The Best Laid Plans ......

Plans .. We have heard the term used that God laughs at those that make plans, we have never been ones to travel to a structured plan as we prefer to go with the flow and have no time limit on places we end up. Kilcoy was one of the very few 'plans' that we agreed to give it a go. It will also be the very last especially in the situation that we found ourselves.

What was supposed to be a 10 week stay on a 388acre property turned into a stressful dissapointing three week's. It had been agreed that our children were welcome to come and visit whilst we were farm sitting, an opportunity that our daughter's jumped at as neither had taken a holiday for many years and looked forward to seeing a small part of Queensland. This was all arranged last August and though we choose to drive the rig back to Perth for Christmas and return to Qld in February we weighed the cost of of doing so with being based for two & a half months and agreed to help out the owners of the property so they could go away for a holiday.

Problems started early with the floods in the district, unable to get into the property due to the river flooding we stayed at Somerset Dam for a few days, there we were visited by the owners and assured that all was as planned and they would call us when the river levels dropped sufficiently to enable us to get the rig across, this happened a few days later and we were pleased to be finally on the property.

We expected the owners to take a couple of days to show us around and get themselves ready to leave but this stretched out to two weeks, during this time the owners told us that their plans had changed and that they were putting the farm on the market and asked us when our children would be arriving and how long they would stay, this was all out in the open as we had mentioned dates many times before, we felt a dark cloud come over us as we thought about the expenses our kids & we had incurred with non refundable airfares. We mentioned to the owners that if they felt they didn't want to go away with their property on the market to let us know and we would have time to make other arrangements, we mentioned this three times to them and each time we were assured that they would go away as they dearly needed a break and all would work in with our kids stay,

The Best laid plans ....... not only did they wait untill the very day our youngest daughter & partner arrived from SA, they only went away for 2 nights before arriving back for the day, away they went again for the night and back again next morning, ..... How could we expect to 'relax' and enjoy our stay when we felt on edge all the time. Again they left and this time we thought they would be gone for the next 3 weeks at least but after 4 days they came back and told us they were back to stay ...... not even the courtesy of a phone call to say 'sorry our plans have changed we coming home' ..... Is it any wonder Vickie's stress levels increased and her damaged eye had another bleed which resulted in more visits to the specialists for treatment.

Arriving back unannounced was the straw that broke the camels back, we had nothing to hide and were quite proud how we looking after the place & grounds from working my guts out mowing acres of lawns, whipper snipping acres of fence lines and pressure cleaning paths, with Vickie attending to the house and making sure everything was neat & tidy at all times ..... we had the owner's return after four days away without the courtesy to let us know.

We are very dissapointed that even though we gave these people the chance to alter their plans, they assured us they were people who kept to their word, obviously not ..... Regardless, i am a believer in Kharma and we hope their plans go the way they hope they do. We hope the dogs are well and don't miss us to much.