The Festive Season Down Under

We hope you are all having a happy, peaceful and relaxing time over the holidays, whatever it is you celebrate.

For us (now down in the southern hemisphere) this time of year now coincides with our summer solstice so I find it a bit weird that people in Australia still put up symbols of winter like snowmen and snowflakes... but of course there are no rules so everyone is entitled to celebrate however they like.

We have been celebrating in true Australian style. We are staying on a campsite in Esperance (down on the south coast of Western Australia) right next to the beach with of course plenty of bunting and paperchains.

Esperance has some absolutely gorgeous beaches, the sea is turquoise and the sand is white fine powder. Apparently George Harrison used to have a holiday house around here somewhere.

We spent Christmas day on the beach, swimming, followed by surf and turf on the barbie and board games in the evening.

A very different Christmas to one usually spent in the UK but just as special!

Sending you all lots of love and peace and best wishes for 2013.

This Past Week...

It's been pretty busy here down under.

At the start of last week Nick had three job interviews, all of which went really well. One in particular, working for a motorcycle company, looks really promising. So we hope to hear some good news soon.

My parents got the keys to their new house in the country where we are all going to be living so we have all spent the past few days making the 45min journey back and forth with boxes. The removal men are coming on Thursday morning for the big bits of furniture and we have to be out of the old house by Saturday so it's all a bit manic!

Saturday night we were treated to a pizza night by some friend's of my parents and we decided we definitely need to build a pizza oven in the new place!

On Sunday we went to a seven year old's birthday party (the beautiful Phemie!) at a water slide park at Hillary's Boat Harbour followed by yummy fish and chips.

And of course there has been more supervision of the kitten as he becomes more and more of handful!

Why Germknödel?

So, we had to change the name of our blog because 'Home is where you park it' was no longer appropriate. We wanted to change it to something that was not just descriptive of our current situation (e.g. 'Down Under', or something like that) because if our situation changes in the future, we'd have to change the blog name again. We therefore chose something that was not specific to anything, so that whatever we blog about, it won't conflict with the blog title.

So, following Emma's mum's suggestion of picking a random word that we like, we have chosen Germknödel. A Germknödel is an Austrian dish which translates as 'yeast dumpling'. We discovered Germknödels when on a skiing holiday and we saw people having a huge delicious looking pudding covered in custard. We had to ask someone what it was and we ordered one. Wikipedia describe it as "a fluffy yeast dough dumpling with a mix of poppy seeds and sugar, filled with spicy plum jam and melted butter on top, often eaten with vanilla cream sauce. It is a culinary speciality of Austria, Bavaria, and Bohemia. The dish is served both as a dessert and as a main course"

So that's it. Strange at first but we think something that people will get used to. Like FaceBook, that sounded weird at first, now it's part of our everyday vocabulary (not that I'm suggesting our blog will become as renowned as FaceBook, but you get the idea).

New Blog Name Coming Soon!

We have been thinking for a while about changing the name of this blog.

Originally we started this blog to document all that we have done to our VW campervan, in case what we learnt along the way might be useful to others.

It then turned into a bit of a travel blog as we documented our adventures around the UK in the campervan (and then the bell tent!).

'Home is where you park it' summarises everything we were doing, selling up, moving into a campervan, and becoming temporarily nomadic!

Now the blog has turned into a record of our lives as we document our move to Australia and try to live simply, making more out of less and having as much fun as we can in the process.

But the name now doesn't quite fit and we wanted a name that meant we could blog about all aspects of our lives, now and into the future.

We have been thinking for ages about it and everything we came up with was too corny, or too long. Nick came up with an (apparently) amazing name in his sleep but couldn't remember it when he woke.

So my Mum said, just pick a random word you like. So that's what we have done, and all will be revealed soon!

Job Hunting

We went into Perth city centre last week to chat to some recruitment agents. Having not worked for the past nine months we have pretty much spent ALL our savings and need to start accumulating funds again.

We have been pleasantly surprised by how much we can earn over here... the Perth economy is doing well (due to the mining boom) and there are plenty of jobs around for both of us, paying at least double what we could earn in the UK. The cost of living is definitely higher here, but certainty not double.

A nice surprise has been that Nick's skills appear to be very much in demand! While I have been told that most of Perth shuts down over Christmas and not to expect much until the new year, Nick already has two job interviews lined up for next week. One is for a motorcycle company and they sound really keen!

In other news we have been packing up my parent's house as we are due to move in two weeks. This involves one person packing while the other keeps the extremely mischievous kitten occupied that my parents have recently adopted!

Settling In

After a whole day travelling we finally arrived in Australia in the early hours of Saturday morning. The flight was fine, Nick and I both managed to sleep for a good portion of it, which definitely helped.

It was about 10 degrees outside when we landed, however the next day this shot up to about 25 degrees, with 35 degrees forecast over the next few days! Quite a contrast to the icy cold conditions we left in the UK!

We got through customs and border control with no issues, they didn't want to look in our suitcases even though we had ticked three of the items to declare on the boarding card.

We are staying with my parent's who live in Carramar, a suburb to the north of Perth.

