10 sleeps ......

still in Singapore and its now Tuesday Feb 14th.....

So not long before we depart, in fact just 10 sleeps.  Oscar flys out next Tuesday evening and arrives in Melbourne at 6.00am on Wednesday Feb 22 when - hopefully - the Australian Quarantine people will be there to pick him up and take him to Spotswood Center.

He will be there for one month, not sure how we are going to cope with that, let alone Oscar!!

 

 Oscar in the crate in the lounge here in Singapore!

We have the crate here in the lounge so he gets used to it being around and by the time he needs to spend at least 10 hours in it, he will be used to it and it won't be too stressful for him. Though we know he will fret as he will not be around us and he needs his people, be it John, myself or Yvonne.... he has always been around people and after losing his brother in July last year he is even more dependent.

But we are doing our best, so fingers crossed he will be well enough to travel and strong enough to take the flight and the 30 days of quarantine.

In the meantime, we are doing last minute purchases of items we cannot get in Australia and if we can, it would be too expensive!  The removalists arrive on Wednesday morning of next week and apparently will take about 5 hours to pack. We have a 20' container and will probably take up about 17 cbm ....  can't afford to buy anything else anyway, so thats it!

The shipment is packed on the 22nd, then it goes back to the removalists warehouse to add our shipment from Batam - furniture from our villa there - then the container will 'probably' depart Singapore by about Feb 28th. We have been told it will take just on 3 weeks for it to arrive in Melbourne but it will sit on the docks till the Australian customs can get around to checking everything. Which apparently is about 2 weeks. If there is nothing needing to be done like fumigation etc then we should be expecting the shipment at our home in Ballan by the first week of April.

This will be the exciting part, the removalists will be unpacking of course so all we need to do is 'supervise' where everything is to be placed. At this stage we really don't have much of an idea as to where everything will go as we have only seen the house once and that was last December when we spent an hour or so just going through everything and measuring rooms.

Its hard saying goodbye to all our friends here, but we know we will see most of them again at some stage ...... but we need to look to our future too and start to think of new friendships and settling in to our new home.

Will keep you posted on events as they happen......

map of where Ballan is located ... Melbourne is to the right off the map. That's for all my friends here in Singapore!!

one door closes another will open!

we are still here in Singapore sorting, packing and generally getting ready to repatriate to Australia .... and then on to Ballan.

We were very apprehensive about moving to a small town after the vibrancy of Singapore, but starting to come to terms with the move and just today we talked about the new adventures that await us ....

its a bit like as one door closes another will open!

There has been a lot involved in the move back to Australia, there is the sorting through all our belongings and arranging for a removalist to get everything shipped back.


We have a villa in Indonesia and there are quite a few things (including furniture) we need from there that has to be shipped to Singapore in time to be shipped to Melbourne with the rest of our things on February 21. But the hold up is on the Indonesian end .... so we wait and wait .... and wait some more, for they need to decide when this is going to happen. In the meantime we are getting a little stressed as each day goes by and the time is getting closer. We want some definite dates!

I have recently uploaded a blog post on packing - or more to the point - what not to pack on my other blog. You may care to read that posting here: Living in Singapore.

John has been extra busy getting his business up and running. With his deep appreciation of cultural diversity in Asia and Australia's changing role in the region, I can see his  business leaping ahead!

John Fabre and Associates is a boutique agency focused on how consumers and businesses can genuinely benefit from our changing world. I choose to work with associates in applying creative, communication and business management skills to align brand aspirations and consumer needs in an experience consumption driven world. We all bring different skill sets.
 

 

                                 Oscar

Oscar (our Tenterfield Terrier) now has his flight booked for February 20 and will be in Quarantine at the Spotswood Quarantine Station for one month.  This particular part of the move has been incredibly stressful for us both .... Oscar will be 14 years old in March and has a few health issues. The Australian Quarantine were not happy to allow his entry into Australia, citing his health issues on such a long flight. We have written to them explaining in great detail that even though he is old and has health problems, he is quite 'the fighter' and will survive the flight. We have agreed to a private vet assess him on arrival and accept all conditions they have placed on the permit that we now have.

We came to Singapore with two Tenterfield Terriers - our boys were brothers, they had the same parents - but Pokey died last July  we know that Oscar really has to go HOME and if we don't try, we will never know. We feel it is worth the risk, so long as he is not in any pain.


If you could see him running up and down the stairs here, there is no way he looks 'old'. The carer (from K9 Kennels) came today to bring the crate for Oscar to get used to. Even he was saying how healthy he looked and was playing with him. We are praying all will be well for him to travel home on February 20 and that he survives the following month in quarantine. We are allowed to visit him twice a week ... that is going to be hard on the three of us ... but lets hope that time goes by very quickly!!

Once he is out of there it will be party time ...... for it will be his 14th birthday!!

So yes .... we are packing and sorting getting ready for our move back to Australia and eventually to Ballan.  There is a lot of planning still to be done, but as one door closes another will open!  We have no idea what that open door will show us......

but we are ready for that next adventure!