Getting out of the house was a bit of an epic in itself. Due to my precipitous departure from the ranks of the painfully over-employed, we needed to shut down our lovely seaside elevated at 6 Walker St post haste to stem the leakage of rent money suffered each week.

So we not only needed to pack for a round-the-world expedition, we were packing up house as well. Varsha Rose was a total trooper as we did our best to de-materialise our lives and go lean.

We managed to get our entire household folded into less than one medium-sized shipping container...still a lot of stuff, but I reckon that's pretty impressive by the standards of today.