“Big adjustments to our expectations”.

June to October 2022, by Will.

Feature Photo: Enjoying our first camping escape since the big move, somewhere near Scott’s Brook, southeast of Boyup Brook, about 140kms from home. September 2022.

G’day to you all glad you can stop by, both Jenny and I hope life is treating you nicely. As predicted in the December 31st 2021 blog post, 2022 is turning into a doozy for the majority of people. Though I didn’t anticipate a rental crisis. We have come across quite a few people who are effected and usually they just have to cohabitate with extended family or friends to keep a roof over their head until they can locate a place of their own.

Even though we believe the rental property which we are currently living in is overpriced by about 25% (currently we are paying $570aud per week) it is turning out to be a nice spot, quiet, comfortable and convenient to ammenities, including work. The owners promptly deal with any maintenance problems that arise. Rodgie dog finds the backyard a little boring but there is lots of open space and parklands nearby, so she’s satisfied with a couple of decent walks each day.

3 month into our rental lease a new house construction commences right next to our bedroom. This will be the 4th time we have had to live next door to a new house construction site.

Jenny has struggled a bit with the big change and finds herself heading up to Mandurah &/or Fremantle for an overnighter most weeks due to work commitments and to see family. It is starting to become a bit onerous. Making new friends in a new location is also proving to be difficult, but to be fair and reasonable it’s still early days into this new lifestyle so we both hope small incremental adjustments will help improve the situation.

What about myself and the new job role ? Actually it’s going along good, as with any big multinational company there are barriers and road blocks to overcome. Things like getting the right computer access, working your way through the many policies and procedures. Dealing with company politics and the commissioning process . Fortunately the vast majority of people I’ve met and interacted with have turned out to be great, so no problems for me fitting into the team. Having a regular consistent pay for the first time in 11 years has also been rather nice.

I’m on a bit of an unusual roster, 2 days, 3 nights, 4 off, 3 days 2 nights, 5 off, 2 days 2 nights 5 off. Commonly known as the equal time sportsman roster, which means you have 2 weekends off then work 2 weekends. Jenny and I are starting to allocate what we will do for each block of days off (uh oh, sounds like planning). During a recent 5 day break we went camping and on my last 5 day break we had our daughter Olivia and the two grandkids stay over for 3 nights, which was fun. The kids have so much energy and keep us on our toes !

The play ground across the road comes in handy when the kids come to stay. Charlie is now 9 months old and Annelise has just past her second birthday.

That’s about all for now folks, I just wanted to give a short update of how team wiljen are going, we both still regularly ride our bicycles around the local area, about the only motorbike riding I’ve been doing is the 18km commute to work so it will be nice to include a bit more motorcycling into our lives. Now that we are into spring and summer is on the horizon we intend to get out camping a lot more. Our focus area will be on the Southwest. We are probably willing to travel up to 300kms from Bunbury and spend around 3 nights in a location.

Below are some photos of what has been happening since June. Thanks for reading, Will & Jenny. 

❤️🚴‍♀️🚴‍♂️🐕

Team wiljen take the Super Tenere across to Katanning via Collie to pick up our old family Ford Focus, which I will be using as a work commuter car. June 2022 it was a cold ride, only 9C in Collie at 10am !

Team wiljen gets 5 minutes of fame, thanks to Eli Moody’s amazing artistic talents our image ends up on the windows of Mandurah’s Performing Arts Centre. August 2022.

Even found some time to do a couple of upgrades on the Yamaha Super Tenere. Fitted an Atlas Throttle Lock. Installed a pair of H7, LED, Headlights. Big improvement on the halogen type, top right photo shows the difference between the Halogen vs LED.

There is not any storage solutions here for our Hybrid Camper so mostly we keep it up in Mandurah. This means there is a bit of logistics involved if we want to take it camping. Rodgie dog reckons this camp site south east of Boyup Brook looks ok.

Some camp cooking on the fire, even comes with an open fire place 🤣.

~~~~~~~~wiljen~~~~~~~~