Twenty months ago we stood here, on top of Mount Wellington, overlooking the city of Hobart and it’s surrounding countryside and coastline.

We dreamed and talked about living here one day. Could we make a life in Tasmania?

In July 2013 we were at a crossroads in our lives anyway. We were going to be “empty nesters” in a couple of months. S~E was engaged and settled in Sydney. C~M was about to begin her six month adventure on a volunteer programme in Buenos Aires.

Aussie Mate and I had lots of conversations, discussions, shared ideas, some sensible, some totally random, some over a meal, many with a bottle of wine involved.

How did we picture the next phase of our lives? Where did we want to spend this new phase?

We both certainly wanted to slow down, get out of the rat race, experience a more relaxed pace of life. We agreed that we would sell the house and down size.

Over the following months, ideas became plans. I applied for an Australian spouse visa. I thought about taking voluntary redundancy from my bank job.

We continued to work on our plan. It felt right. We reassessed our decisions when things didn’t seem to work to our anticipated timetable. But the overall plan still felt right. We took small steps and the months passed.

And now today, here we are. A few days away from leaving the UK to start that new phase of our lives. Tasmania may be short term, maybe not. We don’t know yet and we haven’t burnt any bridges. We are looking forward to finding out.

“The distance between your dreams and reality is called action.”

“Dreams don’t work unless you do.”