The Choices We Make

Over the last week we’ve had a couple of instances where we have come face to face with the financial implications of our choice. We met a friend of a friend who is a business analyst and has the benefits of the comfortable lifestyle that level of income brings – great inner-city apartment, new car, new mac…. We also had a very interesting chat with a Stanthorpe engineer about the amount of hidden money in this town and how different the relationship is when you are working with a grower as a business partner rather than a seasonal employee.

Although this choice was never about the money and I know we won’t be doing this forever, it was still somewhat confronting. I had the whole gamut of associated feelings - felt the desire for material things, worried about not saving for retirement, missed the city lifestyle, worried about how we are going to pull together the money we need to do the necessary and costly work the van will soon need (engine rebuild and rust removal/respray), speculation over how much more effectively we might be able to pursue our interest in permaculture if we had the money to do the courses and have a garden of our own to play with, etc. etc… I even went as far as circling jobs I could apply for in the weekend paper and found a significant number of jobs that were both suitable and paying good salaries. Once I reached that point, I realised that I wasn’t really serious about settling down with a real job just yet, so I’m fine about it now – but what a ride!

I have been slowly chipping away at the idea of starting a business consultancy while on the road, as I would really enjoy applying my skills to helping small business proprietors to save money and improve their working practices, but there’s a fair bit of groundwork to do before I can get that started.

Anyway, there are more pressing issues at hand right now. Our apple picking job finishes at the end of next week and so far we don’t have a new job to go to. We’d like to chase the sun and head North, but nobody we’ve called so far has definite work for us. Timbercorp, a major agriculture investment company, has gone bust and all associated farms have been forced to cease operating until each project has been assessed and deemed financially viable by the administrators. This seems to have limited the availability of work considerably right now. There is a reasonable chance we’d get work if we traveled to certain towns with crops due for harvesting but we cannot claim any travel or work related expenses against our tax unless we can evidence that the work is pre-arranged. Hmm.. a quandary of a pickle!

We are off to Jeff & Katrina’s block of land today for one last weekend of bonfires before we all head off in our various directions, so I’d better get cracking with some more phone calls before we head out. We have spent several weekends out on the block with various people, below are a couple of Bryn's pics from there. It really is a beautiful place!