News and a half

We are moving to Queensland.

And let it never again be said that I beat around the bush for the sake of a story build-up.
Not all the time, at least.

Those of you who know us personally will understand completely the reasons for moving. For those of you who only know the humbly-represented superhero versions of us depicted on this blog, I will give a brief explanation: health reasons.

I did say brief, didn't I?

I'll expand a little. Mele suffers from eczema, which is exacerbated by a dry climate. We live in Adelaide. Adelaide happens to be one of the two worst places in the world for sufferers of dry skin-related conditions (the other is Tucson, Arizona) - this is according to Mele's brilliant (and rather dashing) dermatologist. The pain caused by her dry skin is so great that moving states is actually a reasonable and sensible solution as opposed to the alternative of remaining here.
Eczema and dry skin dermatitis are common ailments. Until I met Mele, I never realised how common. Everyone has it. However, no one has it like Mele does, except for a nineteen-year-old fellow from Port Pirie. You might think you, or your mate, or your Mum, or whoever, gets it really badly, but those people can still go outside and don't need expensive drugs that require monthly check-ups in order to simply keep it at bay. Strong drugs and buckets of petroleum jelly are the only things that work for her. Others may find relief in natural remedies, olive oil, steroid cream, altered diets and any one of the thousands of off-the-shelf moisturisers containing everything from vitamin E to stem cells and piss. Not Mele. Moving to Queensland is one of the last options for relief on a much-shortened list.

So, in the spirit of turning lemons into lemonade and cow-shit into hypo-allergenic roses, this blog will become something of a travel diary. We don't plan to remain in Queensland forever,* just over the Adelaide winter until the dry, cold winds have blown themselves out and the Unbelievably Stifling Heat returns. (Those thinking along the lines of increased evaporation in summer vs increased precipitation in winter being better for dry skin can think again - Adelaide never gets so much rain that it actually becomes humid and the cold winter winds make a girl's skin seize up, whereas warm weather aids in movement).

The first step in the journey has been Moving Out Of The Tiny, Dark, Loud and Frequently Odorous Flat. It was nowhere near as traumatic a move as last year's was, complicated as it was by the multiple factors of:
1) Me being away for my week-long buck's show at the Byron Bay Bluesfest during the time in which I should have been packing, finding a new place, etc.
2) The mansion at Second Avenue dividing into two separate households in one day of moving with a truck.
3) Smallacombe Real Estate being arseholes
4) There being other things going on in our lives.

Trent and Ben turned up, dealt with the discouraging fact that the espresso coffee I had promised had already been packed away, like the granite-jawed hombres they are and swiftly set about the manly business of tossing heavy articles of furniture into the back of a cheaply-hired three-tonne truck. We didn't even smash anything expensive.

The furniture is at Nonna's farm (along with the possessions of at least three of her other grandchildren who are all in the process of either moving or building houses), the valuable gear and heirlooms are at a secret mountain location and the rest of the miscellaneous crap that I thought I wanted, but now can't remember why I kept it in the first place has travelled with us to the house I grew up in to join the rest of the miscellaneous crap that my mother and I have insisted on storing and saving throughout the years because you never know when you might need fourteen cloth bags from various sociology conferences or an envelope full of receipts from an overseas trip which show that you paid 15,000 lire for lunch! I did manage to eBay a few items to lighten the load. My old Garfield comic books were hilarious when I was eight, but are now sliding into Fred Basset territory and are interestingly becoming the target for increasingly creative post-modern critiques. I flogged them off for forty bucks and now I've started sizing up everything around the house, weighing it, making mental notes to check the average eBay price, wondering if my folks would really miss this or that. I can't find a reliable buyer for the fourteen conference bags, however.

The best part is that we're in. Step one to Queensland is the most pleasant. Living in a place with an actual garden and in which you can't hear Cantonese soap operas between 11pm and 7am is truly the meaning of happiness. Throw in a loving parent, adequate bench space and the thrilling access to more sunlight than a winter in north Finland and you have a heady combination. Mele and I traipse around the house in blissful ecstasy, skipping down the hallway and spinning around in the middle of rooms, arms outstretched crying to one another 'Look! I'm not touching anything!'

Ahead of us we have much to look forward to:

* Finding a place to live on Bribie Island which isn't either a temporary carpark or the rented-out cavity under a Queenslander.
* Acquiring transport which will fit more than one person and a second pair of undies (hopefully a station wagon).
* Continuing PhD research remotely and from the various as-yet-unsuspecting university libraries of Brisbane.
* Fishing.
* Finding some kind of employment up there that doesn't involve faeces.


Wish us luck and please join us on our travels. I promise more rambling anecdotes, run-on sentences, pleading for charity, self-indulgent photos, videos of questionable taste and value and a slightly-embellished account of what happens when two writers embark upon a journey north to a place where almost everybody is retired, although, let's hope, not retiring.

*Not a guarantee.

***
GTH - The winner is the largely brilliant, yet puzzlingly scoreless, Brocky, not for guessing that the header was a picture of me as a child used to symbolise the assumed age of most of those who enjoy the comic arts, but for linking the brilliant xkcd in one of its many well-timed, perfectly-weighted, nerd-alert pieces. Before T.O.o. Sam did. Brocky, welcome to The Board.