This year in travel

image from Big Cat Green Island Reef Cruises

After our trip to Singapore and Hong Kong at the end of 2017 we decided that this year we would not leave Australia. Hoping to save up for a trip to Europe to visit Rhy's Dad next year. A trip we keep saying will be "next year" but we're waiting for our youngest to be ready for a busy and long holiday. I've so many places I want them to see, and I have a few places I'd like to add to my country count. 

Usually when we holiday at home we go to Adelaide, Melbourne or Sydney - all places that family and dear friends call home. But this year we are heading north and I am so excited. 

We are planning to go back to where I was born, a place I haven't been back to since I was 6 or 7. Since I was my daughters age. Darwin. We're spending a week in Darwin with my mum. She's going to give us a little bit of a tour of my childhood. And we are going to spread my grandparents ashes. My Grandma and Pa both died in the 1990s, they died in Melbourne but both said they'd like their ashes scattered in Darwin. I only heard this three or four years ago. I was a bit shocked to find my grandparents had moved around the country with us. In little containers in the garage. I want to see their final wishes granted. The last of them to pass away - Pa - died when I was 11, so I never really did anything for them while they were alive. Other than bring them that unique grandparent joy only grandchildren can bring. 

After Darwin we are heading over to Cairns to visit some friends who moved to Cairns in January. We're spending a few nights on Green Island (the pic above) and I cannot wait to take Imogen snorkeling now that she is a much stronger swimmer. 

So this is what I am looking forward to this winter.