The End is the Beginning is the End...

I left the UK on the 10th December 2007, a day that can be marked in may ways, not limited to...:

3 days after I finished work at EDS,
5 days after both my birthday and my arrival back from Berlin
12 days after what was to be my father's final birthday
The very day the rural delivery catastrophe struck CourierPost (the result of which was the need for a temp to man the admin for it in Auckland...and there was my job)
2 months since I left my flat to move in with Mum, Sian & Co to save money before the trip
8 days after the start of a beautiful relationship

On a more mundane level, it marked the day our flight was to leave from Manchester bound for Sydney via Singapore. 'Our', being my mother, my sister, her husband, their two children, and me.

The weeks and months leading up to the departure was quite a crazy time in many ways. Here isn't really the place for that, but those that know...know. Giving up my job, flat and Swansea for a quite aimless trip abroad carried with it many emotions, but this is a travel blog, so I'll try to keep to topic!

Ok, so many things had ended, many things had begun and I was open to see what would happen, although recent developments had cast a rather bitter shadow over the whole enterprise. I was determined for the whole adventure to end the way I wanted, and it seems to have done so...

My mother and sister had both organized pretty much everything in advance, leaving me with basic tasks like packing and making sure I was dressed in time to be taken to the airport.

Dressed and packed I was by the 10th, and so we boarded the plane. The plan: 3 day stop-over in Singapore, a couple of days in Sydney before heading to Fraser Island then back to Sydney for Xmas and NYE with time split between a house in Sydney and my Uncle David in Lawson and a house in Katoomba. Blue Mountains. Things would ease off in early January before a return to the UK on the 11th for the family and I'd head to NZ with CK.

That was the plan, the following entries are how it played out....

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