farewell brindabella

Let's cut to the chase here - moving sucks. Enormously. I have moved too many times to count. Ok maybe that's exaggerating - three times when I was at uni in Melbourne (all on scorching February days), then home to Thorpdale, then to Glenburn, within two weeks, when I moved in with Mr M and followed him to 'the bush', again to the cottage at Ythanbrae (also known as paradise/our other happy place) and then to Brindabella. Where we said we would be for a long time. Never again, we said to moving. 

Well things don't always turn out the way you plan. And that's ok. It's all a part of my new mantra: change is inevitable, fluidity is fine and progression essential. Onwards and upwards.

After our wedding, we spent three nights and four days at Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula. It was blissful, as a honeymoon should be. A beautiful hotel room with a balcony overlooking the ocean, lazy evenings drinking champagne and eating leftover wedding cake, bike rides around Point Nepean, perusing the pretty shops and galleries in the afternoons and lovely dinners by the sea with my husband. 

 

We came home to Brindabella and began to pack. And pack. And pack. It seemed neverending. The stuff. It spewed from our little ramshackle farmhouse. From my sewing room. From Mr M's shed. From everywhere. With the help of Mr M's hard working parents we managed to get everything sorted. The problem was some things were going into storage, some things were going into the new house at Inverloch, some things were being stored at my mum's for easy access (like paperwork and clothes and art pieces we didn't want in storage) and some things we were taking away with us. So. Much. Sorting.

We planned to be on the road to Boort, where we were headed to help friends with their grain harvest, on the Sunday after the wedding. We didn't end up leaving Brindabella until the wee hours of Wednesday morning after that (12.17am to be precise), we fell into bed at my mum's, got up a few hours later and hauled out headed for the Mallee dust and heat at 4.50am Wednesday 21st December. The next four days were spent helping finish off harvest before Christmas, then turning around and heading the almost 5 hours back to Gippsland for Christmas. Madness.

We're now back in Boort and the holiday/honeymoon/reality really starts now. All we have is packed in our camper. We really have no fixed address anymore, no more clothes other than what I packed (very minimal). Is it liberating? Amazingly so. Scary? Not at all, which surprised me. Exciting? Yes!

Was I upset leaving Brindabella? Not at all. Yes, we worked our tails off there in the past year. But it was not home. We were not happy there. At all. I didn't blog about the trials of the past year (who wants to hear about that, really?!) but we honestly had a pretty crappy 2011 - minus our beautiful wedding day, quite simply the best day of my life for the fact that I married my best friend. But take that away, and I'd really rather forget 2011 ever happened.

So, all good things must come to an end. This blog is one of them.

I am no longer Cinderella at Brindabella. I am, however, still a keen blogger. Mr M and I plan to blog our way around Australia, where we can. I'm not going to blog about pretty homewares or gardening or renovating anymore. I'm not going to blog to get readers or hits, not that I ever really did, but I think I do write consciously for the readers of this blog. No, from now on I we are going to blog for ourselves, for our friends and family who want to track our travels and share our adventures. You can most certainly come along for the ride also, but if it's Etsy purchases, baking recipes or things I've blogged about before you are after, perhaps that chapter in my blogging career has closed for the moment. 

Our new blog, The Happy Campers, can be found here. It's a work in progress so stay tuned for active links, photos of the camper and oh yeah...some actual posts! 

Cinderella at Brindabella will remain open to read the previous two + years of posts. I will also post on here some wedding photos and a re-cap of the day and details when I can. And you know that as soon as I can I will :)

Thank-you to my lovely and loyal readers, some of you I have come to really know like 'real life' friends, all of you I have appreciated. The blogging community is a beautiful place in the world wide web because of the people and the connections we create. I hope you continue to follow my blogging journey, but if not, thank you and farewell...

Images by Emma Steendam for Cinderella at Brindabella