Finally cleared out from Warrandyte

We rose, not so early on Sunday morning, and got back to Warrandyte for more packing. We quickly realised that there was no way all our stuff was going to come with us. So, we loaded the hardware and things that wouldn’t come, and took it to our storage at Fort Knox.

We had an amazingly large amount of stuff (three trolleys full), and an amazingly large amount fitted into the space we had. Some of it was balanced precariously. We’ll have to make another trip later.

After a while we both became very casual when crossing the road with approaching traffic. Hey, this is our street; keep your speed down: See, we’re not rushing out of your way. Actually, you could hear the traffic coming a long way off because of the wet road. The wet weather made things miserable. But, gradually things came together.

As I was loading the truck I had a curiously large number of motorists toot at me and calling out unintelligible things as they drove past. Were they feeling sorry for me, seeing me packing in the dark, or telling me to get off the road? Maybe they thought I was up to no good, and robbing one of the houses on the street. No idea. It was bizarre.

I squeezed our boxes into every nook and cranny, and almost packed them to the ceiling at the front of the truck. It was very loaded well.

I had to ring the rental company and apologise for not returning the truck on time. It was due back in Canberra at 5.00pm and here it was 4.00pm with us still packing in Melbourne. We needed another day.

S had collected a lot of magazines over the years, and wondered if Melody would have liked them. Passing them on would have been a way of getting rid of them. No, she wasn’t interested. Fortunately, it was rubbish night in Warrandyte, and the neighbours’ bins became very useful. Every bin in the close vicinity began to bulge as we filled them with our magazines and other rubbish.

Despite packing carefully and stacking the various boxes as high as possible so that there would be the maximum amount of floor space for our plant pots it became apparent that there would be insufficient space for them all. Drastic measures needed to be adopted: Large pot plants were placed next to one another on the floor, with tiny pots located in the gaps between the larger ones. Now came the tricky bit. Another layer of pot plants was placed on top of the first layer. That’s not something you would think of doing if you valued the pots or the plants in them. It was desperation. Then came all the last minute things, and before the truck doors were closed things were literally being thrown inside. Brooms, strips of wood and other stuff that I can’t recall, were literally thrown inside on top of everything else. There was no choice really. We finally left at about 10.00pm