Next minute ...

 

It began with a conversation about moving south to Otago, then a shakeup jobwise, an urgent placing of my 10.5 acre block in Northland onto the market and then regaining my job with a new company and able to continue working remotely from a new location: Oamaru. The farm sold and the weeks thundered by. The moving truck came and took all my stuff and then it was my turn to head south to an island I had never set foot upon, let alone ever considered heading to at all. It was always 'too cold for me' ... next minute ... I'm sitting at the ferry terminal in Wellington with cats in crates and my youngest one alongside in the passenger seat while we waited to board the Livia for Picton. How the hell did that happen?

We boarded the ferry, listened to the rumbling of its massive engines and screws churning up the water and headed up to deck 5 where it was full of people either going on tour or holiday. We met a couple from Hawke's Bay and their family and they were doing the same kind of journey as I was. Headed for a new chapter on the West Coast to work in the mining industry. We had a meal of chips and John Dory fish as the Livia crossed the straight and into the Marlborough Sounds towards Picton. 

The jagged rocks at the beginning of the sounds heralded the next chapter in my life. I wanted a change and it happened: reality hit home hard that I had left the island of my birth and headed to a new one where the landscape was different, a township I had never seen and a life full of the unknown. But that's what you do sometimes. Get brave and take the step. 

We arrived in Picton in the early evening with still enough light to get some captures of the harbour my grandpa had an old worn postcard of from dating back to 1900 of the harbour before it became what we see today and, of course, I love history. I couldn't have chosen a better area to live that is full of history -- a lot of it. That's me for now until the next post. Been a long time since I've blogged over five years when I think about it. Given I work in a job dealing with the written word? Writing about this new adventure is going to be a lot of fun.