That’s what most of my friends have said when I’ve told them that we are moving to New Zealand. Middle Earth wouldn’t be too bad, if you had a thing for pipeweed and hairy feet (which I do) and didn’t have a thing against orcs and dwarves (which I don’t) but we settled on Dunedin in the South Island instead. I’m pretty sure Sauron doesn’t have designs on Dunedin.

Sixteen days to go. Most of our worldly possessions are now in rusty containers in ships on the high seas, and we’re in the thick of farewell fever, which is getting a bit hard on the heart. Still it’s only 3 hours away (closer than Perth!) but it’s gonna be tough, especially taking the Little Guy away his grandparents. We will be raking in the Frequent Flyer Points.

So why do it? Living the life we want to live is the simplest explanation. I really wanted to free up more time to spend with the wife and kid and make time for more writing, Ness wanted more time with her son and to pursue an artistic career. Where we were in the Inner West of Sydney we had a pretty nice flat but a hefty mortgage, and we couldn’t have another little one, or let me work less and write more, or let Ness pursue her artistic dreams without failing to meet our commitments. So we knew we had to have that lifechange, in order to live the lives we wanted to live. That plus the floorboards were ridiculously thin, and the arseholes who lived there loved to play the worst music in the universe, right under our little guy’s bedroom. All night. Every night. 

So we knew we had to move, ditch the mortgage, and find a decent place for Ness to study. We’re both waaay over Sydney — it’s a fantastic place to wallow if you’re wealthy, but we’re not. So we started searching further afield. And after much searching it came down to Blue Mountains west of Sydney — or Dunedin.

I felt the call of Dunedin about ten years ago. Can’t remember, either saw it on the teev or read about it somewhere, and just knew I was gonna end up there some day. Yeah, weird. I know. Ness and I finally visited some mates there a couple of years back, and again last year for their wedding (yay!) and realised that it’s actually is a pretty cool place. Small, seaside university town, 100,000 plus 20,000 students; beautiful landscape in every direction, decent folk, and we could afford to buy a good house outright — so no mortgage. Which meant that Ness doesn’t need to work unless she wants to, and I only need to work three days a week. And that sounds like a pretty good solution to me. The University of Otago was offering the perfect course for Ness to study, I’d have more time to write, the little guy gets his backyard, and though people keep telling us it’s cold, at least it’s not as bad as this (thanks Kurt):

Now this is cold!

But there was the family and friends factor, and so we looked really hard at the Blue Mountains. And it involved compromise after compromise. I won’t go into it, but it wasn’t what we had in our hearts when we started the ball rolling. For a time we decided that we were going to move there. We had just put our house on the market and two days later the arse fell out of the financial industry, and we were scared we wouldn’t be able to sell at all… and for months we alternated between the two options, til choice paralysis set in and we lost our way. 

But in the end our hearts were set on Dunedin. So we’re going.

Maybe we’ve made the worst decision in our lives, and will be back in Sydney before we know it, tails between our legs, no place to live, and considerably poorer. Maybe I’m not as good a writer as i hoped to be, and all my efforts amount to nothing. Maybe we miss our friends and family too much. Maybe it really is a cold as everyone keeps saying. At least in two year’s time we will know for certain. We will know. And I think that is a plays a big part in going. Cause I am certain that if we chose the safer path and remained in Australia, the thoughts of what might have been would gnaw at my insides… and if we eventually decide to follow our destiny, but no longer had the opportunity to do so, what then?

So yeah. Maybe on some really naff allegory, we are stepping out that big green round door and walking down the path from Bag End. I kinda feel like we are, which is good for the heart and warms the soul. It’ll be a grand adventure. And maybe, just maybe we’ll find some treasure.

Though if we come all boggle eyed with a penchant for wriggling fish and whispering “my precious! my precious!”, please just throw us in the nearest volcano.

Jeremy

PS. The map in the headline image comes from this fantastic online collection of old maps now in the public domain. Go check out the rather saucy named Hipkiss’ Scanned Old Maps if you’re into that sort of thing.