First let me say a hearty welcome to Andrew’s replacement, Chris – Cobar’s newest road pirate. We hope you accrue many happy memories of your time in Cobar!
With around 4 months to go, our 4-year tenure is almost up. Technically, we’ll have to wait for a position to become available – which looks like July – and, also technically, it’s Nigel’s 4-year tenure but I’m sharing in the excitement of returning to milder temperatures, lower grocery prices and not a cats’ head in sight!
Of course, our last trip home is always bitter-sweet with fond memories of new friends, neighbours and outback places plus those gorgeous sunsets and starry fire-pit nights.
A recent trip to the coast for a family birthday gathering last month heightened our anticipation when we spent 3 days in Paradise before transferring to a Tuncurry Caravan Park (our house was booked plus it was more fun to be on site with the family) and short of a possible (hopefully not probable) Tsunami, nothing can dampen our anticipation of returning to Paradise for good.
We arrived back home to the Cobar by-election and, while I was only working on Pre-Poll on a casual basis it made for a bit of a juggling act between preparing for the move and the usual gardening and household chores. Plus, somehow the end of the financial year seems to be creeping up way too fast so I’ll soon be drowning in the last ever rental statements for the Shack.
As it turned out, it seemed prudent to call it quits on electoral work – which I did just over a week ago. Now I’m concentrating on sorting, packing / selling furniture, cancelling energy and telco companies, change of address letters and all things removalist.
So there you have it. There are four more months, three more tenant bookings and two more trips before we move back upstairs for good and this blog comes to an end. No doubt we’ll miss our little pool room, which has served us well, allowing us to simply lock the door and walk away (well, drive away) leaving bed sheets unchanged and food in the freezer for next time.
To be honest, I’ll miss its cosy atmosphere where everything is five steps away from everything else. In fact, we’re toying with the idea of living in the pool room permanently …. just joking …… but, with a plunge pool also five steps away maybe we’ll “holiday” downstairs every now and then in summer.
I know Bowie wouldn’t mind. He gets to sleep on his bed under the pool table and wake us up as soon as we stir – “Coming ready or not” as he launches himself onto our bed.
I’ll leave you with some never-before-seen photos of the ever-changing face of our little cabin by the beach.
Back in 2007 when our first outback adventure began with the Ivanhoe tenure, little did we know where it would lead us. Again, to misquote Douglas Adams, We may not have gone where we intended to go, but we think we’ve ended up where we needed to be.
PS
On and off we’ve had tenants show interest in buying the Shack and we once even had a conversation of sorts, about what ridiculous price it would take for us to sell up and leave Paradise. We came up with 4 million so I guess we won’t be selling any time soon. 😊
PPS
I toyed with the idea of waiting until it was closer to Christmas but, if you know me, you’ll know that patience isn’t one of my virtues.
One of my lovely new electoral workmates has been designing Christmas cards with an outback theme and I bought these ones from Kate a couple of weeks ago.
I know it’s a bit early to be buying Christmas cards but I like the idea of supporting our farmers and young Kate is just starting her photography business so I was lucky enough to be her first customer.
And just for interest, the baby Brahman calf is Penelope, the lamb’s name is Willy and the hand-reared Galah is Gilly.
You can check out her Facebook page as well as message her here. https://m.facebook.com/TheOutbackCapturedbyKate/photos/
I hope she does well!
Married to a Country Cop 