On February 7th 2002 we received an e mail:

"hello 11085   Why not go to Australia one day????"

it was from Veronica and John Crowther who lived in Goondiwindi on the New South Wales/Queensland border in Australia.  They has a holiday home on the coast at Byron Bay in New South Wales about 500 miles North of Sydney and 100 south of Brisbane.

They were offering to exchange their second home for use of our house in Malvern for 3 weeks in May 2002. We had not heard of Byron Bay so we looked it up on the map and decided we could combine a stay there with a trip to Sydney so we agreed. 

Veronica and John were planning to visit Europe for several months, they planned to combine a month in our house with an exchange in France and Ireland.

I met them off the train at Malvern in May 2002 and took them to the house which they used as a base to explore England for just over 3 weeks.  They visited us at our home in Lincoln on the first week end of their stay.

In February 2004 I e mailed Veronica to ask if we could have our half of the bargain that August which they agreed.

We flew to Sydney from London via Japan where we stayed in an apartment hotel.  We hired a car to drive north to Byron Bay.

The holiday unit at Byron Bay