The smoke stacks (or as Chanbe calls them, “smoke snacks”,) loom over the city. The ground is brown and bone dry, and it looks like it hasn’t rained here in years. Honestly, I started to panic a little. But then I saw the look on Hubs’ face. The look of recognition. The look of “coming home”. Hubs starts pointing things out to me; familiar places and new things since he left here 19 years ago. We drive past his old house, which I find lovely and exciting. He doesn’t feel it until a few days later, but he has come home. And I feed off that.

For the 2 weeks or so leading up to the move, Chance was going through his usual adjustment period, and it was especially hard work this time. It had been so hot (and horribly humid in Ingham and T’ville) and my patience was pretty thin. We had quite a few stand-offs and tantrums and lock downs etc etc. Nothing seemed to make any difference. I really tried to stay calm and give him lots of positive attention, but he was just out of sorts. On our final morning in Townsville, he completely lost it, and it broke my heart. This poor little boy. My poor little boy. We’ve moved him again and he’s finally cracked. I dreaded the days and weeks to come.

We arrived in Mount Isa, and I kept talking about how exciting it was going to be in our new home, and he agreed in his 3-year-old capability. We moved his aeroplane bed upstairs into his room, and hoped for the best that night. Not bad, not bad. Both kids slept well and we had a nice morning together. We then went to church and Chanbe was a bit of a handful, but no more than usual. The rest of the day passed without too much drama. And then Monday rolled around. We dropped Hubs off at work around 9am, and by 10am I was going crazy. Lots of deep breaths and hoping for the best. Hubs came home for lunch at which time I had a little cry and tried to move on. The afternoon and Tuesday were much the same, with lots of meltdowns (both of us) and negotiations.

We were both exhausted and I wondered how long this transition period would last. And then Wednesday came and Chanbe, my little trooper, turned a corner. We were having such a fantastic day, that at around 2:30pm I decided we could all go shopping together. I laid down the ground rules (no asking for food or toys), and off we went. It was one of those shopping trips where I walked around with my 2 beautiful children in the trolley, with my head held high, beaming with pride (and relief!) He was amazing. And he’s been his old self ever since.

Kids astound me. Chanbe surprises me every day with his resilience and his ability to adapt. I know I need to take lessons from him some days. We both need to take more deep breaths and just calm down and be still. We’ll get there.

Aaaaah…. sweet sweet internet. Moving sucks. And not having internet in the interim makes it even worse. We have signed up for our usual ridiculousGB per month deal, but it won’t be connected until the end of the week, so in the mean time, we’ve paid a ridiculous sum for 3GB of data to get us through.

It’s been too long.

Normally it wouldn’t bother us as we use the internet on our phones, but the connection out here is terrible with Optus, so we have (almost) accepted the fact that we have to change our mobiles over to Telstra. Ugh. The things we do for good phone and internet connections…

Moving on. SO much has happened! But in a nutshell (with photos to come soon, hopefully) I left Ingham with the kids on the 12th of January and spent a few days in Townsville catching up with friends and family and making purchases that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make in Mount Isa. We then headed back to Ingham on the Thursday to pick up Hubs and the trailer and pack the rest of the house up, then spent our final night in Townsville with friends, though our 6pm getaway from Ingham turned into 8:30pm, so we didn’t actually get to hang out much.

Friday morning we threw the last few things in the car, and started heading west. We had a rough idea about where we wanted to get to on day one, and it was a really easy drive. We stopped at Richmond for the night, but not arriving until after 5:30pm made our dinner choices somewhat limited. There was the pub, or the other pub. I went with the other pub and grabbed a few takeaway meals that turned out to be fantastic! We shared the lamb roast and garlic prawns – both restaurant quality! I was very impressed, especially considering the, shall we say, “rustic” appearance of the pub.

We woke up around 7am the next morning, which just happened to be my birthday, and set off again. It really is such an easy, albeit boring drive. No traffic, not many towns to slow down through, and some very interesting landscapes. We stopped for brunch in Julia Creek, and then we were in Mount Isa by about 3pm that afternoon.

And then it hit me…… We’re living in Mount Isa…… Happy Birthday to meeeeeeee!……

to be continued…….