On our first day we just relaxed at home and had a few celebratory drinks in the evening, and the next day we headed down to the local beach for a stroll.

The water was beautiful, crystal clear and blue.

This week we are getting all the boring stuff sorted; bank accounts, recruitment agents, mobiles, tax numbers etc, etc. As well as relaxing and trying to get over the jetlag. During the day it's fine, but we both keep waking up in the early hours of the morning and not able to get back to sleep.

We brought over four suitcases and Nick's guitar, almost all our belonging in the whole world (we left one bag of stuff we couldn't squeeze in at Nick's parents). We can't really get unpacked that much though, as my parents have sold the house we are currently living in and we need to be out by the 21 Dec! So I think Nick and I will be earning our keep by packing and moving boxes.

This is my Dad's new car - it's a Toyota 4x4 converted into a camper! That's a pop-top roof up there! It's a bit rough and ready - so we may have a few more campervan makeover type projects in the pipeline to share in the near future.

We also just wanted to say a big thank you to both of our parents - without which we wouldn't have been able to do half of this. We really appreciate it!

Final Week in the UK

We have arrived back in Portsmouth to make our final preparations before we ship off to Perth, Australia. It's really getting exciting now. When people ask us when we are going, we used to say '29 November'. Now, we say Thursday. It's starting to feel very real. And the good old British weather is giving us a proper send off with storms and rain and wind every day. We've sold the car and now we are just going through the last bits and pieces.

We are not nervous or uneasy about the move in any way. This just feels so right for us. I've been out to Perth six times, and Nick three times so we have a fair idea of what to expect. And having spent almost 10 years apart from my parents and little brother I feel like I'm going home, even though I've never lived there before myself. They have just bought an awesome new home, which we are all going to live in together. We have spent all our savings on our adventures over the last nine months so we need to get some jobs to build some funds up again but we will be going on camping adventures whenever we can.

But we are now having to face the only hard part of the whole process - leaving our friends and family behind in the UK. These days with things like Facebook and Skype, the world is really getting smaller and smaller and we will stay in touch with everyone easily.

And of course this blog will continue to document what we do and how we do it (although we may rename it..... any ideas let us know!).

We held a farewell party at the weekend and we had an awesome time, so many people turned up to wish us well. It was emotional at times, which is inevitable I guess when you have such a close, amazing group of people around you like we have.

But we strongly insist that it is not a goodbye. It's a see you later, a till next time.

Chelmsford; my home town

We drove down from Norfolk, to Essex, where we are staying in Chelmsford with my brother James and his girlfriend Jo.

Chelmsford is where I was born and spent the majority of the first 18 years of my life. It has changed so much since I left it to go off to uni, and I'm not sure all the changes have been good.

But I wanted to go and visit all the places I remember from my childhood a final time before I head off for the other side of the world!

New bars and restaurants have sprung up from nowhere while the old historic buildings of Chelmsford have been forgotten. We went out for dinner one night and I thought it quite telling that we avoided all the multiple chain restaurants in the town centre and drove for 20 mins to eat in a traditional country pub.







While staying with James and Jo I painted a mural for their nursery (they have a little baby girl on the way).

We have come to the end of our UK travels. Tomorrow we drive back to Portsmouth, where we begin making our final preparations for leaving. We've got a leaving party to prepare for, and we need to figure out how to squeeze our remaining possessions into four suitcases.

We've seen some amazing sites, Britain is a truly beautiful place. I think you would need several years of travelling to see it all.

But we're ready for what's next: a period of staying put. I miss proper cooking, my sewing machine and having space to paint. Nick misses his tools and a workshop to potter around in. We've run out of money and need to start earning more, but we don't dread getting jobs in Australia, we're so excited about this new start.

Norfolk

Maybe we made a mistake, but Grimsby and Skegness didn't sound like nice places, so we skipped on down to Norfolk after we had finished in Yorkshire.

We drove in via Kings Lynn, and Norfolk is what they all say, ridiculously flat. You can see tiny trees and pylons and buildings right off in the distance. And the whole place smells of cauliflower and cabbage as there were thousands of them growing off in all directions.

But after we had driven through Kings Lynn and up to the North coast of Norfolk, the earth definitely got more undulating so it's not all flat as a pancake.

The villages round here are absolutely beautiful. All the houses and cottages are covered in flint and made from natural materials. The only way to tell the new houses from the old houses is that the new ones are straighter. Every village has a church and/or windmill. And all the villages have there own individual colourful plaque or sign with their name on. It's a shame that so many of the cottages are now holiday homes I think.

We stayed in the small village of Burnham Deepdale, and explored along the coast until we got to Cromer. Near where we camped, Nelson was born, and the creeks here are where he learned to sail. So a nice little connection to Portsmouth and the Victory.

Poor Cromer is looking a bit sorry for itself, lots of boarded up shops. Best to stick to the villages I think if you ever come here.

We ate mussels harvested literally metres away, they were delicious. Unfortunately we couldn't find any fresh Cromer crab while we were there.

We also frequently heard thousands of geese passing us overhead in various 'V' configurations.