It is impossible to tell you how happy I am, really. I suprise even myself here - with this ligament teres issue and chronic hip pain, I have to be careful about my physical movement, which is hard for an airy chic who drifts and flys from one activity to the next, at home on a stand-up or a longboard, travelling through the bush on foot, moving through a garden planting and weeding and moving, moving, moving. Even this sentence is moving. Even adventuring in the Land Rover gives me such pain that the journey home is almost insufferable, necessitating deep intakes of breath and the mantra: almost home, almost home.

Home

But home I am, after waiting to be for so long. Outside my window as I type is a yellow crested cockatoo clinging to the huge stringybark tree, ready to invade. He'll likely bring his mates - we can't fill the bird bath too often, but in this heat, all animals, no matter what pests they can be, are worthy of a water supply. Last night Kylie the Kangaroo (she's tagged as part of a research program) came past with her joey and drank for - no shit - two minutes straight. Here's me just staring in delight at what essentially is the most common marsupial in the country, but dammit, it's absolutely cool that I have these fluffy eared beasties in my garden.

It's been hot here, yesterday and tomorrow reaching 40 odd degrees (100 Fahrenheit - I only just learnt why these two scales of temperature work, albeit in different ways) and the media crying about how it's like Black Saturday, the horrific bush fire that killed so many people. In this town it's Ash Wednesday - I was a kid when that happened and everyone round here has a story of surviving it. The bush is right on our doorstep which is delightfully incredible - but it's also a danger. We know where the passports are and have a bug out bag in the van.

Home

But oh - how my heart sang yesterday when the sea breeze kicked in. The temperature dropped and the air was cool and hung with salt. We went for our second swim down the beach in cold turquoise waters, washing away dust and sweat and the boredom of the day stuck inside (with occasional rescue missions to the garden to cool the chooks down and wet the sheets hung over the veggie patch). In the old place, inland, we could only afford one swim a day, due to the petrol costs, and it'd take half an hour to get to the sea. Here it takes three minutes. I've been using goggles and as I swim, I watch the seaweed drift - big strands of leather like kelp, delicate pinks and whites, necklaces of beads filled with gelatinous fluid. I really must pickle some with ginger, a recipe I've been interested in for a while.

The neighbour, Mike, asked this morning if we were happy here. I gushed that I was. He said that he felt they'd won the new neighbour lottery - we could have been a lot worse. I blushed, I'm sure. It was kind of him.I But we think the same of him. Last night he brought us apricots from his tree. Last week I picked up two pullets for him when I picked up ours. Jamie brings the bins in for the neighbours with holiday houses, so he can fill them up with excess stuff from the shed. We water another neighbours garden in return for lemons.

We introduced ourselves to the neighbour diagonally across from us. He has two blocks - one with the house, and chooks, and the other full of bush, some 100 species he said. He's part of a group that caretakes the bush in the area, removing old fencing, weeding introduced species, and so on. He came over this arvo to see if Jamie wanted to join them and also that there were two other thigns coming up, counting wading birds, and counting orange bellied parrots, as well as a table tennis group that meets three times a week. In fifteen years of living in the old town no one invited him to do anything.

There's another neighbour with bees, who have been coming and drinking from the bird bath (the bees, not the neighbours) and we met the ones a couple of doors up with sweet young kids who seem very nice. There's a few holiday houses but they are old timers and they aren't air BnB's - they are quiet, respectful, part of the street.

Home

And then there's the family two doors up, with the guy who's a tinkerer like Jamie, or at least pretty savvy, and has a Land Rover discovery 300 TDI and was putting in a new clutch and wanted Jamie to give him a hand, whichdammit he loves, and spent all afternoon chatting and covered in grease, and was gifted a bike frame with shocks and all that he could spend the late evening rebuilding.

There's a lot to be said for male company for husbands.

I cannot believe we have been so lucky. Six months ago we could never have imagined how great things could be.

So yes, whilst I'm in pain, I'm in pain here. Jamie is home from work, bimbling in his ADHD way, building my garden, spray painting an old bike orange, fussing at the guttering, raking leaves. He'll come in and collapse and I'll make us snapper tacos for tea, with a fried bean and pepper salad from the garden. We'll do our own thing for a bit - I'll knit, maybe, or read a book (I have three on the go, plus some gardening books - I love our regional library) and he'll watch some Youtube on cycling or tanks or whatever tinker boys like him watch.

It's all a temporary affair, I know. He'll have to go to work eventually, or to the UK to sort out the Land Rover I don't think I'll be physically capable of doing another road trip in. But for now, I'm happy, pinching myself at how darn lucky I am, we are, and still each other's best mate after twenty odd years, enjoying each other's company.

I would be happier, of course, being able to move, to surf, to be physical, but I'm taking a leaf from Dad's book, feeling hopeful, being happy with the small wins, enjoying the life I have now.

Turns out it's not impossible to be happy, at least for the most part, which is totally okay by me.

I hope you are happy too.