to Bendigo

Last weekend my family and I went to Bendigo for four days. It wasn’t just a sightseeing trip, my husband got a job there and we wanted to explore the area before moving there in few weeks time. I never been to Bendigo previously, though I’ve visited the towns not too far away from it. Upon hearing the news of the job offer I felt relieved and happy for my husband, but apprehensive about moving to unfamiliar place where I don’t know anyone. Yet, it is only 2-hours train trip away from Melbourne. Everyday I would search the internet for the information and come away feeling reassured that Bendigo seems to be a lovely small town with everything we may need at this stage of our lives. Just before the trip I could write down a long list of the advantages of moving there and only few disadvantages, but I was definitely having cold feet about the whole thing.

On friday we looked at two schools and areas around them. In the afternoon I left everyone else at the playground to take a short walk around the neighbourhood to get a better understanding of the distances as we spent a lot of time driving around. While I was away my daughter hit her head at the playground. It was just a small scrape, but there was lots of blood (as often happens with the head wounds) and my husband’s choice of words on the phone made me imagine the worst. I was back with them in the few minutes and by that time the blood flow almost stopped, which made me realise it probably wasn’t too bad, but it was hard to see anything for the blood and the hair, so we went to the emergency department of the hospital anyway. I guess it was useful to find out that emergency department seems to be well run and staffed by nice, caring, professional people. After the emotional adrenaline-fuelled roller-coaster I felt drained and wanted to hide away from the world in a safety of my own home under warm covers and not to have to face new places or people. It didn’t help that every night during our trip I kept on waking up feeling totally disorientated and not knowing where I was.

The next three days we took it easy: walking around, looking, exploring the type of places that we usually spend our time at like the library, the park, the museums, finding cute little shops and interesting restaurants and cafes to try out later.

The sun was shining, the sky was blue, people were friendly and I felt that maybe it will be OK, maybe this was the right place for us, maybe I can let go of my resistance to change and start writing to do lists and taking steps to get us there.