Unravelled - Chapter 2: The Settling
Sometimes, you don’t settle down, you’re gently placed
Our little family, the four of us, chose to call Bathurst home. A regional gem in New South Wales, Australia, where the tablelands roll wide and free, where mist clings to paddocks year round and livestock graze with a calm that seeps into your soul.
We didn’t, however, arrive in Bathurst chasing a dream of wide skies or golden fields. No, we arrived by way of necessity, a reluctant pilgrimage carved from upheaval and quiet despair.
For seven long years, Sydney had been our anchor. Not just a place, but a promise. Our children took their first breath there, their first steps on pavements that had become extensions of our memories. We had stitched our days into its rhythm. Parks, markets, weekend city exploration, mall hoping and eating out. It was home. Or so we believed.
But life has its own tempo, often indifferent to the plans we pen with such care. An urgent call from our home country had us packing bags and giving up our rental haven. We returned months later to a city we no longer recognised. Its warmth turned unfamiliar, its welcome replaced by a rental market that now stood like a fortress. We wandered between Airbnbs for three months across the state, our belongings boxed in the boot of our car, our hearts cramped with exhaustion. Two small children in tow, and nowhere to truly pause. We were travellers in a land we had once called our own.
Bathurst wasn’t on any vision board. It was simply a softer landing in a season of financial bruises. What began as a short-term rental, a quiet space to breathe, soon unfolded into something gentler. A house emerged, nestled where trees still listened and the air didn’t cost you peace of mind. It was modest, yes. But it was within our reach. And in that reach, something unexpected stirred: a sense of possibility.
We didn’t overthink it. For once, we didn’t cling to calculations or forecasts. Alice was between jobs, and my own work stayed tethered to screens, not cities. So we chose movement. We chose faith. We chose to believe that perhaps being brave didn’t always mean leaping, it sometimes meant settling in, even when the soil is unfamiliar.
And maybe that’s what real settling is. Not the place, but the permission we give ourselves to belong.
The early days however weren’t easy. The kind of not-easy that made us whisper doubts we were too afraid to say aloud. Illness clung to us like a stubborn fog, one after another, all four of us, as if the very air resisted our arrival. At times, we wondered if we’d gone against the grain of something divine. Were we walking against God’s path?
But life, as it often does, softened. Slowly.
After a year, our 6-year-old daughter Isla, gentle, thoughtful, our quiet soul, began to come home from school with stories. Names. Laughter. A rhythm of belonging. She’s always been slow to trust, but her roots were finally reaching into the soil.
Our 2-year-old son Aero, still toddling but already determined, stopped trying to eat the furniture and began claiming it, building his little world out of blocks and toy cars, chasing birds in the backyard, and discovering joy in the simplest places.
We started to exhale more deeply. The backyard, the front yard, the stillness of a town without the big noise of a metropolitan, it became our peace. Park trips turned into little rituals. We found picnic spots where the wind felt like it knew our names. And for two introverts who had long accepted a life of quiet company, my wife and I found something rare: people we could start to call friends.
It began to feel like we hadn’t made a mistake. We began to believe the struggle was part of the blessing. That, perhaps God had led us here, just with a few storms to clear the path.
We were finally settling.
We were finally home.
My wife and I found peace here, something deeper than convenience, something close to meaning.
But peace, I’ve come to learn, sometimes carries a hidden weight.
The fear of limited opportunity didn’t bare its venomous fangs at first. Not until I lost my remote job.
Missed the previous reflection? Read Chapter 1 – The Mirror in the silence.
Waiting for the next one eagerly.
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