North, South, North, South, East, West, East, West...

We moved again last week! And, as we drove from one end of the freeway to the other (again!), I stared out the skylight of our car, at the stars in the clear evening sky and felt my brain kick into gear.

How often have we driven from one end of the freeway to the other in the last six months? More times than I could count off the top of my head.

After all, it seems like the majority of our latest sits have all been at the end of the freeway… alternately mind you… north - south - north - south… Even now, we’ve just left Pearsall to go to South Lake, after this we’re back north to Landsdale and Carramar - each one almost an hours drive from the other. I bet I couldn’t have planned the alternating better if I’d tried!

Good job we like driving - or should that be ‘still like driving’. After all, we do have well over thirty-five years of courier driving racked up between the two of us!

Still, it is us who picks the jobs and (if we wanted) it could be one side of the world to the other, as opposed to one end of the freeway to the other.

In fact, last week, we officially expanded our list of places we’ll sit to include more than West Australia. Yes, now we’re looking for places in Tasmania - although they need to be for more than the standard week or two (ideally a couple of months or more) to justify the week’s drive it takes to get over there.

For those that are wondering, the decision to travel there isn’t as sudden as it may appear. It’s been a plan from the very beginning, we just had to wait for the right time. You know, standard parent stuff… once I’m sure the children (who aren’t really children any more) are settled and capable of managing without us (or is it me without them? Never!)

Of course, by offering to house-sit in the lush green hills of Tassie we are aware that we’ve now opened ourselves up to ricocheting across the sandy plains of Australia. Still, what a way to spend your time, especially since we’ve both always wanted to live in Tassie and have not, as yet, had a chance to explore the island, or… as people constantly remind us… feel the true extent of its winter chill!

However, since we haven’t yet been lucky enough to be offered a suitable house-sit there, we are continuing to enjoy the warmth of the West Australian sun and pingponging back and forth along our expanding freeway.