A NEW DAY ARRIVES

I’m re-orienting this Reverential Ramblings blog to provide a written (and occasional visual) account of our year-travelling-around-Australia adventure.

For the year of 2021 I’m dragging my wife Joanne and our three children on a 40,000km circumnavigation of this great southern continent, and we’ll be exploring more than just the geography. And I mean it when I say “dragging”. Joanne was not that keen. It’s taken me over two years of constant nagging and manipulative mansplaining to convince her an odyssey around Oz with our oddball kids was a good idea. Rather than being convinced of the genius of the plan, Joanne eventually agreed…just to shut me up.

God bless her, and God bless the ability of a husband to wear down his wife eventually.

Surprisingly, the kids have also been bland in their response to take a year off mainstream schooling and trek around the world’s largest island with their father. Despite my explanations of old friendships continuing online, and new relationships being made on the road – the three Riley kids have been been slow to embrace my enthusiasm.

So, we’ve packed our home and rented it out, upgraded the car to tow a newly built caravan, and set out in faith that pandemic-related lockdowns would simply set us free to be unhurried in our travels. We’ll allow the Creator of this continent to send us down whatever rock-strewn road He believes an adventure or lesson might await.

I had been saying to the family during our planning of the trip it would take only a month of settling into new routines and daily rhythms before the realisation dawned on them that dad’s idea of a Big Lap around Australia was brilliant. And yet, after our first day of travel over the Great Dividing Range to the town of Tamworth, I’ve come to the realisation that it might take a little longer for some of the family members to come to that dawning. 

However long it takes, I know a new morning will come. 

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About this blog: Pastor David Riley is a minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and is taking a sabbatical year to travel Australia. This article is from his “Reverential Ramblings” series – which you can subscribe to by clicking “follow” on this website.

Want to read more inspirational stories of faith from this series? Click here to read of one man’s sacrifice on the Kwai River in Burma.