2021 Recap

2021, where did you go?

As with many of you, our 2021 did not go as planned either. I had initially thought, what a great year to restart the tiny roamers journals with updates of our lives and adventures! But as you’ll soon see, it would have been better to have 0 expectations for this year.

At the end of 2020, Brett and I decided we had, had enough years in the brutal winds and rains of Wellington and it was time to leave New Zealand for good. When it was announced, that despite New Zealand’s tough border lockdowns due to COVID-19, a travel bubble was emerging between New Zealand and Australia, we saw it as an opportunity to finally leave.

Brett and I had both lived in Australia prior to meeting one another, and it had always been a goal to return there, over the years. When we heard the bubble had opened and Brett was offered a position with a company in South Australia, we jumped at the opportunity.

New Zealand is beautiful, but Wellington (some may disagree with this assessment) was like the armpit of the North Island. The saying was, “You can’t beat Wellington on a good day,” because every other day was so miserable with its greyness, sideways and upside-down rain, that it made a good day seem in Wellington seem like a day from the heavens.

In January 2021 with Australian visas in hand, we packed up our belongings in a shipping crate and prepared to leave….only to have the bubble shut down on us days away from our flight. Some, or just I, may say this was a sign of the year to come, but I don’t think we have good natural instincts about this sort of thing. So instead of moving to Australia, we temporarily moved into a hotel.

When the bubble reopened, we were finally off. Due to COVID, during this time direct flights were not available, so we had to stop in Melbourne, Victoria for a night and then fly out the next day to Adelaide. We settled into what was supposed to be temporary accommodation, but as you’ll see will be the theme of this story, things did not go according to plan.

To move to Adelaide, Brett was promised housing and childcare was cheap and plentiful, while Adelaide itself offered was perfect for a growing family. Adelaide itself was beautiful and would have been a wonderful place to raise children, but quickly we came to realize there was a housing crisis that had not been disclosed to us. Housing prices had gone up and with people moving out of big metropolitan areas like Sydney and Brisbane, housing was also scarce. The inexpensive childcare mentioned to us was for permanent residents and Australians only, which we were not. So 2 weeks in an apartment-hotel became 2 months, after which it became apparent that in regards to work and living, Adelaide was not going to be our forever home so once again we packed our bags and this time head east to Sydney, New South Wales.

Sydney was where Brett and I had both previously lived and a city we loved. A concern though was we had lived there as singles and now had a family of five on one income. As we looked for a new home once again, we saw with our new parental eyes, that inner-city living had lost its charm when you have three, three and under in tow. Our search wasn’t dragged out as long as it had been in Adelaide luckily, and we found a townhome a 10-minute walk away from a little beach.

‘This is the moment it all comes together!’ one may think. “Nay nay,” my favorite true crime and makeup YouTuber Bailey Sarian, would say. Because just when we finally settled in and started to explore our surroundings, COVID had the audacity to enter the general population and shut down New South Wales for over 100 days!!

This leads us to now, 14 November 2021. Lockdown finally eased up three weeks ago so we are once again out roaming and exploring.

I have to say for a year that’s gone so pearshaped we still have managed to squeeze out quite a few adventures. There is still a month and a half left of 2021 so it’s hard to say if we’ll be ending the year on the up and up, but if I’ve learned anything from the past two years, it’s to keep expectations very low so there’s nowhere to go but up. ?

That’s all for now folks! Until next time.

xoxo Alexis and the tiny roamers