A year of lasts
It’s been a while. A few things have changed, and by a few I mean most things in my life. It’s a good thing though, and it’s something Megan (my wife) and I had been planning for over a year.
I remember sitting in my son’s room in early spring 2025 in Newcastle. It was my favourite place to sit, especially at that time of year. Outside his window there was a pomegranate tree, and three citrus trees—lime, mandarin and lemon. The citrus all blossomed at that time of year and the smell would waft into his room. It smelled amazing.
Megan and I were talking. We didn’t feel that Newcastle was the place for us, and with our son starting primary school in 2027, if we wanted to move, we would need to do it before October 2026. A year felt so far away, but it meant that this could be the last time I’d see my citrus trees blossom (they tended to bloom towards the end of spring).
We made a tentative decision and created a plan. We would use our annual Christmas Melbourne pilgrimage as reassurance that what we were thinking was right. All going to plan, 2025 would be our last Newcastle–Melbourne Christmas road trip.
Once you know something is ending, you start paying attention. As the months rolled by I tried to notice the lasts. My last failed tomato crop in the Newcastle garden (the soil was clearly cursed). My first and only crop of olives from the tree I’d planted six years earlier.
The biggest risk in our plan was my work. I needed a job I could do remotely, or one in Melbourne. I’d been at Beech for over five years and had been wanting something new for a while, so this was extra motivation. At the end of March an opportunity came up with a client of mine, Alpha Australia. I’d built two of their sites and was halfway through a third. I liked the team and what they did. Apparently they liked me too—I started in April as their new Digital Lead.
Very quickly it was my last day at Beech. It was bittersweet. I’d been there a long time and we were a close team. I miss Mr Hoots, our AI companion, and our constant team banter.
We were moving. It was happening, but it still didn’t feel real.
The following months were chaotic. Our plan was to rent out our Newcastle house and find a rental in Melbourne. We had a lot to fix up on the house and far too much to organise: a house, a primary school, a daycare and more. The weeks and months flew.
It was easy to notice the lasts when I knew they were lasts. But there were more I didn’t realise. My favourite place to skateboard with my son. The local animal sanctuary we’d visit as a family. We went there one day not realising we wouldn’t come back.
The move happened fast. We thought it would take multiple rental applications—we got the first one we applied for. We had 10 days.
Those 10 days were hectic. Packing up a house without neglecting two very active young kids was tough, and they found the whole process unsettling. We had to say goodbye to their friends and their preschool teachers. It was hard.
We’d thought we would have at least another week or two. Instead it was all logistics. We worked so hard and just focused on the next thing. We didn't have time for reflection.
I never got to say goodbye properly to a lot of people, which I regret. There were cafes and places I love that I never got back to one last time.
The hardest lasts were the ones I realised had already happened.
But I did get one.
Thanks to some weird weather my citrus bloomed earlier than usual. The last thing I did before we left was stand at my favourite window in my son’s empty room and smell the citrus one last time.
