Corindi

We are now in Jeff and Linzi’s house in Australia having managed to track down the keys at the post office. Someone must definitely be smiling down on us as we have managed to find ourselves in a beautiful house complete with a pantry filled with cookery books, a huge flat screen TV showing endless surf competitions, a room for yoga, skateboards and a family of kangaroos that live in the garden. No kidding, they actually pretty much live in the garden. This morning me and Sam walked to the shop and came across three kangaroos (1 big, 2 small) stood across the path. We probably got about 2 meters from them when I decided that perhaps we should take the long route to the shops, they looked friendly enough... but then so does a bull before it charges you!

We walked (well Sam skated) the long way round and came across a family walking down the road ‘ Excuse me’ I said ‘Could I ask you a very English question? Is it safe to walk past a kangaroo which is stood 2 meters from you on the path?’ . The response, should you ever need it, is that you can walk past kangaroos which are pretty close to you, but be aware that they could kick you if they feel like it... A bit like the charging bull I guess. Anyway it was brilliant to see the kangaroos up close, they are such funny looking creatures, with their enormous feet and it’s very odd to see them bounding off down the road. They also have the same eyes as Archie!!

After we moved into the house we made a roast which as you can imagine we were all very much looking forward to and then, fat and happy, we lay on the sofas together and watched a film. At about 11:30 we went to our separate rooms to sleep.

When we moved in the neighbour Mark informed us that the guy who was here before us had come in to find a red and black snake in the bedroom (i assume this one is poisonous as all the Aussie creatures either, bite, sting or inflict some other godawful wound upon you) so we had checked the house for spiders and snakes already, but when you’re about to go to sleep suddenly images of huge spiders and snakes take up every corner of your mind and so it wasn’t long before we found Sam climbing into bed with us, and really who could blame him. So we all spent the night huddled up together (again). However when we woke up this morning there were no spiders or snakes so I think Sam will sleep in his own room tonight.

Speaking of waking up, the dawn chorus here is very bizarre. In England beautiful little sparrows wake you up singing, tweety tweety tweet tweet, in a relaxing Mary Poppins style. In Australia the dawn chorus sounds like someone raking their nails across an out of tune violin, the birds here don’t so much tweet as screech. It’s not the most relaxing alarm call that’s for sure.

Today we have done nothing, other than the walk and seeing the kangaroos which I admit is pretty cool we haven’t done a thing. It’s now 1:30 in the afternoon and Will hasn’t even left the house. This is because it is so nice to be able to stretch out on sofas and watch telly, cook bacon butties on a real hob and drink filter coffee. I am sat in a separate room to the boys. Sat on a real bed. Honestly it’s luxury. It’s amazing how little you need to make you happy when you have been living in the van – although I have to say that I did miss the van for a fleeting moment when we moved into the house and found it funny that we were all huddled together on the sofa, or all squashed into the same bed. I guess it takes a while to get used to having space again.

So I think this is a bit rambling but hopefully you get the picture that we are very happy to be in this house and feel very lucky to be here and Jeff and Linzi if you are reading this, thank you so much for lending the house to us, we really do appreciate it.