Deepwater and first month's update

Greetings from northern NSW. Just thought we'd give you a quick update of what we've been up to in the last month.

After finishing all of our packing, and moving out of our Mt Waverley house, we headed off in the caravan west past Portland, almost to Mt Gambier and had a couple of weeks holiday after the stress of quitting two jobs, and packing an entire house.

Turns out that our conveyencers promptly lost all of the paperwork that we'd carefully signed and lodged before we left, so they rang us while we were in a national park just out of Portland, and blithely asked us to just pop into the office the next day, and sign it all again. Um - No! So in the end we had to come back to Melbourne before settlement, and sign another stack of paperwork. If you are planning on buying or selling soon, we'd recommend that you avoid Allied Conveyancers in Mt Waverley - it was one mistake after another. Their latest roadblock is that we have to personally go to their Mt Waverley office to pick up our title, even though we are interstate - they won't post it. Of course, they will be happy to store it for a yearly fee.

Anyway, after sorting out the paperwork, and hiring a trailer the day after settlement to move the furniture that the Salvos had promised to take from Mt Waverley, and then didn't, then moving Ashley into his new apartment, we headed north for good.

Since then we have meandered slowly north catching up with some people whose friendship has hung on Christmas letters, and promises to visit them one day. We've caught up with Mandy's best friend from school, a girl from our Glen Waverley youth group who married a merchant ship's captain and lives on a farm out of Bathurst, our youth group leaders in whose Glen Waverley lounge room we first batted eyes at each other and who now live in the Blue Mountains, a couple from Glen Waverley who were married about the same time as us and led youth groups together with us, Rachel's (kind-of) aunt from the US who is now on assignment in Sydney, my ex-boss who hangs out of helicopters to fight giant bush fires in NSW, two of my ex-IBM colleagues in Sydney who I've never met as all our meetings were always by phone, and tomorrow when we get to Brisbane we will get together with one of my friends from school and then uni who, bless him, generously ensured that I passed my computer exams by patiently re-explaining everything my lecturers and teachers said to me. It's been lovely to catch up with them all.

Whilst having coffee with my ex-boss, and explaining our plan to volunteer for anything worthwhile, he mentioned that he was leading on a Prison Fellowship camp over Easter for primary school children who have one or both parents in prison, and that they were short of leaders. So now we have our first volunteer assignment - leading on a camp for 50 at-risk primary school children - just up my alley I hear you say.

That has meant a radical change to our tentative plans - but that's what being flexible is all about I guess. We were expecting to be in Brisbane over Easter and had, in fact, booked accommodation, so we rang and cancelled all of that. Instead we are now heading straight to Brisbane, then meandering south back to Newcastle for the camp, then retracing our steps all of the way back to Queensland quickly to get to the station for the start of second term, so Mandy can begin her teaching.

Life on the road is fun, and we haven't killed each other yet. We even managed to revisit the places we visited during our honeymoon. We are staying in a mixture of accommodation. We've lobbed into people's back yards and paid to use caravan parks; as well as free camping in national parks and state forests, roadside rest areas or council provided reserves (in the hope that you'll spend money in the town). Some businesses also provide free camping - for example tonight we are parked in the paddock out the back of the Deepwater pub in northern NSW. Free paddock and toilets, but no power or water provided, in the hope that you'll buy your evening meal at the pub. Yes, we did, and we sat on the balcony watching the setting sun eating a delicious hamburger.

We seem to have everything we need, and everything is working out just fine with the car and caravan, although the brakes smoked a bit (a lot) coming down the Blue Mountains. Weather has been great, though its got a bit nippy at nights now that we are upon the central NSW plateau which is about 1000m above sea level. We've seen all the expected fauna - koalas, kangaroos, lizards, cockatoos, galahs, kookaburras, rosellas, lyrebirds, and a few million ants some of which have decided to hitch a ride with us.

Hope you are all well, and we'll let you know how our camp leading goes in a few weeks.