Thanks Darwin for a great 11 years!
The last few weeks before we left were crazily busy! First Phil drove to Brisbane with his brother Greg (thanks Greg!), taking my car, Bruce the dog and Thunda the Rat! Thanks to Mum and Dad who will look after them while we are travelling! They also took our recently repaired Jayco Swan - the wind up mechanism snapped on our trip to Alice Springs in July and we then got caravan envy so we traded it for a newer, larger Concept Icon caravan (like a Jayco Expanda) - much happier with this one (but much more expensive...). Lucky we got a good price for our house! Phil then had to drive it home while fighting a nasty cold! On a good note, he did get to catch up with friends in Mt Isa on the way down (timed perfectly for the Isa Rodeo weekend... hmmm....) and with his Dad, Bill, who has recently been in ICU but is again recovering remarkably well! They celebrated Bill's 81st Birthday while Phil was there.
Meanwhile, I was finishing up at work and had a series of farewell functions - thanks everyone and especially to Barb K, my former manager, for all her kind words! It has been great working first at Stuart Park Surgery while in Darwin and also at SARC where I clocked up 10 years on call and received a lovely framed copy of the 'Little Children Are Sacred" painting in recognition of this.
On Phil's return, we realised how much we still had to do, so his sister, Helen, offered to come up from Canberra and help sort and pack, which made all the difference! Thanks Helen! We think she mainly wanted to make sure we were actually leaving and coming to live down the road from her! Also thanks to other friends Justin, Luke and Sian who also helped with packing up and at our garage sale.
We also managed to fit in an Angry 'Bird'day Party for Jack (6) and Jess (4 on 21st Sept) which turned out really well and was a great last party to have at our lovely Darwin home. It was really quite sad to leave that house and all our fantastic neighbours but I was happy to hear from Sian recently that the new family have a 5 yr old boy and invited all the neighbours and their kids over for afternoon tea today. We're very happy that the pirate ship cubby house will still get some good use!
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| The birthday pair with an angry watermelon! |
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| Inside angry bird colours! |
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| Yellow Angry Bird mini cake |
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| Helen and Phil exhausted after blowing up 70 balloons! |
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| Ben and Sophie with William and Mia and Louise |
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| Helen and Heather |
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| The Three Amigos? Luke, Justin and Phil |
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| Andrew and Kristie with Gillian and Maggie, Rory's family |
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| Cody |
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| Our neighbour Jamie (11) painting Riley's hair |
Jack and Jess also had their last days at Nakara School and Dripstone Childcare and are missing their friends and teachers. Jack is keen to do 'schoolwork' to keep up his reading and writing and Jess keeps talking about things she or her teachers did at 'my school'!!
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| Jess with Miss Maryna and Miss Mandy |
For our last week, we stayed with friends, Barb and Luke, which gave us time to get the car and caravan finally ready for our trip. The kids had a ball playing with Isaac all week. Thanks guys for putting up with us for those extra few (5!) days! Another series of farewells during the week had us finally leaving on Saturday 8th September!
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| Arron, Isaac, Jess and Jack at the Trailer Boat Club |
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| Isaac, Finnis, Max and Gus with Jordan, Jack and Riley behind, also at Trailer Boat Club |
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| Helen, Tracy, Phil, Barb and Luke |
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| Harriet, Ben and Ollie |
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| Mandy, Matthew and Kasey |
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| Phil with Skye (15) and Taylor (13) our neighbours who we have known since they were 4 and 6 years old! |
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| Grant and Robyn, more lovely neighbours! |
On our way out of town we stopped at the Jumping Crocs on the Adelaide River. We realised that Jack and Jess hadn't done this and thought they should see the crocs in the wild before leaving the Territory! They weren't disappointed and Jack took some excellent shots! He wants to be the official photographer for our trip! Barb, Luke and Isaac came along, which was a lovely way to say goodbye.
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| Isaac, Jess and Jack |
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| Ok, this is it!! |
We then spent two nights at Litchfield Safari Camp, near Wangi Falls and spent a lovely day at the new area called 'The Cascades'. We can certainly recommend this to our Darwin friends and can't believe we haven't been before!! But perhaps our lives have been a little busy on reflection...
