In Three Days I Made Our Old Life Disappear

We had been living in paradise for almost twelve years. Mission Beach, a picturesque small town, right on the beach and slotted among the tropical rainforest. Truly a beautiful patch of paradise.

The downfall of living in such a beautiful place is the tropical cyclones that can hit and ravish the coastline.

We experienced a large and intense Category 4, Tropical Cyclone Larry in 2006, that tore through the town. We lived in a house only a few hundred meters from the beach and we were hit hard. Whilst we hid under my heavy dining room table, the cyclone lifted our roof from the house but thankfully set it back down again. As lucky as we were though, the damage was done, both to our house and most of our belongings.

It was a time where we had to pick up the pieces and start again. A long uphill battle that took years to come back from. Years to have the repairs done to the house and time to replace everything we lost.

Just as it felt like we were finally back on out feet, five years later, a tropical cyclone Category 5, three times larger than TC Larry, was forecast. Tropical Cyclone Yasi, she hit us and she hit us good. Everything we worked hard to replace over the last five years, most of it was gone again. There were even a few hours there when I thought we couldn't possibly survive this one. It was a terrifying night for all.

Again we were left with the excessive damage and the need to pick up the pieces, so it's probably no surprise when, six months later, I decided that I would take my two Sons and leave town. We couldn't go through all this again for a third time.

We had the majority of the house repaired by this time, except there was one area out the back that was damaged. It was stopping me from being able to lock the house up.

I discussed my decision to leave town with my boys and they were happy to leave. The uphill battle of trying to cope with loosing everything you own, twice in five years. I think it's totally understandable why the boys and I wanted to leave.

However, I couldn't leave until the house was lockable. I set about repairing a couple of outside walls, which took me about a week to do, with the help of a good friend.

Here are the before and after shops of our repair. This made the house lockable once again.

I asked the boys to pack up the things they absolutely could not live without - TV, XBox, Games, Computer etc - while I packed enough clothes to get by. We set a date to leave in the next few days, so we all could say our goodbyes.

Almost twelve years in Mission Beach, so there were definitely places and people that deserved a goodbye.

Those few days flew by quickly and suddenly it was the morning of the day we were leaving town.

I climbed out of bed, got dressed, laid my dressing gown down on the end of the bed and walked out of my bedroom for the last time.

We had a quick breakfast and it's suddenly time to leave. The last thing I did was clean out the perishables from the fridge, throw them in the bin and put the bin on the kerb for pickup.

Oh, and of course, I locked my house up.

Once done, the three of us jumped into our cars. I was driving one with my youngest son as passenger and my oldest son was driving his own car.

We quietly drove out of Mission Beach and preceded to travel 1,569 kilometres, over three days, to relocate in the City of Brisbane.

On 14 September 2011, we walked out of our house, jumped into our cars and drove out of Mission Beach. We did not pack everything up, we did not make our beds, we left them exactly as they were when we climbed out that morning. In fact, my dressing gown was still laid on the end of the bed, my slippers sitting nearby.

There was still all the pantry food, cereals and dry goods on the shelves, dishes were drying in the sink, a basket of clothes freshly washed were sitting in the lounge room, waiting to be folded.

The books were still in the bookcase, CDs in the rack, videos in the TV cabinet, the boys sports trophies sitting on display, along side my TV.

Everything was still set up waiting for a family, that no longer lived there, to come home. However, that family never did.

I flew back to Mission Beach approximately two years later, hosted a huge weekend garage sales, sold everything for next to nothing, ordered the biggest skip rubbish bin available and totally cleaned that house out. I then locked the house up, put it on the market to sell and flew back to Brisbane.

I was back in town for three days and in that three days, I made our old life disappear. We were no more!

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Originally posted on Medium