Early January we made quick arrangements to travel up to Cohuna to help my brother, Nath, move from his rental in Cohuna, to the house he had just bought in Gunbower.
This was no small thing, as Cohuna is in the NSW/ Vic border, around 5 1/2 hours away as the crow flies. Roughly 450 k's.
WE managed to leave before 9am on Monday the 6th of January, all packed and breakfasted with snacks and toys at the ready, and set off on our journey.
It was pretty straight forward till we hit Melbourne, as we only knew we had to find the signs to Bendigo. That was it. We had priorly arranged to use the toll ways, and pad our fees accordingly, but we had not anticipated the signs being so vague, and managed to get lost three, yes, that's right! THREE times!
We had lunch at a little place on the far side of Melbourne, and ran amock slightly in the food court, using the toilets like four times before we finally left.
We reached Bendigo at four pm, and then there was the 'now what?'. We did not have a map or any directions, so had no idea where to go next. Cohuna is a pretty small place and so there would be no signage of it till we were a lot closer. But it turned out alright, because we finally stopped in at a service station, and the lovely lady there went out of her way to help us out. Giving us diections and a map and everything.
It was a very LOOOONG two hours from there to Cohuna. I mean, really long! It wasn't so much that the land was very flat (no hills! None!) but that the roads were very straight, and there were very few trees to break up the monotine, and it was dry and dusty. http://www.cohuna.org.au/location.htm
We were ever so glad to get there! Nath had finished his evening milking and was there to greet us.
Unfortunatly our first drama happened almost immediately.
You see, Nath had cleaned one room for the children to sleep in, but the room with the sofa bed in, which Michael and I were to sleep, was filthy, with spiders, dust, and cat faeces to boot. Michael had a melt down.
Now, I could have cleaned it. I could have made it all fine. But Michael was having none of it! So he went off in the car and booked us into a bed and breakfast for the night at a cost we couldn't really afford, but I had to give in otherwise I don't know what he would have done, and I have to say I was rather embarrassed because Nath couldn't understand what Michael's deal was and was slightly offended on his behalf and also on mine, so I had to smooth his ruffled feathers and try to keep Michael calm all while I was so exhausted from travelling literally all day. But we made it through with out anyone killing each other.
The next day the cleaning and packing started. Nath was having to work around milking, but I was able to do alot of cleaning while he wasn't here, and we packed up our car, and the cattle trailer her had been able to get his hands on, so things kept moving.
It took us three days to empty the house and lean it.
With both the car, the ute, and the trailer full, we moved the contents of his house. And we made two trips every day. One after the morning milking, and one after the evening milking.
His new house is in Gunbower. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunbower,_Victoria
He finally got the keys a week before, and was quite anxious to move it. Its a lovely old little house.
As we arrived with our cars full of stuff and emptied them, I put stuff away, so that istead of there being mounds of lying all over the place, there were pockets of stuff packed away here and there. It took the same amount of time to pack him into his new house as it did to pack him out of his old one.
Really like the cow trailer idea to move stuff :D
ReplyDeleteWell the goof thing about it was that you could pile stuff up, hehe!
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