Arrived We Have

It's Saturday afternoon and we've been in Vancouver for 3 nights now. "We're" getting used to driving on the right hand side (I'm actually only navigating, but hey - it's a job). The language differences aren't too terrible (although we're getting picked up on our accents all the time), but the currency! OK, we have loonies and toonies ($1 and $2 coins), quarters, dimes, nickels (all a lot lighter than Aussie coins, and they feel like play money). The shops are similar-but-not-the-same, as are the products on the shelves (Special K is NOT Special K... over here, it's like flattened rice bubbles). On Wednesday and Thursday it was quite overcast and cool, as it is today (it's actually been drizzling all day today), but Friday was clear and sunny and WE SAW THE ROCKIES! Our first view of these really pretty mountains, with snow and lakes or glaciers - every bit as beautiful as in pictures.

I'd whinge about the rush and hassle of getting to Sydney, the sick boy IN Sydney, the drama at Sydney Airport leaving and the 14 hours flight (it was L O N G) - but I can't be bothered now. It's done; over and no great enduring harm done. We're HERE! It feels really odd - like stepping into a book we've read and talked about together for years and years. At the moment, it doesn't feel real.

We're in a 33' caravan (which feel like more to tow, less when you're inside it!) and staying at a van park in Burnaby at the moment. I have bought an iphone but am still figuring out how to use it. Everything is working out as it should be - and the 20 month old boy playing with the CD drawer on the laptop wants me to get off the computer.

Lots of love from Canadia, where we're remembering ANZAC day. Lest We Forget.

Why?

Why do people leave and go to far-flung places?

I had a bunch of girlfriends over for morning tea today; kind of a farewell-just-in-case-we-don't-come-back thing. I love my friends. A hundred came today, with approximately 5,000 children. It was cheerful and noisy and crowded and loving. I am going to miss these beautiful people.

I might even miss my house. If we move overseas and dispose of the boxes not earmarked to leave our shores, I might pine for some of those belongings.

Yet my heart is stirring for a New Thing. A look? Just a holiday? I don't think so. I think the New Thing is to be a Grand Adventure... a new way of looking, a new way of living.

But, oh, I am an Australian. This has been my home. My country. And today, I am enjoying the bittersweet joy of loving and being loved in this place. Of knowing that the comfortable and familiar is not all - but it is comfortable and familiar.

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die-
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold-
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land-
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand-
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Dorothea Mackellar

How To Get There

View Canadian Dream - Our Road Trip in a larger map

I've been fiddling with a Google Map, and in theory, you should be able to click on this map and see where we're planning to be.

At the moment, we're expecting to spend a week in Vancouver (Capilano) before we head off into the Rockies and beyond.



We're traveling in a hired SUV and 30' caravan (camper) from All Drive Canada, and we'll be taking our time... probably traveling a couple of hours every second day.

So, from Vancouver to Whistler, Jasper, Banff and Calgary before heading across the Trans Canadian Highway to Winnipeg - stopping in Moose Jaw to do coffee with a new friend of a friend. Seriously - Moose Jaw. :)

We're expecting to be in Winnipeg about May 22 and will spend a couple of weeks there with a good friend of Mat's and his family before we head back to Vancouver. I will try to get the map updated this week. I'll add it to my to-do list. ;)

The Collective

Resistance is Futile

Mat, Terri, Miranda (6), Cælum (4), Catalina (20mos) and Oliver (20mos)

It's the end of something...

Tomorrow is Mat's last day at work. Well, the last day for the foreseeable future. Sort of.

That doesn't make a lot of sense at all, I realise, because of course he is going to go back to work in a couple of months, but we don't really know where. After over 11 years with his company, he's taking his long-service leave, and we're off to Vancouver on April 21 for 9 weeks. We're hoping to find a wonderful opportunity over there and stay for a few years.

April 21 just happens to be 13 days away. Take away one night in Sydney, and another night because we're leaving early on the 20th, and that's 11 days to finish packing up our house. 11 days to get one of the cars repaired (sigh) and sold (heavier-sigh). 11 days to get the roof of the house repaired, the ceiling in one room replaced, the carpet ripped up, the floor refinished, the walls washed, the house clean... OK, I'm a basket case.

BUT in 13 days, I'll be in Vancouver with my beautiful husband and my 4 terrific kids, and we'll be realising a dream we've had for 11 years together - and even longer individually. I'll be taking with me a jumper (sweater) I bought in 1990 in anticipation of this trip (it has shrunk a little! ;)

I suppose I won't be doing much blogging between now and then, but I'm looking forward to catching up with you here over the next few months. Won't it be great to see what happens?