Feeling like The Three Bears

You know the part of the story where the bears come back from the walk and find the house 'not as it should be'? Well that's what we felt like on arrival to the house we stayed in on holidays. We were an hour later getting there than we'd planned, which turned out to be a good thing.

All was good in getting there, found the address just fine and did our usual thing on arriving somewhere new, and got the kids to stay in the car while Pete and I get an idea of what we're all walking into. It makes the unloading of the car a whole lot less messy when we already know where to direct different bags etc. Thankfully it's our practice, because THIS time... it was obvious once walking in, that others were STAYING there! Large black men's dress shoes were near the front door as though having been walked out of. There were multiple sleeping bags & pillows set up but not made. Beer bottles and pizza boxes over the bench. Lap tops and mobiles scattered around. No one answering to our call, we then went upstairs to see if there was more 'stuff' or even people upstairs. NOW WAY was I going up by myself so I tagged along behind Pete! Thankfully there was no sign of life upstairs but by now we were obviously asking ourselves 'what do we do?!'

We had been told others were staying there the night before but also that they would be leaving the Island in the early morning so we had NO thought that this might happen.
We rang the people whose house it was (they were holidaying in Queensland while were were housesitting for them) and got no answer. We told the kids what was going on and let them know they'd need to stay put while we got it sorted out.

Only a couple of minutes after that, a couple of vehicles rolled up and a handful of interesting looking people rolled out - rather surprised to see us in the now open house. It turns out that they were the ones staying the night before but they hadn't realised anyone else was coming down and thought they'd delay their departure. They'd been at the beach so then showered and packed up and in another 45minutes the house was ours (so glad we've trained our kids to be patient!). I suspect (as NOTHING had been packed up and post event traffic off the Island was horrible) that they'd been planning on adding another night.

Ah well - all was good in the end and we had a wonderful holiday!