The Leaving- April 2011

The rain washed across the valley in chill sheets, blown by the westerly wind.

I stood on the patio that surrounded the pool and gazed out across the space below me that was

framed by eucalyptus hills to the horizon.

It was beautiful, and it was the view I had drunk from every day for the last 20 years.

I had just sold my house.

This house had raised my 3 children.

This acre of land had seen dogs cats chickens geese goats koalas snakes and kangaroos come and go.

This place had seen to the end of my marriage and witnessed some significant relationships begin

and end.

I felt winter coming early again, as it often does in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia, even though

it was only March but the summer had just fizzled out like my relationship with the woman I had

loved the most..

I was tired.

Tired of owning lawnmowers and cars.

Tired of cleaning gutters and fixing pumps and leaky roofs.

Tired of paying property taxes and council taxes and income taxes.

Tired of seeing my life savings run out the door to sustain the life of this house.

It was time to move on.

Property prices had dropped as people fixed with fear and less able to get bank finance had

withdrawn from the market. The earthquakes in Japan and Christchurch and the devastating floods

and cyclones in Queensland were still raw memories, and overseas hedge funds were selling down

Australian banking stocks as a way of making money on one of the most overpriced real estate

markets on earth. So the day I sold the house I probably lost $200,000 from what I could have

achieved 2 years before.

My savings had depleted as I had not worked for several years.

So I sold everything except my guitar which I left with my youngest son Jon. He was the only one left

in Adelaide and had recently moved out of home for the second time at the age of 23.

I booked tickets to London via Sydney and Bangkok. My son Chris lived in Sydney and I really wanted

to spend some time with him before I went overseas. My daughter Kate lived in London. I hadn’t

seen her for over a year, and I was going to stay with her and her partner Wayne for 6 weeks, after

which there were no real plans except that I would move on to my next experience.

I packed up my favourite books and Family photos and left them in the safekeeping of my best friend

Michael. Like me, he had a longing to travel to places less seen and experience people and cultures

less known. He, like me, was less into material wealth and we had many many great philosophical

discussions and an awful lot of laughs at our Saturday morning “therapy sessions” at the Organic

Markets Cafe in nearby Stirling. Whilst my children had grown up and left the nest, his were still at

school and he vowed to follow me in 3 years time when they were adults.

I felt it was time to become attuned again to life, and the things which were real. To break out of the

cocoon that most of us in the Western world spend our life in. Although I felt I had lived a fairly full

life up to now, I realised it wasn’t enough; that I wanted to live authentically and creatively, to break

the mould I had been cast in for once and for all.

To explore, to experience, to live truly in the moment.

The journey of the last 20 years or so had been about preparing myself for this, ultimately.

In some ways I felt I had been on a sleeper carriage on a train that was transporting me from my old

Life into the future.

That journey was almost done.

The awakening begun.

I would leave my mistakes where they lived and treat the past as one would treat a favourite novel-

put it on the shelf and occasionally pick it up to nostalgically rifle through the pages.

Any skills or wisdom I had gained I would take with me, along with what money I had left.

The material possessions I sold or gave away- I knew they were useless, in fact worse than useless.

They had tied me down, tied me to them.

Things.

Things that asserted a gravitational pull on me- that forced me to return to take care of them.

A house, a car, a sofa, a juicer, a phone, a big screen TV- did I own them or did they own me?

They need dusting and cleaning and regular maintenance.

They sucked a regular stream of income for taxes, rates, power and space.

Once they became mine they bonded to me and became as needy as a child.

But they were all dead or dying; inanimate things which wore out, depreciated, and then needed

Replacing. They became outmoded out of fashion and out techqued.

I left these things for others to care for and would not be enslaved by them again- when the train

stopped and I emerged from the sleeper, it would be alone and without this baggage that had

weighed me down.

I would be free.

I had done my time.