When you’ve been planning big changes for a while they seem to take an eternity to actually happen. It feels like we have been preparing to leave Melbourne for years and although we love this place and its people, the day we leave has felt like an age away.

Well, all that has all changed in the last few weeks, I have all but finished up at my high rise job, we’ve booked the movers and this last weekend we invited a bunch of friends for a farewell farmyard BBQ. The big day is rushing towards us and we are being swept in the details of turning our lives upside down.

There is still so much to do, the development application for our studio is now in the hands of the local authorities, but the application for permissions for our bridge are still a way off.

Sometimes it seems like the mountains of red tape will take months to clear, but deep down I kind of appreciate that society cares about how we make buildings and how we build bridges, even if the concern is sometime misplaced.

We are still nowhere near ready to start building, I doubt that will actually start until March, but there is no shortage of work to do at Milkwood. We need to do a lot planning of the layout of all the elements that will make up our little ecology and then there is soil to improve, green manure and legumes to plant, water storage to worry about and earthworks to be designed.

We have been furiously educating ourselves in advance of the big move. Kirsten has just completed a permaculture design certificate with Geoff Lawton from the Permaculture Research Institute and I am booked in to do the course in early February.

I know we have a lot of work in front of us, but I don’t think I have ever been so excited in my life.