After 9 months of living out of our backpacks it was finally time to fully unpack them. Our clothes would hang in a wardrobe, our toiletries would have a home in the bathroom cabinet, we would sleep in a bed for more than 5 nights and no longer require to share a bathroom or queue for a shower. These were all firsts in our journey.

The last swansong of the Backpacks!!

What an amazing experience we had, had travelling to Sydney via Asia, Western and Southern Australia. We had mixed emotions as we crossed the Sydney harbour bridge to collect the keys to our new home for next 6 months. Were we ready to put the backpacks away and settle? On the other hand we were very excited to set up a home in a new country. We would be neighbours with the Prime Minster of Australia in the harbour side suburb of Kirribilli.The name Kirribilli is derived from an Aboriginal word Kiarabilli, which means ‘good fishing spot’.

Map of the new surroundings!

As we anxiously opened the door we were greeted by a welcome pack – full of cleaning products. Sadly these would be put to good use instantly- the apartment wasn’t very clean. We missed Celia- our cleaner from London. Soon JK were armed with rubber gloves and bleach, scrubbing while singing to 80s tunes on our newly acquired sound system.

Ghetto BLASTER!!!

It felt like we had come full circle, our last memories of London were scrubbing our apartment for the full deposit back.

After the place was gleaming we left the apartment with one mission, come back with the required items to make it homely but keep costs to a minimal. We had been very lucky and landed one of the nicely furnished apartments in Sydney- everyone tells us this is a rarity. There was only place to head- K-mart. Soon we had fluffy towels, bedding, cushions, kitchen utensils, photos and photo frames. One shopping error was buying a body pillow case- John modelling above. The next task was to carry it home- if only we had brought our trusted backpacks.

By 8pm the place looked like home but JK had no food so we headed to the local Thai to celebrate a successful day. On our way we passed the local community centre that was all dolled up for Cancer Research Month!!