Coming Home

Our grand journey had come to an end. We are home. Ahhhh...

We have loved every minute of our journey, but once the car started heading in the homeward direction it was hard to stop! 

After the Arapiles, we stopped in at the Grampians. Very beautiful place. On arrival we had hit the hygienic low of our journey. We were with limited water and no showers for 6 days of dusty, sweaty rock climbing. All of us had an air of grubby-ness that you only seemed to notice when you were in town around all the clean people...

Grand Canyon, Grampians

It turned out our camp had a mountain stream through it. The weather was actually hot, very hot, so I stripped us all in to cosies and gave us a rinse in the river. The water was mind numbingly cold. I'm a water baby and I had trouble convincing myself to get in. Nathan, up at the camp-site, said he could hear the kids murderous screams, accompanied by my wicked cackle and he could imagine exactly what was going on down at the river.

Our next camp was Daylesford which was delightful but we only stayed 2 nights as our hearts knew it was home time. We got up early, set off and with only a short stop for lunch, drove the full 9 hours back to Canberra. As we drove down the Barton Hwy towards Canberra, conversations turned to our favourite memories from the past 8 weeks and the things we were really looking forward to back home.

So How has it been being back home?

Well it has been a different experience thats for sure! Here are the main points we have all noticed, since being home...

- Our bedroom is the size of 2 caravans.... who really needs all that space?
- The more space you have, the more mess you make.... and the longer it takes to clean it all up...
- I LOVE my shower... it is free, there and no time limits, I don't have to wear thongs in there and I don't have to manage getting dressed in a wet shower cubicle
- It takes more than 1 shower to scrub 8 weeks of dirt off yourself
- We have A LOT of stuff... and much of it just sits there
- It is nice not having to pay for every load of washing (mind you we got home, put on the first of 10 loads of washing and the machine started flooding the laundry... crap... a 50 piece had blown a hole in the side of the outer plastic basin, Nath spent the whole day fixing it... because he is good like that :))
- The kids are adoring re-discovering their toys
- We kept to ourselves for the first few days... this was great! Kids re-found each other in the new space instead of turning straight to friends. We have been able to continue our holiday relationships back in our familiar  habitual environment
- A lot changes in 8 weeks, the new traffic lights are finished, a new MacDonalds has been built, and our supermarket is all switched around and different!
- We have more time in every day than we think we do. We just need to turn off the media boxes, get up and do it!
- The kids really have grown! Tilly can reach the door knobs and toilet flush button now!

We are slowly entering the social world around us again, but I have definitely noticed that we are moving at a different pace than everybody else (the man who was beeping me to drive faster noticed it also :)I have hardly driven in 8 weeks so I was taking my time :))

So overall are we glad we took the gamble and went on our trip

ABSOLUTELY!!

We are REALLY bonded and close as a family and the kids eyes have been opened to SO MANY new ideas and experiences. Hearing them talk and describe our holiday to others makes it very clear just how much they got out of the whole experience.

So our adventure ends here, but leaves us with life memories and relationships that will last for many many years to come...