And … we’re baaaaccckkk!

The drive wasn’t too bad really.  A bit rainy through the twistery, hilliness that exists up until Nowa Nowa, but after that the sun came out a bit and the wind died down.

We made good time and were at Bruthen for lunch and home by 4:30pm.  The kids initially thought that we were free camping tonight … and I guess we kind of are 😉  But they twigged around Sale that the destination was the big HOME for tonight and they were pretty excited.  We finally managed to finish listening to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy audio book that we’d been listening to, one chapter at a time each day.  Around Pakenham they still had no idea where we were and thought that it would be ‘hours’ before we were home and thus happily got stuck into the last movie.

It wasn’t until we were going through Baxter that Hannah said “Hey!, I recognize this place!” … and the jig was up!

Home was in fine shape when we got there, thanks to our many minders … outside was super tidy due to Leigh’s fine handy work in the garden.  You should see the lemons on the tree!  We could paint them red and sell them to the AFL …

Inside was just as we’d left it … virtually no dust, no cobwebs … no nothing.  We’d planned on sleeping in the van tonight, as we thought the house would be uninhabitable, but it’s fine.  Kids are super excited now to be home and sleeping in their own beds tonight!

The house did take a bit of ‘rebooting’ to fire everything back up again.  Powering up took awhile as we’d unplugged all non-essentials.  Everything still seems to work that needs power.

The gas took ages to filter all the way to the hot water service and the spiders underneath it got a hell of a shock when she finally lit. 🙂 The water supply took the longest.  The water left in the pipes wasn’t happy about moving into the drains and it took a good flushing to get clean water out of every tap and a good empty out of the hot water service too for good measure.

The cars we left behind both fired up easily once their batteries were re-connected.  All too easy really!  Almost like we’ve only been gone for a weekend.

The kids are having tomorrow off, but are keen to go to school again on Friday.  Kids keen to go to school?  They’ve obviously been in the sun too much!

*sigh* … back to business as usual.  Seems like I still have a job to go back to, as does Kel, so I guess we’ll not be heading off anytime soon for a repeat trip.