Brisbane 2021, back to school and the hard thud back to reality

I can’t believe it has been a week since Clancy and I left Brisbane. Time really does fly by. Is it just me or does it take everyone else at least a week to settle back into some sort of routine and get things back in order after they have been away? Although having said that I do feel that I am finally adulting now that I have hit my 42nd year of living on this planet. As I always say – better late than never and I always have been late to a trend. So I guess it is only fitting that it takes me 42 years to finally get some sort of order in my life.

I reckon for the first time ever I left my house totally spotless, tidy and organised. And I mean organised… I had done a deep clean on the office (deep deep deep clean), laundry and bedrooms. Everything was in order and all I asked of Mr Chardy on my return was that the bed was kind of made and that the towels were hung up… and they were.

Because – you know we never actually go anywhere as a family… so it was just the boys and I down in Brisbane. God listen to me ramble on, does any of this even make sense? Ok so why did we go to Brisbane I hear you ask? Well our oldest – Tom – was lucky enough to be invited on holidays with my sister and her family (and another family) to the Sunshine Coast – poor him! We decided not to holiday this year so he was very lucky indeed. He flew down and then they were checking out on 21st January. Now school didn’t go back in until 26 January and it wasn’t really worth flying him back home only to turn around and fly him back so I decided to take one for the team and go down for a week with Clancy and Harry.

I was well and truly ready to get off the station after about 6 weeks of being here – things aren’t pretty when I am stuck here for more than about 4 weeks. I turn very ugly indeed. So off we went. This was in the thick of the Covid mandatory face mask wearing in Brisbane (and of course the airports). I had managed to get away with never having to put a face mask on so far during the whole Covid saga so it was quite the shock when we had to don one at the airport and let me tell you I was over it in about 2 minutes flat. But we did have to keep them on the whole way to Brisbane. Of course we survived.

We had a lovely night with my brother-in-law Mikey and his gorgeous wife CC and even had real Thai Takeaway!!!!

God it was good, sooooo good! The name of the restaurant we ordered it from makes me laugh every time – Bankok Milton. Don’t you just love it. Of course upon arrival at Mikey and C’s, C suggested that because it was only 3pm we might like to duck into Indooroopilly for a quick speed shop and some hair cuts for the boys. Um, that was a HELL YES from me!!! My boys were in desperate need of a hair cut and I couldn’t wait to see some shops.

The next day I had a quick coffee with my lovely friend Nikki from Styling You.

I met Nikki back in 2014 at my very first Blogging conference, after I had just started Miss Chardy. Look… here is a flashback…

It was so great to have a speed coffee date with her. Then it was off to have the night out at Pullenvale at a lovely little Air B&B with my sister and her family to get my oldest boy back – did I mention he is now 16 and has his L’s? He got them on the way into town to fly to the coast and my brother-in-law – Justin – even let him drive while he was down there. How lucky – Justo is a great driving instructor, it would have been so good for Tom.

I had not seen my sister and her family since we holidayed together at Noosa for Christmas back in 2019, over a year ago! Gosh it was so good to see them but no long enough. We had a great night together though.

They then drove back to NSW and I headed over the hill to Brookfield to stay with Ed for the rest of my time in Brisbane. The boys love staying at Ed & Rob’s, there is a trampoline, pool, 4 wheeler… they just love hanging out there. Ed put them to work, which they loved!

All I wanted to do while I was in Brisbane was to have lunch with the girls at a restaurant that had water views and let me tell you – they did not disappoint. Madame Wu’s was PERFECTION!!!!! I mean look at the view from our table…

We honestly had the best day. Just Ed, Kel (and her gorgeous daughter Grace) and Kirsten from Bettyquette – who I also met back in 2014 at my very first blogging conference. Here is another flashback (because we didn’t get a pic together last week – who even are we?)….

After lunch we headed to Mr Percival’s another perfect spot on the river where we had a lovely afternoon and evening. Gosh it was fun.

