The best laid plans of Mice and Hannan...

It's a Wednesday afternoon in the Gold Coast, East Australia and I'm sat in my room. Under my duvet. And this is how I have been spending a lot of my days lately. And the reason for this is two-fold:

...Waiting for the bus. Freezing...

1. It's winter and it's cold. Yes, even Australia gets cold. Not Britain-winter cold, but cold enough to want to be inside your house. In a duvet. With a gallon of English Breakfast tea.

2. We are short on the ol' dollar front. When we first arrived we threw that bright colourful plastic money around on coffee shops, trips around the Gold Coast, even a cheeky schooner of Aussie beer! Then, as work failed to appear and shops insisted on charging us for food, money began to run out... This resulted in our daily activities being limited to a walk to the local park, Playstation afternoons, Netflix marathons and UNO games to decide who's turn it is to clean the bathroom.

...Guess who won..?

This was NOT the plan.
The plan involved finding jobs INSTANTLY, using our money to live the care-free Australian life promised to us by Buzzfeed and Home and Away. The plan involved spending most days at the beach, overdosing on Vit-D thanks to Mr Australian Sunshine and becoming the masters of BBQing Aussie-Style. The plan involved saving enough money to travel the country  inbetween work days and seeing all Australia has to offer.

But, the funny thing about making plans is that we really shouldn't bother. As Burns once said;

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft a-gley..."

Which, as we all know, is Ol' Burnsy's Scottish way of saying that when Humans and Mice (??) try to make good plans, they often get all fizzed up and you realise there aint no point in making a plan in the first place.

Being a control freak and an idealist, I struggled with the notion of screwing the old plan up and creating a new one. "But....but...we said we would LIVE here for 6 months AT LEAST and it's only been 3!!"

"But...no but I've joined the library! I LIKE having a library card and doing the big shop!"

...An example of the 'free' activities we can do near
our house!"

One of The Boy's biggest struggles being married to me is that I am an imagination painter. I'm a very gifted imagination painter actually, even if I do say so myself. I can create masterpieces in supreme detail in my mind of how something will be, how it will look and how I will feel (yes, I can even paint emotions!) Without much effort I can almost feel like I know how a situation will pan out before I've even arrived there. I do it with conversations ("No...no The Boy, you're supposed to say THIS, then I can say THIS back to you!") and I do it with social events ("But I'll walk in the room and everyone will laugh at me for spilling my drink, I just KNOW that it will happen!") and I did it with travelling. It's a good job The Boy balances me out. He refuses to guess how a situation will pan out. I spend hours quizzing him about what he thinks our future dog will look like, or what our children might be like, or even what tomorrow will be like and he always says "Well, I don't know! It hasn't happened yet!" 

So when our last plastic bank note disappeared from our purse we looked at each other and finally admitted that we needed a plan-rethink. And it wasn't scary or sad actually, it was exciting! We both realised that we had been staying in our day in-day out routine because that's just what we had decided rather than it being exciting and life-changing and 'something to tell the grandkids'. I'm not sure how excited our grandchildren would be when we tell them the story of the weeks on end we spent playing UNO, waiting for SOMEONE to give us a full time job in a coffee shop...

We decided to leave our comfortable lives here in Surfer's Paradise and spread our wings across Australia. We signed up to 'Helpx', a website that links volunteers up with hosts. We are going to stay with different people all around the country, working for them in many ways in exchange for free accomodation and food. We leave in a week and are so excited to meet new people, try new activities and most of all, to actually SEE Australia!

...Our "We're-going-on-a-new-adventure!"
smiles...

And, in the spirit of me being 'free', 'spontaneous' and 'brave' as is the purpose of this year of travel (see first blog for more details on that particular hurdle) I WILL embrace the uncertainty of each new host. I WILL choose excitement over anxiety. And I WILL put down the notebook that contains all my plans and hand it over to The Boy, letting the laid-back attitude that Australia is so famous for wash over me. 

So we leave in one week! But...for now...it really is freezing and I WILL be in my duvet until the next chapter of our adventure begins. One more game of UNO anyone..?