Japan..

Firstly we hope that everyone's friends and family around Japan are ok... being in the area we really find out loads of information on the news etc about all the earthquakes, tsunamis and floods that are happening and it feels like there are an awful lot of them around at the moment. I'm not sure if this is because we are travelling, so more aware of the dangers and what is happening around us or if in fact there are more disasters happening at the moment.

What with the earthquake in Costa Rica, the earthquake in Christchurch and now the earthquake in Japan and the floods in Queensland it makes me feel like we are three little characters in a computer game, travelling innocently down the road as quakes happen before us, after us and all around us and yet fortunately we always seem to be stood on a solid bit of land (and long may this continue). It also makes me realise how volatile the world is and how lucky we are in the UK to not live with the threat of volcanic eruptions, quakes and tsunamis. Now we are in Australia we also deal with the creepy crawlies, the huntsmen, the red back spiders which are the size of your finger nail and can offer a nasty bite, the funnel webs, the brown snakes (if you see one you have to run) the red and black snakes (you also have to run, but not quite so fast) and the sharks. We also have a creepy spider outside the front door which has 4 legs showing and has spun a web with a big cross running through the middle, we looked it up and it's called the St George's cross spider... again it makes you appreciate safe little old England with it's harmless house spiders and little grass snakes!

But I guess that's what travelling's all about, testing your boundaries and facing your fears. It's what makes the adventure fun and exciting (and let's face it, it's way more exciting than sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day). But it also makes you appreciate how vulnerable we are to the earth and it's mood swings and puts a bit of perspective on things.

Picture attached of the little house we stayed at in Newcastle

The lesson of the day...

Yesterday Jeff and Linzi's friend Scott came to join us at the house in Corindi. He is also travelling for a year and is a deputy head from Jersey who has spent the last few months travelling in Bali.

Of course news of his arrival sparked my usual maternal ferocity - I really do have a problem, when someone else that I don't know is coming to share our space (or we are going to share their space). I have visions of drunken parties followed by copious amounts of swearing and vomiting, you know, worst case scenario kind of stuff and very extreme (and in reality pretty unlikely behavior in a deputy head).

So when Scott arrived I crouched before Sam emitting a low growl, teeth bared, ready to pounce should he make a sudden lunge at Sam and try and eat him for dinner... and then, about 20 seconds later, I realised that he was not in fact a child eating predator but just a jolly nice northern fellow and so offered him a cup of tea instead.

And so a nice evening followed. I cooked a vegetable Thai fusion curry (which is basically a Thai curry gone wrong, but tasted quite nice in the end). Scott being a good northerner is great because it basically means that he, like us, will eat pretty much anything. We ate food, drank beer/wine and made Scott talk shop all night as we discussed the benefits/hardships of home schooling and moaned to him about the UK schooling system. We rambled on about how brilliant Sam is and poor Scott probably sat thinking, 'Oh yes I see thousands of poor deluded parents like you, if only knew what he was really like!' But to be fair he didn't voice any such thoughts and the evening ended with us (Me, Will and Scott) prancing around the front room learning how to do a memory test!!!

So there we are, it all worked out well in the end and the lesson is that sometimes it's quite nice to try and see the positive in people rather than assuming that everyone is a crazed party animal who will have Sam smoking crack by the end of the night. I also accept that I will probably always feel a bit this way when we are sharing our space with someone that I don't know - but will try and remember the important lesson... that it only takes about 20 seconds before I invariably really like them and want to make them a cup of tea and give them a hug.

By the way that's Will on the wave above.

Simplicity is the beauty of life...

Today we had a great day, we got up to blue skies and went to the beach with the surfboards. We also borrowed Linzi's longboard. We headed to a beach about 10 mins away and had a super fun morning surfing the little waves, yes even me!! Then, as usual hunger got the better of us and so we headed to a little town nearby for lunch. There were a few shops in the village and one was a new age shop which was soon to close down and was filled with crystals and stones, by the desk were a stack of little cards with words of wisdom to take away and I picked one that said 'Simplicity is the beauty of life'.

