Seeking serenity

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Moving house is a fairly mundane if stressful event, something most of us will do many times in our lives. But for these three families, moving house turned out to be something more – it became a journey that changed the way they live. Each of them began by seeking more space, only to discover that a home is made of more than just the walls of a house.

Kristie Phelan, 39, and her husband Paul, 32, have been married for seven years. They have two daughters – Gracie, three, and Rosie, 16 months. The Phelans originally attempted a total sea change, but ultimately settled on a life somewhere in the middle.

“You know, I tried really hard to do the juggle,” reflects Kristie, “but it just didn’t work. I had no energy and none of us were really happy.” Considering Kristie’s schedule, which entails working four days and sleeping two nights in Sydney each week, with the remainder of the week spent at home in the Southern Highlands, NSW, it’s hard to know where she gets her energy now. Until, that is, Kristie explains how her family found the right way for them to live.

Before the birth of their two daughters, Kristie and Paul led busy lives in Sydney, concentrating largely on work. As network creative director of the children’s television channel Nickelodeon, Kristie was working in her dream job, a position she’d worked long and hard to achieve, and as Paul worked in the same industry, as a television producer and writer, the long hours weren’t a problem. But becoming parents put a different spin on things. “I just didn’t realise how differently I’d feel about life after Gracie was born,” Kristie admits.

It quickly became apparent that the house the couple owned wasn’t going to be suitable for a young family, and when Kristie became pregnant for the second time the Phelans started to look around for other options.

“It was such a treadmill,” Kristie recalls. “I’d drop Gracie at daycare early in the morning, work till late, pick her up and then hit the bedtime blues. It felt like my time with her revolved around getting her to sleep and there was definitely no time for a proper relationship with Paul. We just knew there had to be another way.”

Casting her mind back to her own childhood, Kristie began to consider a move to the country. “I grew up in Berrima,” she explains, “and in the back of my mind I was comparing the life I was giving Gracie with my childhood – it was this magic mix of all the space you needed, combined with a close-knit community.”

While Paul’s family lives in Ireland, Kristie’s is scattered along Australia’s east coast, and moving closer to them was appealing. “Mum lives in the Yarra Valley, and my sister Phoebe in the Southern Highlands; all I wanted to do was to live near one of them. So, we decided that if we were going to change our lives, we’d take a gamble and go all the way to the Yarra.”

Kristie and Paul sold their beloved house and Paul handed in his notice but Kristie ultimately decided that the family needed a solid plan B. “I couldn’t bring myself to just quit my job,” she admits. Instead, she decided to take a year’s maternity leave from her job to re-evaluate what she really wanted. The family moved to Victoria’s Yarra Valley, where Paul worked on Kristie’s parents’ vineyard and Kristie enjoyed spending extended time with her mother and Gracie. “In some ways it was wonderful,” she remembers, “but it was just too much of a change for us at this time of our lives.” The reality of making ends meet in their new ‘simple’ life was also quite different to the fantasy. “You assume that the simple life is the same thing as an inexpensive life, but it was anything but. We went from having enough money but no time to plenty of time and a serious lack of cash, which caused a lot of pressure.”

Happily, fate intervened when the family took a trip to Mittagong to visit Kristie’s sister Phoebe. “I was eight and a half months pregnant with Rosie and just feeling so unsettled,” remembers Kristie. “Visiting the Highlands made me realise that we could live here, that I could go back to work and take the financial pressure away but that we’d still have the family support I wanted.” On the last day of their visit, Phoebe took Paul and Kristie to see a house she’d spotted on the outskirts of Bowral, and on their way to the airport later that day, Kristie and Paul realised they had to turn around. “We missed the flight,” laughs Paul, “but we got the house.”

The family made the move to Bowral when Rosie was five weeks old, and feel it was definitely the right move for them.

“Sometimes I do get tired,” Kristie admits, “and it’s hard for Paul when he’s here alone, but it’s still so much better than it was. The girls aren’t spending long days in childcare – they’re at home with Paul or, if he’s working [Paul has a studio in the garden], with Phoebe or their godfather Bryan.” Kristie pauses and looks around the garden. “But the best bit is that now we get to watch the seasons change instead of the billboards.”

Flight to the coast?

• In 1999, the two Australian cities to experience the largest population growth were Brisbane and the Gold Coast, up by 15,700 and 12,800 people, respectively.
• Outside of the cities, coastal regions enjoyed the largest population growth in 1999, including NSW’s Shoalhaven and Tweed regions, Victoria’s Surf Coast, Queensland’s Maroochy and Hervey Bay, and WA’s Busselton and Bunbury.
  Statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Head online
If you’re considering a move, take a look at www.australia.gov.au/states-territories to find information on states and regions throughout Australia.

Words: Francesca Newby. Photography: Andrew Lehmann. Hair & Make-up: David Novak-Piper