After many weeks of lying to our friends (sorry!), we were finally able to tell the truth about our planned move to Kenya to some of our Brisbane based friends over dinner at the beginning of August. We took out the world map and played the fun game of ‘guess where we will be living in the next few years?’ The African continent didn’t get a mention in the first round so we had to play another round before Angie got closest with her guess of Tanzania…

guess which country we will be living in for the next few years?

By this time we had already begun some of the preparations, and we had just returned from our familiarisation visit, so we had plenty to tell our surprised friends.

The next 2 months are a bit of a blur. As you can imagine, there is a lot to be organised when you are moving to a different continent. And us still planning to go to Cape York with Lara as our farewell trip to Oz (for now) didn’t make things easier…

To-do lists were made, items were ticked off the to-do lists, but more seemed to be added every day so we were a bit stressed at times. In short the must-do actions were:

• finding new tenants for our rental home as we had to break lease
• selling Lara as she was too old (by 2 weeks!!) to bring with us (not by our standards, but by the Kenyan regulations)
• preparing for a two week 4-wheel driving trip to the most Northern point in Australia
• deciding what to store and what to pack. Made harder because we had to divvy it up into 3 piles: checked-in luggage to go with us, air freight and sea freight. We also made it even harder for ourselves as a lot of things we wanted to bring with us, were still needed for the trip to Cape York…!

packing up the house for storage

everything into the container

finalising the piles for sea and air freight after returning from our Cape York trip

Those actions were forever broken down into smaller to-do things, whilst not trying to forget important details such as renewing passports and driver’s licences, getting our vaccinations up to date again and buying items which would be hard to find in Africa, ranging from new cameras to dental floss. And of course we wanted to catch-up with our friends wherever possible.

But, as always, time ticks on and towards the middle of September we had found new tenants, had a fantastic Cape York holiday, sold Lara (sniff) and moved in with Marjolein and the 4 chooks with just the things we were going to take with us on the flight to Kenya. Jon had already enjoyed many leaving drinks, leaving dinners, leaving breakfasts and leaving parties with work colleagues, before our final farewell party with friends at the Regatta the evening before flying out. Hopefully we will see all of them in Kenya at some point too! (we forgot our camera so unfortunately no photos…)

Jon’s African themed leaving drinks.

Lara’s new owner – Jon is smiling on the outside, but not on the inside…

The next day we managed to catch up with Anna, Tom and Millie for lunch and not much later it was time to say our final good-byes to Marjolein and Mel when the limo picked us up to drive us to the international airport.

farewell lunch with Anna, Tom and Millie

last Ozzie cuppa at Marjolein’s place

yes, we are deeply ashamed for our matching suitcases (and the fact we are now traveling with suitcases!)

We were treated to business class flights and of course spent some time in the bar on the upper-deck of the A380 to celebrate not only the start of a new adventure, but also Jude’s birthday that went on a lot longer than normal thanks to flying through the time zones towards the West. A great start to the next chapter of our lives!!

Australian resident departing permanently…

celebrating the start of a new chapter of our lives and Jude’s birthday in the bar on the upper deck of the A380

Jude definitely watches less movies when traveling in business class

traveling in style