Our New Home

As I go to write my ‘first’ post about our new lives, I hardly know where to start!  We’ve only been here a few days, but the activity has been just amazing! 

Well, I guess we’ll begin with our new home – it’s situated right on the Clarence River, and Bill and I have been enjoying daily breakfast out under the patio, as we chat and watch the ferry merrily chugging back and forth across the river. 

I just LOVE the house!  Yes, it’s smaller than what we are used to, but it’s still four bedroom, and we will soon enclose the car port to give us a ‘games room’ – a place to put the pool table, my exercise equipment, the dart board, and maybe even a tv and a couch.  Currently, we only have the one living area, and while we are coping, I can see a few issues, given that the house we came from had two large living areas at opposite ends of the house, as well as a separate dining room and kitchen.  The patio certainly helps, though, and being just outside the back door, gives the feel of extra room, even though it is outside.

Taken from our back yard!

The Ferry - Again, Taken from our Back Yard

The Patio

So many people have come to welcome us!  We’ve met new people as well as being greeted by old friends.  The neighbours are beautiful people, and are more than happy for us to use their ramp to get down to the river, have popped over to help us move cupboards, and have even put Bill to work already when their lawn mower broke down – yep, Mr Fix-It was at it again!

We were greeted on our first day by some friends who dropped by and delivered this very special welcome gift – a cake that said, ‘Welcome Mahers’ – what a delightful surprise it was, and such a beautiful cake!  

We were also given the gift of a tomato plant to put in our garden by a new friend – here’s hoping I don’t kill it – gardens and me have never really gotten along, so time will tell on that one! 

Of course, all my ‘old’ friends have also kept in close contact, whether by email or through Facebook, and I’ve been merrily updating them all on our progress.  I do tend to go through ‘moments’ with FB, and even deleted my account all together a while back, but I’m ‘back’ now, and happily kept my Facebook friends updated all along the trip from SA to NSW.   It was wonderful to receive the storm warnings – thankyou! We did pass through one storm on the way, and needed to pull over for little while, but we were soon back on the road, and made it safely 'home' with no dramas.

We went for a walk around Ulmarra today – that’s the town where we now live, just 13kms out of Grafton.  It’s small, but that suits me just fine.  With such a short drive into Grafton, it makes things very easy – although it will take a while before I’m confident enough to tackle the highway – driving lessons, coming right up!

So many things are an absolutely novelty – I’m like a big kid, jumping up and down with excitement whenever the mail is delivered (new experience for me – no mail delivery where were used to live) – and we even had one parcel dropped off via courier!  So no more trying to figure out where to have those parcels sent – just straight to our door, thank you very much! :)

And,  I just received a delivery of my FIRST EVER automatic washing machine!  Due to the lack of water at our last address (rain water only) we needed to use twin tubs to save water – but now, we’re on town water, so an automatic it is!  (another episode of Mum going crazy with excitement!)  

As well, we have BUSES!  The bus to Grafton goes straight by our door, meaning that my conservatorium students can catch the bus until I feel confident enough to tackle that highway.  We didn’t even know about the buses until just before we got here – so that’s an added bonus. 

Well, there’s so much more I could write, but the post is long enough!   No doubt I’ll be adding more to the blog soon.   For now though, it’s back to unpacking and sorting!

May God bless your day,

Linda.