I think this is a really nice sentiment, sometimes it's easy to over complicate life by thinking too much about what might happen and trying to put things in place to stop those potentially awful things from happening when in reality they probably wouldn't have happened in the first place... so I liked this little card - just keep things simple! It reminds me of something Sam said when we couldn't get into the house the other day - me and Will started to discuss the options and stress a bit about what we would do next when Small Swami Sam piped up with, ' hey don't worry guys, lets look on the positive side, we have a van to sleep in, we can stay here for the night and most importantly we have each other.' Well that shut us up and we shamefacedly had to acknowledge that he was right and stopped our gloomy predictions.

When we set off it was really difficult to know how to approach home schooling, unlike many countries, the UK doesn't insist you do a correspondence course, they just look at you with a slightly confused expression and say in a slightly sarcastic voice 'Ok then, off you go on your holiday, but don't expect any help from us!' So we set off somewhat in the dark, armed only with a little advice from the headmaster of the private school and a rucksack full of text books and revision guides.

At first I wondered how this was going to work, how long should we study for? What subjects should we study? What time of day do we study? and on and on and on... and then I remembered...'Simplicity is the beauty of life' and so we just let things happen organically, we began to look at one subject a day and did this without a clock so that we weren't putting time restraints on ourselves but just working until we either a) finished the topic or b) felt that Sam or us were getting too tired to continue. This means that we usually work for between 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours every day and this seems like a sufficient amount of time to get a grasp of the topic/section we are looking at. Sam also reads for 1/2 hr every night and occasionally updates his blog (www.thebiggesttripever.blogspot.com). He also unwittingly learns history and geography as we travel around the world, as well as planning skills and confidence which are by products of the travel, and of course he is fitter than he has ever been due to the walking, skating, surfing, paddling and lack of rubbish foods and chocolate.

Since we have been home schooling a few remarkable things have happened naturally, Sam has started to enjoy reading the books and no longer sees it as a chore and occasionally he will pick up a pencil and start to draw just for the fun of it, these are things that he would never have done back home, he has also started to ask literally thousands of questions... now it could be that he always asked these questions and we just never had the time to answer them but now they stream from him every day, infact it's quite difficult to shut him up which is why it's so nice to have separate rooms because at least we are getting a bit of peace on an evening once he has gone to bed.

So to all those who are thinking of travelling with kids but have no idea how to approach the schooling, don't worry, don't stress, do your research and then set off and let your own child dictate the nature of the learning process (with a few clearly defined boundaries) and I think you will find a healthy, happy learning environment. I wouldn't say that Sam relishes the lessons but he certainly doesn't moan about them and is engaged in the learning, and that's good enough. Of course the proof of the pudding will be when we get back and he hopefully slots seamlessly back into the education system but no point over complicating things and worrying about that until we get there.

Picture of Sam and his friend Will paddling out on the canoe with fishing rods to catch some food for the BBQ!

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.

Oh the times they are a changing.....

Oooooh it's not very nice here at the moment because there is rain, rain and more rain and when you're all squished into a van as we all know things get a little fraught (still at least we aren't in the small NZ van).

We arrived in Corindi yesterday so we could stay in the house which our friends had kindly offered us. In true travelling style things were not however that simple. We went to the neighbours house to pick up the keys but unfortunately they weren't there so we hung around Corindi for a while waiting for them to come home. (Corindi would be gorgeous in the sun and it was quite nice in the rain - but there were 4 kangaroos all sat in the local square which was super cool and made us feel like we were truly in Oz).

