3 days out into the bush, you will only find a pitch in a sprawling mass of other tents and caravans, not unlike the camping fields at a music festival but not quite so much fun, none of the music and far too many children.
When our lease was up on our little icebox of a flat we found a place with a little garden and set about making it a home for, we figured, two or three years. We spent a fortune at the garden centre creating our own little oasis of flowers and vegetables (although a resident possum put paid to our actually tasting any of our home grown produce but we could live with that).
But nothing worked.
My job bored me to death, literally. For the first year, I spent so much time at the photocopier I nearly cried with frustration that all my studying and almost 20 years experience of practising law seemed to count for nothing. This was not helped by the barage of sarcastic comments by colleagues about hogging a machine I hated more than anyone could possibly imagine.
We both found our working environments similarly challenging. Paul was treated with undisguised contempt for not knowing the Australian way (which, incidentally, was of a standard which would have been completely unacceptable in the UK). Getting paid for his work was a constant battle meaning we were always living hand to mouth, never knowing when the next cheque would be paid, if at all).
I, in turn, was gobsmacked at the elitism and snobbery in my office, not to mention the extent of backstabbing and bullying which was practically unheard of in the law firms I had worked for in London and elsewhere in the UK. It was an eye opener for both of us and tiring in the extreme.
We went fishing at weekends (we never caught anything except a snapping turtle and a fiddler ray), we went for walks along the beach, drives in the country; in short we tried really hard to make a go of it but we didn't fit and we were trapped.
And it didn't help that in September 2013 the Australian electorate voted for the most idiotic of Prime Ministers who, along with an equally morally bankrupt and inept government, sent the country backwards in terms of dehumanising asylum seekers, reversing climate change initiatives and scaremongering the state of the economy, The PM was ridiculed home and abroad for his appearances on the international stage and three word slogans, stuttering each word he uttered at least three times so that if the material wasn't embarrassing enough the delivery was painfully so. Last but by no means least was the slashing of funding to indigenous communities as well as the now infamous claim that those indigenous communities are simply making a lifestyle choice which should not be paid for by the ubiquitous hard working Australia family. I found out enough about the Stolen Generation in the first 6 months by watching the acclaimed "First Australians" documentary series to know that these statements were at the very least disingenuous and at most downright offensive. We weren't exactly enamoured by the politics at home at this point but by comparison it felt as if we were living in a parallel universe of political satire.
Slowly, we spiraled into a despair which we had not seen coming.
Then Paul applied for a job in Uganda and we went on holiday to Indonesia. We returned to the Prince John Dive Resort in Donggala, were welcomed with open arms by the Germans like long lost friends and had the most amazing holiday where, to my amazement and with a huge amount of pride, I learne,d to Scuba dive.
Paul was shortlisted for the job in Uganda and while in Indonesia we researched and talked about whether we could do this, whether we could go to Africa to live, to a continent we had previously dismissed as being "too difficult".
After hours of talking and researching we decided unanimously that we badly wanted to do this. We investigated accommodation and cost of living and researched the charity Paul would be working for and set ourselves up for a fall. Of course, he didn't get the job and he was heartbroken, but it was to be the catalyst for our decision to sell our house in the UK and start again without any debts and make a different life for ourselves.
Which brings us to where we are now: planning a trip to Indonesia to dive the beautiful seas and trek the jungles of Sulawesi and Bornea, a train journey from Singapore, enrol a Celta course in Thailand before heading back to the UK to sort out the final loose ends, catch up with friends and family and press the re-set button and then, we don't know. Vague plans are bandied about involving teaching in China, another trip to Cambodia, an overland truck around Africa, voluteering in India - all of the above and anything else we can think of. Did I mention South America?
Nothing is set in stone as yet but we can see a light at the end of the tunnel. We can make plans about our future, we can escape the ties that bind us in the form of debts and storage, and together start another journey which in a way will be more life changing than that the journey that started it all back in August 2012.
We are now fifty years old. We are inspired by many but more importantly we are bound by a shared vision to live our dream and make the most of our time, see what we can of the world, learn as many languages and speak to as many people as we can and see as many fish as is humanly possible.
Time to start another Blog......
