February 18th, 2018

 
Over the Christmas break, my family and I packed up our lives as we knew them, kissed our dear friends goodbye and moved back to Adelaide. There were many influencing factors for our decision including schooling opportunities, work prospects, constant humidity, snakes, fresh food, the Adelaide central markets, but none more important than putting our family back together again and resigning from the life of FIFO.
To pick up one’s family and move them interstate is no small feat (and I have done it twice now!). Whilst my two younger children were able to return to their previous primary school, they did so with great trepidation. They had lived half their lives in Queensland and considered themselves to be Queenslanders; they say plant instead of plarnt, they eat devon, not fritz and they wear togs – it’s who they are! They barely have any solid memories of their previous lives in South Australia.
It’s not like we were moving around the corner and they would be able to maintain the same friendships, routines and lifestyle that they had grown accustomed to. No; I ripped them from their comfort zones, from the bosom of their friends and the core of everything they had come to know as ‘life’.
They now have to navigate through the perils of finding their place again; they need to dissect and determine a new network of friends; abide by a whole new set of rules; discover a whole new world.