We are Emily and Josh; we are 19 & 21 years old, and we come from a small town in Western Australia called Geraldton, its population is around 30’000, and is a pretty boring town. It has a cinema, some restaurants and is surrounded by beaches. It also has 2 wind speeds; dead or cyclonic & plenty of "people with character". We have lived in Geraldton most of our lives at home with our parents, and we went to different schools. Emily went to Nagle (a catholic private school) and Josh went to Geraldton Senior (a public school). We went to Primary School together, even though we don’t remember each other, but we’re sure we probably saw each other around. Emily’s mother worked at the canteen for the primary school we attended, Josh has already apologised for pretending he had no money to get free lunches from her. She understands.
We met each other on MySpace around the 10th of April, 2008, where we shared a love for sarcasm, Jim Carrey movies and a hatred for anything sports related. On our first date we went to see a movie called Sweeney Todd at the cinema. Aww how romantic! On April 13th, 2008 we became “facebook official”. We are both into gaming; Josh enjoys a good game of Minecraft, Left 4 Dead, and League of Legends. Emily prefers to watch the more interesting games, plays a little Minecraft and watches a lot of TV shows while she lurks tumblr & design blogs. The internet is our playground.
Josh started working in IT around October 2007 for an IT support business, helping small businesses with their PC needs, later moving onto Market Creations and becoming a full-fledged Server and Desktop IT team, who did both contract and small business work around the Midwest. Emily finished school, and was trying to find a job in the Graphic Design business, but in Geraldton, if you aren’t in mining or retail, there were no opportunities. She worked at Target for a good 6 months or so, but the money was too low for such a bad job, and with their refusal to train her higher she figured it in her best interests to leave. We kept to ourselves mostly as we enjoyed each others company & we didn’t get along with most people from Geraldton. We did meet some friends not too long ago, who quickly became our closest friends, and who still are today.
I guess we should explain our story in the last year of our lives, it’s been a big one;
We were getting miserable living in Geraldton at around the 2½ year mark in our relationship, Josh was working at a mining company as the only IT Support company-wide, and Emily was still working part time at Target trying hard to find another job. We had always had the intention to move to Perth at some point but as fate would have it we travelled to Melbourne for Emily's 18th birthday& we fell in love with everything about it. A month or so after our holiday came to an end, we were adamant to move there. Over the Christmas and New Year’s break, Emily applied for universities & Josh lined up some job interviews, and got a phone call from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine as IT Support, where he got given a chance to come in for an interview. He organised flights and accommodation and flew over for 2 days, where he had the interview, and thought he did pretty well. After getting back to Geraldton, we played the waiting game; unfortunately 1 month later he received an email saying he had been unsuccessful in the position. We worked out how much money it would cost to fly over again if he did get another interview, and it would be around $1200 for each trip to Melbourne. We decided then and there to move over with no job, no car, and very little cash in hand.
We told our parents and friends of the plan, where most already knew about us wanting to move, we had a lot of people (and some family) who thought we had no chance, and were dreaming, but our minds were made up. We had recently met some good close friends in Geraldton too, which we didn’t have before, so it was a very hard choice to make. To leave our family, and friends, to leave our jobs, and our easy home living, to sell our car, pack our bags, and jump.
We had set a date, the 14th of March, 2011, one week before Emily's birthday and almost a year since we had our holiday in Melbourne. Josh handed his resignation in 1 month early for an easy transition for the next support person, and we started planning. We put our only asset on the market, our beloved Mitsubishi Lancer, for $7000, and we moved back home from renting at a friend’s place to save a little more money. We held a garage sale, where Emily sold most of her clothes and maintains that it is the "hardest thing she has ever done". We started sorting through our things, and having goodbye lunches and dinners with our friends and family. On heading down to Pemberton for a wedding, Josh had gotten a call from a person in Bunbury regarding the car, funnily enough, as he was driving right through Bunbury on the way down – must have been meant to be. He drove to the prospective buyers home and took it for a test drive, the man offered $5200, as we had no other offers in the month we had the car on sale, we said yes. We had sold our car, and we had at least a little cash to help with our move. 1 week later, we drove up to Perth to meet the buyer, and swapped car and cash. We were officially car free.
Josh used his dad’s car to travel to and from work for the remainder of his weeks at the mining company. The final week came, Josh had officially finished work and Emily had been helping the family clear out her room. We started packing, overwhelmed by the amount of childhood memories we were uncovering from the back of our cupboards, and feeling a sense of accomplishment as we packed over 18 years of our lives into suitcases. We spent as much time with our friends and family as we could, going to friends’ houses over the weekend and saying our goodbyes, and finally having a goodbye lunch at one of Geraldton’s few restaurants with our parents, and friends. It was a sad but liberating lunch; we had to say goodbye to those who we had been surrounded by for so long, taking for granted the friendships, and the closeness of family. We headed home, finished packing, and went to bed.
At long last, the day we had been waiting for was here, Josh will always remember when Emily woke up, and started crying, saying that she won’t get to wake up next to our cat Moss anymore, assumably she got more upset at the fact that we are about to leave all we know and love, our lives for the last 18 years, for the unknown. No idea on what we will do, or what will happen when we get there, we just knew it was for a good reason. We got our bags and headed for the airport with my parents. It was a hard ride to the airport, watching the town where you grew up getting smaller in the distance & knowing you won’t see your parents for at least a couple of months, after living with them all our lives, it was hard to imagine just how that would be. We arrived at the airport, checked in and had some breakfast; Emily’s parents were coming separately, so we waited for them. The speaker came over and asked for people to board the plane, Emily’s parents showed up just in time, which was good as she probably would have been a wreck on the plane & we said our final goodbye. It was a very sad morning; we hopped on the plane to Perth, and started our adventure. In the Perth airport, whilst we were waiting for the plane to Melbourne, we were on our iPhones checking out what suburbs were the best and which to steer clear from. We boarded the plane knowing that we wouldn't be returning for a long time. We were sad for leaving so much behind, families, friends, our entire life. We were happy to finally be following our dream; we were worried for ourselves as we were travelling to the other side of the country with nothing but hope. No home to go to, or friends to stay with, no jobs lined up, nothing but the suitcases we came with, and less than $6000 in the bank.
