Wagga Wagga to Worcestershire & back again
After teasing us and offering up a warm day or two here and there over the last few months, summer arrived in England this week.
We’ve had a solid six days in a row of temperatures in the high 20s, low 30s. It’s even prompted official government warnings, about beating the heat. Friends and Adam’s family have been asking all about how we Aussies cope with weather like this for months at a time.
When you go on a road trip in Australia you inevitably end up stopping at a ‘servo’ to refuel the car, use the bathroom and eat. On busy routes there might be a ‘service centre’ where there is a petrol station and several fast food outlets, but on many country roads, it’s an old style road house – essentially a petrol station with a cafeteria attached.
In England, the ‘service centre’ is known as ‘services’ and most are akin to what you find on the Hume Highway at Yass. As I’ve learnt over the past few months though, there are fancy road-side stops in a few select locations. Welcome to the world of ‘posh services’…
Thanks to the internet, it’s been relatively easy for me to keep in contact with family and friends back in Australia. Emails, wifi text messaging apps and video chats make the distance between Adam, myself and our loved ones ‘down under’ seem minimal. For a couple of members of my family though, this sort of communication just doesn’t work. My grandparents aren’t online, so my grandmother and I have taken to exchanging handwritten letters.
I was chatting to a stranger the other day about moving to Malvern from Australia and it dawned on me that Adam and I have been in England for six months now. The time has truly flown ever so fast.
Malvern really feels like home now. Old buildings that I caught myself staring at in awe are now just part of scenery and picking a posey full of flowers from our rambling cottage garden seems second nature.
I know short cuts around town, can recommend pubs and cafes and am starting to sound a little bit English… well in a way!
Over the last few days I’ve been watching from afar the build-up, impact and effects Tropical Cyclone Debbie has had on Queensland. The category four storm bashed into the Whitsunday coast between Bowen and Airlie Beach earlier this week, with my hometown of Mackay (just over an hour’s drive to the south) copping its fair share of destructive winds and torrential rain too.
Oh what a difference a week can make. Last week Adam and I were sipping sangria under sunny blue skies in Gibraltar. Over the weekend we’ve watched flurries of snow showers from our kitchen window, whilst warming our hands on big mugs of coffee.
It still seems a bit magical to me that you can wake up one morning and have one type of weather, jump on a plane or train or in a car, and suddenly be in a place completely opposite to where you were. It’s why I guess so many people get wanderlust.
Wattle and Ash 