We're off! Welcome to Inverness...

A new year, a new blog. A new adventure awaits us.

Here on The Happy Campers we will track our progress on our around-Australia honeymoon. We don't have a timeframe that we plan to be away for - a year? Two? Five? Ten?! We don't have a home or jobs to come back to, we've packed up all our belongings into storage and re-homed our three dogs. Nomadic gypsy's indeed.

We finally pulled out of the Brindabella driveway at 12.17am on Wednesday 21st December. At last on our way to Boort, our first stop on our adventure, helping our great mates Tyler and Kate with their grain harvest on the family farm 'Inverness'.

Three days of chaser bin driving for Matt, with Tyler in his prized header, to get the crop off before Christmas. We had planned to get up to Boort four days earlier but totally underestimated the painful process of moving/packing!

Kate is a primary teacher and was still working with school not yet finished for the year. I busied myself making lunches for the boys and taking it out to Leaghur where they were harvesting, about fifteen minutes from Inverness.

The mallee heat was a rude awakening to living 'north of the divide'. We figure we are acclimatising ourselves gradually as we head further north?! 

We do love how very different the landscape is up here compared to our lush green rolling hills of Gippsland. It makes for a nice change, if not a stark contrast!

I made myself at home, making rocky road for Christmas and loving Kate's cute Aussie Christmas tree. No pines up here I guess, not like at home in Thorpy. Boort's a nice little town, with a small supermarket, a few pubs, hardware, little cafe and very friendly locals. My trip to the supermarket was met by lots of smiles and hat tips. Lovely.

We headed back to Gippsland for Christmas with our families, before turning around and really starting our journey north (we're not sure if we will be back 'home' before leaving Boort). Back at Inverness to start our five week stint here, the first day back we went for a wakeboard and biscuit on Little Lake Boort. Needless to say Matt thinks he's in heaven, even if he can't sit still as he's 'on holidays' and not working!

Settling in well to life at Inverness I would say...