It was so nice to to feel rushed down in Brisbane and have time to do everything we needed to – like dentist appointments for everyone. It was a sad day when we had to drop the boys back at school and Clancy cried for about 1 hour after dropping them off. Poor little thing. The boys couldn’t have cared less, they were like “yeah, bye Mum” but I wasn’t ready to go, they were all but pushing me out the door, ha ha ha. I didn’t even get a pic with Harry before I left him, he was gone! Here is one I got in Tom’s dorm…

Can we just take a moment to look at another flashback, this one is from 6 years ago – Tom and Harry’s first day back at school here on the station – Tom year 5 and Harry year 3…

And then it was Thursday… time to fly back to Mt Isa. We had arranged for our new Govie – Miss Molly – to be in Mt Isa on Thursday also… we all stayed the night and drove back to the station on Friday. The holiday is always well and truly over when you land back in Mt Isa and have to deal with the heat, and rushing around town picking things up and getting groceries and trying to get out of town as quick as you can to beat any afternoon storms that might be looming. We were told the road was fine so off we went… through border control at the NT/QLD border then up the 160km of dirt road into the station.

We were only 30km from home (Molly following along in her ute) when we hit the first bog hole. It is no secret that one of my biggest fears is driving on muddy roads and I am definitely not experienced in getting through bog holes but there was no way around and I knew Mr Chardy would be heading down to find us eventually so I “fed it the beans” – as Tom would say, and tried to bust my way through. Bam… I was bogged up to my eyeballs… back, forward, back, forward trying to get myself out. I decided we weren’t going anywhere and we would have to wait there for Mr Chardy to come and find us, surely he would be coming soon. I told Molly to get in with us in the air con and there we sat for about 10 minutes, trying to call Marty on the UHF radio to no avail. Then I decided to give her one more go… back, forward, back forward and fed her the beans and out we popped. Are you kidding me… you should have heard us. We were as proud as punch. I asked Molly if she was happy to give it a whirl, told her to feed it and just motor through and guess what – she did and she got through… I mean who even are we? Total pioneering women of the outback, ha ha ha ha ha.

We were on a bit of a high thinking we were home and hosed but it wasn’t too much longer before we came upon and even bigger water course… and this time the water was actually flowing (albeit slowly) across the road…. what to do? I sent Clancy in to see how deep it was – like any good mother would – and to see if it had a rocky bottom. There was a bit of gravel around and I thought we might be right so, once again, I fed her the beans and tried to motor through but this time we were bogged even deeper than before. Oh dear lord. Are you kidding me. I may have become a little anxious this time, dropped a few f-bombs and lost my shit a little. We were still about 30km from home. Ok, yep this time we are really staying here. I was in low 4WD, no where to go from there. We sat there for a little bit and then Clancy said “don’t give up Mum, try again” and so I did, I put on my big girl pants, pulled myself together and I got myself out. Thanks Clancy, my little support crew! Once again there were cheering and Molly decided to give it a go and got through! Look at us go. We were beyond excited. I told her it was a team building exercise and this was all just a test and if she could make it to the station she could stay. The resilience project we called it. ha ha ha. What a trooper – did I mention that Molly is only 17 years old… what an absolute legend! As we were driving along Clancy said “I’m so proud of you Mum”…. nearly brought me to tears.

This time I decided not to get too cocky and was happy as long as we were still moving forward, I just took it steady. We came to the last gate and found a note telling us we needed to go via the cattle yards as they had had a shower of rain on the last bit of road… we were only 5km from home. We made it and we were so happy to be home! It was definitely an ice breaker, get to know you exercise for Molly.

So now you know why I hate driving anywhere at this time of the year. You never know where there may have been a storm or a shower of rain.

It is so great to be home. Clancy has started year 4 and we are back into the swing of things. Clancy’s official first day of school pic…

I am still organised, the house, office and laundry are still clean and tidy and maybe, just maybe now that I am 42 I can finally keep things this way!!!! Surely!!!

Now it is time to get my skates on and get ready to launch tickets to our Wild Spark event in Mt Isa. Tickets will go on sale tomorrow – Friday 5th Feb – at 9am and you will be able to purchase them here on the Miss Chardy website. We are so excited about our Wild Spark Long Lunch which will be on Saturday 6th March 2021… our 3rd annual Wild Spark event in Mt Isa. I can’t believe it is our 3rd. We will be raising money for the RFDS, there will be pop up shops, a guest speaker and of course lunch. Each lady will also go home with a goodie back. It is going to be fab so stay tuned.

Ok, enough from me, god if you have made it this far, well done!!! I have just vomited my past few weeks onto the page. Have a great day. Over and out.