It’s been four years since we left Reunion and settled down to life in the French city Toulouse within sight of the Pyrenees. Since then Aurélie has been working away and I had been travelling back and forth with work.
One Wednesday back in March last year as I was was preparing to fly out to join a project in Australia I got a call with the voice on the other end saying that the Australian borders were being shut at midnight on the Friday and there was no way to get a flight that would get me from France into Australia in time. After saying "bugger" a few times we talked over the situation and agreed that we would just hang on until the boarders reopened in a few weeks or a month, two at the most and and I would jump on a plane then and fly out....
Cue five and a half months of waiting until, in August, the company I am working for was able to get the paperwork organised to allow me to travel to Oz and after a false start (the airline cancelled my first ticket (economy class) so that they could sell an additional business class ticket) I was on a series of business class flights to Perth!
Stepping out of the the airport into the Perth springtime I had to immediately get onto a bus to be taken to two weeks of strict quarantine in the faded luxury of the Regency Hotel, two weeks confined to my room with food being delivered to outside the door in paper bags... pretty relaxing really!
Anyway, since then I've been based in Perth working on a project up north in the Pilbara (where I am as I write this) while the rest of the family have remained behind in Toulouse. It's not the first time that I've been away for a long but it was the first time that I missed Christmas at home with the family :(.
Which is all a long roundabout way of explaining how I ended up spending Christmas in Western Australia far from home!
I was lucky however as I'm working with a group of other international orphans one of whom was super organised a camping trip down south for Christmas which I joined along with!
Not having a vehicle here I decided to hire a camper van at Travellers-autobarn an Aussie van rental company that specialise in camper vans and to be honest I couldn't be happier with the van I got, not too big to drive easily and plenty big enough for one or two people (and a good bit comfier that the tents the others were in!).
My Christmas Home
The other orphans (two couples) packed up their cars and tents and on Christmas Eve we all headed down south of Perth to a campsite called Martins Tank where we spent a lovely Christmas in the sun enjoying the company, good BBQ food and the nearby Preston beach!
