​‘Lindsay, get the shotgun!’

Hello again, now we did say on our home page we'd take you through the highs and lows, it appears we’ve hit a low.
Leaving Airlie Beach and heading in the direction of Mackay, all fully loaded and excited, we managed to get an hour and a half down the road, close to Mount Ossa, when Stanley decided to have a hissy fit and came to standstill. In true Pommie style my phone had no credit and Nathan's had no signal (bizarre seen as mine had and we are on the same network) it left us with no choice; Nathan had to walk to the nearest town and phone the RACQ to come and rescue us. The first time Nathan set off it only took 15 minutes before he arrived back safe and sound with the number for the RACQ. Now here comes the problem with living in Australia, getting a mobile signal can be quite difficult, and after 20 minutes of standing in various positions we gave in and off Nathan went again. This is where I admit again how I’ve watched too many horror movies, Nathan had been gone for at least half an hour longer this time, I was hot, stuck in the middle of what seemed like nowhere and thinking the worst as lots of rather large trucks hollered past. Needless to say when a car pulled up innocently checking I had water I’m afraid I was a little standoffish and waved him on rather quickly when in actual fact the water would have been a nice refreshment seen as ours wasn't in the slightest cold. Another 45 minutes later, and not soon enough, Nathan finally arrived back in a rescue truck and soon after we are being towed to the garage in the middle of nowhere for a long awaited verdict.

​You know you are raising strong and independent children when at 6 years of age they ask questions that you can only hope you answer in a way that will be memorable enough to stay with them until they are free to fly the nest to find the answers by themselves; ‘Mum, what’s the difference between a holiday and travelling?’ And so I answered honestly, taking Isabel back to a recent experience only five days earlier and knowing ahead of us was a further 6 hours in the campervan to Sydney. A holiday to me is stress-free and relaxing, travelling is a challenge. To get to Fraser Island, (a world heritage listed Island) it took us an internal flight from Melbourne, where we’d spent the previous 10 days exploring to Brisbane, only to arrive and discover that our only checked baggage was momentarily lost in transit. It then took us three hours to collect a campervan which mostly consisting of sitting around in 38 degree heat with nothing more than a vending machine for supplies, and after which we drove in the campervan back to the airport to collect our delayed baggage. We then drove what we’d planned in as a three hour drive to our evening destination; Rainbow Beach in Queensland. However, when you factor in that we needed two food stops and a bonus wee stop, that we had been on the go since 7am that morning and now were all feeling extremely tired and fed up, the drive itself became just over five hours, two of those in darkness with nothing but cats eyes in the road and the glare of oncoming road trains to guide us. That night, having finally found our campsite after some confusion over the exact campsite name, we discovered sleeping in the campervan was diabolical. 

The truth is I don’t know what the rules are about blogging and the length of each read, I guess I could find out but should I discover that I’ve already exceeded my allocated number of words (highly likely) then I’d have to put a halt to my writing because I choose to write until all that needs to be said has been, and I choose to do this guilt free. Another truth is that when I set out to begin this blog I had high hopes I’d be much further into our original backpacking journey than I actually am, frustratingly time is just as busy now as it was back then. Remembering this same frustration I had to find an hour to sit and send news home from Australia, twinned with today writing this reminded me of a phrase my Uncle once shared about not rushing things and how anything worth having is worth waiting for; there it was, the realisation that I’ve been typing about the wrong feeling. I don’t think I felt frustrated back in 2006, what I was feeling was determination to find the time to email home just like I am today to share this, which has to be the final and best truth yet, that writing is an outlet that allows you to rediscover things you’d momentarily forgotten and look at them in a whole new light. I do recognise though that I am still the same determined person with a goal; to remember the past by giving it a future within my children’s eyes.

25th July 2006; Sydney to Far North Queensland
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So here we are in far North Queensland and I thought it was time we updated you with our travels continuing from Sydney where we left off....
Best buys so far for us have to be the expensive travel towels from Blacks (walking shop in the UK), they seriously work and take up the slightest of room, the wash bags with hooks are perfect for running to shower rooms and finding things easily, oh and the universal sink plug. No worse buys yet although I suspect I will have a fair few items of clothes that I won’t have worn by Christmas but I’m not admitting this till at least 3 months have passed! Andy and Kelly be aware to leave space in your suitcase for a bit of ferrying for us (love you). A note to Phil here, cheers for sorting the iPod out, seriously it works a treat, the car (this story comes later) only had a tape player but after buying the cassette lead changer thing for the iPod we now have music and plenty of it to choose from; I especially love the East17 tracks. ​

 This is embarrassing, in fact I’m confident any readers I had hooked with my introduction may consider me a complete fraud when you read the first ever email I sent home after arriving in Hong Kong for three days at the beginning of our years backpacking adventure;

1st July 2006; First Instalment of our adventures
Hi there, it’s me and Nathan at 2.35am here in Hong Kong, and England have just lost their game – bummer, I was soooooo giddy. Hong Kong is so humid, it’s a little unbearable and the things they cook and show on the streets are not nice; ducks with beaks still attached and rats! The buildings are amazing – lots of photos taken and lots more to see before we leave.’ Only a quick email for now to say we have arrived safe and sound and lapping it all up. Speak and email in detail soon. Lindsay x

Wow.
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OK, so here’s the thing, I did promise to include the emails and journals exactly as I wrote them minus the spelling errors, I’ve removed these because let’s face it my use of the written English language is humorous enough. I mean I seriously wrote ‘bummer’ in an email to my parents. I remember my dad at a parents evening once telling my English teacher I sounded like, and I quote, ‘a refugee from Eastenders.’ My mum was an absolute TV soap addict hence the link. I was absolutely mortified, I still am, I’ve never quite fully understood my dad’s humour but I can’t deny my first email home makes me wonder how I ever passed my English exams; I did by the way. 

​I’m a couple of months into being a stay at home mum which seems an odd thing to say considering I’ve been doing this for a year already, but that was different, I was on maternity leave, I had a job to return to so drinking coffee and eating cake at any given opportunity especially as soon as Zack took his ‘twenty minutes is all I need in a day nap’ was the guilt free right I had earned, and I drank a lot of coffee. Actually I ate a lot of cake too. Fact. Mostly in those moments if I was solo I found myself contemplating reading the book I’d forgotten to pack or re writing the ‘to-do’ list which often had become longer rather than shorter, and considering whether if I made the phone calls I needed to make just how far into the conversation I’d get before I’d have to apologetically end the call due to a waking boy who through his sobbing would be telling anyone who listened I hadn’t fed him for days (it’s not true just to clarify). I found so often that my thoughts took me to thinking about my mum who died from Breast Cancer in 2008, and as I sit today in yet another coffee shop a month into my new role desperate for the caffeine to kick in so I can brave whatever the rest of the day is going to throw at me, just for a split of a second I feel guilt, 

​New Year, a new role and a new me, that’s what we all say right, but 2018 really is the year I’m starting with the acceptance I am not a failure and the unknown of where it may take me. You see I spent much of 2017 stressing about this, and when, at the end of the year, I found myself sat in the doctors surgery for the first time ever about to admit just how stressed I’d become I knew I had a decision to make there and then; to return to work after a year’s maternity leave or not.
My second baby, a boy, had arrived and I had planned so many adventures but what I didn’t plan for was the journey I was going to go on myself