Travel Theme : Freedom

In 2009 we decided a major downsizing was needed to create the freedom to travel. So we had a garage sale.

Getting ready

Lots of stuff…

Ready and waiting…

and the people came…

It is amazing how liberating it is to have a good clean-out. Things that haven’t been used, clothes that are never worn, objects that have been bought on impulse, but not really needed. At the end of the day almost all gone. The few things left went to the op shop.

Not only things were being disposed of we also downsized the space we lived in. Moving from a 3 bedroom house to a one room Granny flat/studio. Keeping a few pieces of furniture the rest was sold/given away.

Now we were ready, we had the FREEDOM to travel.

But we then downsized even further and Matilda came into our lives.

Setting off

This small van gave us the freedom to travel around Australia. For a year in 2010 we travelled 37000 kilometres, met many interesting people and saw the incredible diversity of this great land.

Crossing the Nullabor Plains

To see more about this iconic part of Australia click here.

Freedom camping at the beach

Freedom camping in the outback, cooking over open fires in the camp oven.

Camping alongside rivers and billabongs in the shade of the mighty gum trees.

Feeling as free as the birds to follow our own path.

The open road, the anticipation of what is over the hill. That is the great feeling of FREEDOM…

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Feel free to click here and go to Ailsa’s “Where’s my backpack” for many more glimpses into the freedom bloggers have found.

 

More Downsizing

Matilda’s new owners

Goodbye Matilda

With the sale of Matilda our nomadic camping lifestyle has come to an end, at least for the time being. So it was time to downsize even further, no point the camping gear being stored away taking up valuable space. Time for a garage sale.

Friday night getting ready

getting ready

I had put an ad in Gumtree on the internet and also in the local paper. I wonder if any one will see them? It was to be from 7-30 to 12-30.

At 6-30 Saturday morning the first vehicle pulled up. We were still having breakfast so I went out and said we will not be ready till 7am. “oh we will wait” they said. By the time I lifted the garage door there were 3 lots of people waiting to swoop in on any bargains…

Having a garage sale is lots of fun. We had a garage sale in September 2009 when we had decided to start travelling and downsize from a 3 bedroom house to a one room Granny flat. (click here to take a look into my archives and see the start of our dream) We chat to the people and sell them “stuff” that we are amazed they will use. I put in my old Nikon SLR that I haven’t used for years. It was the first thing to sell. Maybe I should’ve put more than $25 on it !!! The cd’s and books were well rummaged through with most people finding at least one treasure to take away. I intended to take photos during the day of the sale but some how the morning just raced by and it was all over before I could stop to take a photo or two.

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After the excitement was all over and we had a well-earned cup of tea. I wandered around the garden and I would like to show you these beautiful flowers that are out at the moment.

Pentas

Bat Plant

orchid

 

 

 

 

Garage sale day…

We were up at crack of dawn, 5am, Jack biked off to put garage sale notices, with our address on them, at every intersection, 10 in total. I moved things around outside so they could be seen, and was finishing pricing things when the first customer arrived, 6-30am.

He told me that the paper had put our ad into the “for sale” section, not “garage sale”. As the day wore on and more and more people arrived I asked how they had found us and all said they followed the signs Jack had put up. So much for the newspaper ad…

Friends June and Rex came over to help and more importantly keep up a supply of coffee and delicious cake, that June had made.

We had a fun day, Jack is really good at persuading people they just can’t leave with out this or that. By 1-30pm it had slowed down to just the occasional person dropping in to browse around. By then every thing had been well picked over. At 4pm I shut up shop while Jack went round to collect all the garage sale signs. We then went upstairs to count the cash and put our feet up with a well-earned cuppa.

We were well pleased with the final total of almost $300. But more importantly a lot of the junk had gone and we can now fine tune all the rest of our clearing up…