There’s no place like Dubbo
MOVING to Dubbo was never going to be a simple decision to make. Two kids under five and no real plan, we left Melbourne’s bright lights and busy freeways for a life that we’d dreamed of since our eldest was a newborn; a life of simplicity.
My husband and I had longed for days without traffic and skies that seemed to go on forever.
We arrived with every corner of our car packed and a moving truck that held our entire life’s contents. We made it. What do we do now?
I had made the decision to continue working as a photographer while we worked out the finer details of our new life.
A decision that served me well when I was featured in this very paper, two weeks in a row, for both my work and my photography business.
I would later be offered a regular spot to write about life as a new resident in Dubbo.
Do you know those moments in life, the moments where everything is happening for you and you can’t help but wonder when it’s all going to fall? Well a couple of days later, I would learn that my little sister was unwell and I needed to return home.
Nothing can quite prepare you for moments like that. Especially when you’re over 800km’s away.
I worried about going back to Melbourne. I love Dubbo and our children had finally found comfort in their new routine. But somewhere inside me still worried that we wouldn’t be coming back.
We loaded up our little Subaru Forrester and were on the road to Melbourne the following day.
Driving into the city was the wakeup we needed. We sat in traffic for over two hours before we even began to get anywhere.
I looked at my husband, “how could we live like this for so many years?”
He gave me the saddest look, “I could never live here again”, like everything we ever believed, growing up, was a lie.
That it was normal to spend an hour in your car, just trying to get home to your family after a long day at work. That you were less of a person, less successful, less worthy, if you weren’t in this never ending rat race.
Such an enlightening moment, knowing that we had made the right decision for the things we wanted for our lives and our children’s lives, we would definitely be returning
home to Dubbo, we’d even come to look forward to leaving Melbourne.
Pulling out of my parent’s driveway, my heart didn’t feel as heavy.
I wasn’t scared of what Dubbo would bring our lives because I knew that, as difficult as it was to leave my family behind, we had fallen in love with our new home, the community, and the lives we planned to build here.
We had come to love how quaint our new town is. We loved the sense of community and the relaxed lifestyle that Dubbo offers.
In Melbourne, like most big cities, it was normal to spend two hours each day sitting in traffic on Melbourne’s busiest freeway, nicknamed “The Monash Carpark” due to the lack of movement during peak hour.
One hour each way. Two hours in one day. Ten hours in a single week. The hours spent sitting in traffic alone would quickly add up over time.
520 hours a year; 500 if you were lucky enough to have a couple of weeks off over Christmas, and that’s just commuting to and from work!
Everyone is always too busy. Rightfully so! We lived in a city full of shopping malls that take an entire day to navigate, restaurants that continue to pop up all over the place, work places that are generally not within 20km’s from your home, and then all that traffic I told you about!
Don’t get me wrong, Melbourne is a beautiful city and we had a fantastic life growing up.
I got to sit in the drive-through line for the first Krispy Kreme opening in Melbourne for an entire five hours. We had a huge list of clubs and bars to choose from on a night out. We are the food and shopping capital.
We had restaurants for every country, every style of cuisine, every new trend, and every occasion. We had it good in Melbourne.
We also missed out on a lot. We missed out on the things that matter most to us. Our children. Each other.
We spent more time being busy than we ever did making memories with our kids.
So when we drove over that hill and into Dubbo, I knew that this beautiful sunset was just the start for us and our lives here.