About 6:30 we went back to try the neighbours and thank the lord, they were there... but they told us that the guy who had stayed before us had not left the key!!! (Our Australian plans were due to change yet again) so we drove to the local campsite, hooked up to the power, had a lovely Tereyaki stir fry and went to bed to read our books and wait for the next day to arrive to formulate a new plan... so here we are right now, cooking bacon butties in the van and still trying to formulate a plan... it's like the ending of neighbours, what will happen next? Will we stay in Corindi and get into the house? Will we head up the coast to Byron and stay in the rain? Will we go down the coast and avoid the rain... tune in next time to see what happens in the adventures of Ruth, Will and Sam!!!

NZ V Oz

Before going to NZ I assumed that it would not be to dissimilar to Australia – how wrong I was, comparing the two is a bit like comparing England to Italy – thinking they would be similar just because they are close to each other. Here are the main differences that I have seen so far. Firstly NZ is very small and has a tiny population (1/3 of all NZ live in and around Aukland and that is the same amount of people as live in Bristol, roughly). As a result you can drive for miles without hitting a town and when you do it’s invariably pretty small. In Australia you drive along the coastal road and come across small town after small town, with lots of houses and people. The roads themselves are also very different. Australia has the Pacific Highway, a straight motorway which leads up the coast and has off shoots to various white sandy beaches. In New Zealand the roads are windy, actually really really windy and also run along the coast, scattered with mainly black sand beaches.

In New Zealand we didn’t see any homeless people, no litter and very few police cars. The small population on an isolated island leads to a great deal of intimacy and trust between the people and as a result I guess they are better able to care for each other and the environment. Australia seems equally as proud of it’s environment but it’s probably harder to police with a larger population. Then of course there’s the wildlife. I believe that NZ had no mammals originally and the mammals that live there now have been introduced over the years. As a result there are nice animals like cows and sheep and dogs and cats... Australia however has its own animals and all of them seem to be bloody deadly, spiders, snakes, sharks, etc... I had a shower yesterday with a small cockroach climbing up my leg and didn't scream, just flicked it off!!

We spent the last couple of days in Port Maquarie, a small town by the sea and finally got used to our new van. The van is actually ok, it's bigger than the other one and we can stand up in it and of course it has the fridge and cooker etc which is luxury. The only problem is that because it's a 'budget' van it's a bit grubby. The catches on things are broken and the table doesn't connect peoperly, which are things that you can live with (but would rather not). But what I don't understand is why they don't clean the van!! The van has had a superficial wipe over but once you start opening the cupboards you realise they are a bit sticky and the whole thing is a bit greasy yeugh!! But we have armed ourselves with cleaning fluid and wipes, bought new pillows and sheets and it all feels a bit cleaner now.

We are now in Coughs Harbour and may head up to Jeff and Linzi's tomorrow, I say may because in true 'us' travelling style we forgot to get the address of the house oops...

A Sam update now, he has had his hair cut which is nice because you can actually see his eyes, he got stung by a wasp a few days ago, which has now gone down and is fine and he did his French schooling in McDonalds today. He actually did really well and his French is coming on a treat (I think!!)

So that's all for now, hi to you all and lots of love

Back on the road

Well we have now left the beautiful house on the lake and are making our way North up the Pacific Highway towards Corinidi. Our friends in Newcastle gave us some nice spots to stop at on the way and last night we spent our first night sleeping in the van at Seal Rocks.

The campsite is just across the road from a gorgeous beach with lovely blue ocean and white sand, idyllic. We set up the beds in the van which looked a bit manky but actually once they were up were pretty comfy, we had a decent nights sleep apart from the whiring of the fridge every 5 mins as it recharged it's battery.

This morning we got up and Sam and Will went for a surf on a secluded beach called Treachery!! All the surf spots around here have scary sounding names!! But the beach was lovely, not a soul on it and the only thing around were a pod of dolphins surfing the waves close to where Sammy was surfing.

There is no internet access in Australia (a bit like NZ) so it looks like we will be having a few Mcdonalds as we take advantage of the free wi-fi (that's where we are now)... so onwards and upwards - Can't believe it's March already, only 5 months to go!!