Happy New Year - here's to 2020!

With the impending new year I got to thinking about past new year celebrations along with past memories.  For 2020, I am planning a more simple life and because of that I thought back to times in my life when I didn't have as much as I do now and was living a very different life.

One old memory is when I was travelling around Australia on a year out, 21 years ago.  We spent 6 months in Sydney where Ciaran worked in an architectural practise in the city and I worked at a few odd jobs here and there.  After this time, we bought a camper van and set off travelling around Australia and did farm work along the way to make a bit of money to carry on with our travels.  One place that we visited was Kununurra in Western Australia where we got work packing sweet corn and melon in a production plant. We had got the job by going to a garage on a Monday morning and managers from local farms and factories would go along and pick people out of the group to work for them.  Once you were picked you would be taken on a bus every day to the farm.  It was the case that if you were picked on the first day, you were then employed by the farm until you quit or they didn't need you and let you go.  

We had planned to work for about 6 weeks in this town and were booked in to the caravan park for this time.  So every day we were up about 4.30am and headed to the garage to get on the bus and start work at 6amam.  The work was tough but we got fed by the farm - let's just say we ate a lot of corn and melon!

Did I mention at this time we were fairly broke and we were saving all the money that we made, after we paid for the caravan park and bought dinner for the evening.  Beyond that we didn't spend a whole lot and as far as I can remember we worked 6 days a week.

Everyday when we would arrive at the garage to meet up with the other workers we would see some of them getting breakfast in the garage.  We had already eaten breakfast back at the camp site - we made a big pot of porridge because it was cheap and filling. And although we were not hungry we looked on with envy at the backpackers who bought their breakfast in the garage. What we yearned for most was a cheese and ham toastie and a chocolate milk but it would have blown our budget if we were to buy one every day. One of the mornings we made a plan that on our last day of work we would buy breakfast in the garage to end the block of work on a high.

The six weeks passed quickly, we made great friends on the packing line and had great chats and conversations over lunch with backpackers from all over the world.  And then on our last day we went to the garage and we ate a cheese and ham toastie with a chocolate milk. What bliss!  I can't say it was the best food but the experience was unforgettable. The value we placed on that treat that we worked so hard to experience was immense - so immense that I am blogging about it over 20 years later.  It's the little things that come by with difficulty that provide the best experiences, in comparison to things that come by easy, these days.

For 2020 I want to go back to a simpler time when small things provided the greatest pleasure.

I have a plan in motion......watch this space!