Like all new adventures, it sounded idyllic at the time: move to a sleepy seaside town, become part of the community and buy a local business. In our minds we imagined spending quality time with our children as they grew up in a peaceful beachside haven. Memories of my long-forgotten dream to become a writer flooded back, reigniting a spark and drive within me.
Credit: ISTOCK My husband was a tower crane driver and I worked in mental health. Both jobs came with a lot of pressure and we knew we couldn’t withstand it for much longer. After much deliberation, we took the chance and dived right in.
Within months, our new exciting adventure had turned into a living nightmare. A highway bypass diverted traffic away from the town centre and our local business, decimating the foot traffic we had relied upon. The numbers we had projected when purchasing the business crumbled, leading us to near bankruptcy.
We worked seven days a week with three small children and finances were so tight that even a coffee was a luxury. Our situation was bleak. I would lie awake at night worrying that the bank was going to foreclose on our house, wondering what had become of my life.
We were diligent, hard workers – how did we end up on the verge of losing everything that we had worked so hard for? My husband was forced to go back to work. He would leave at 4am and drive 21⁄2 hours to Sydney, work a 10-hour day and then drive 21⁄2 hours home. He did this six days a week, while I was working in t.