When we embarked upon our first tree change to Berry 8 years ago I had a vision of country living firmly in mind. I was moving to the “boutique village” (as one urbane mate so concisely rubbished it) and I was going to live the dream in all of its technicolour cliched glory. Chickens, veggie gardens, solar panels and naked children running free in dappled light. I also had a dream to get a pet goat- it was going to be called Nellie. My husband Jacques rubbished the idea- they are escape artists/ what’s the point of a goat/ they eat everything etc etc. Some very plausible reasons to not get a goat.

But this week- in the WTF shadow of the carnage of this summer, and under the cover of my youngest daughter Phoebes impending 9th birthday, I got myself my goat. And a spare. She called them Oreo and Snickers. She thinks that they are hers. I know that they are mine.

They escape. They like to sneak in the house. They are happy to join you for a walk or a bike ride. They are cheeky. They are miniature goats who will grow to be the size of a small kelpie- so they definitely have no faux farming purpose. They actually have no purpose at all other than being the physical embodiment of my new guiding principle- JOY. That they have in abundance.

As I start to excavate the big hopes and plans I had for WorkLife and family life in 2020, I am very happy to have finally become the crazy goat lady of my country-life dreams.

So the moral of this two sided story of grief and joy, if you are mad enough to still be here with me, is that if you are patient, and are left unsupervised with access to the savings account and Gumtree; healing can happen and dreams can come true. Just like that.

This post was written in February 2020 by Kate Dezarnaulds, founder of WorkLife.org.au, a network of coworking spaces in regional NSW + NFP Director