We moved to Magnetic Island – Emmie’s first day at school

What a day! Emmie has been so excited about starting school here on Maggie. It’s been great to see her so keen to join a school and learn. It’s about time I suppose, we’ve been doing Distance Education again since we left Australia December (so seven months) and neither of us are very good at it, even after years of trying.

I often speak about trusting the Universe and how I am often redirected from the path I want to take to something new. I feel like this happened again with moving to Magnetic Island, and I am so happy I listened.  I was trying to move to Cairns and a series of little setbacks and suggestions from our fam on Instagram and Facebook led us to deciding to move to Maggie instead.

Today is Emmie’s first day of school. I dropped her there a few hours ago and had a little tour as she joined her class. There are still covid restrictions like parents not being allowed into school grounds at pick up and drop off, and the school usually has volunteers at lunch leading the kids in arts and craft – I can’t wait for that to return.

This little school is amazing.

The school grounds are huge and green, with lots of bush, a rainforest, an Indigenous bush tucker garden and kitchen garden and a tropical fruit walk. There are so many nooks and crannies for the kids to sit and rest in nature, and there’s covered play areas and lots of play equipment.

A koala family lives in the grounds! The (amazing) School Principal, Kasey showed us photos of the mum and tiny baby she had seen this morning, but they had moved on by the time we went to look. I’m sure we will see more.

There’s a swimming pool where kids learn to swim in terms 1 and 4. They also learn Japanese as part of the school curriculum – this is so fabulous. There’s a teacher in charge of well-being and ensuing all the kids are happy and smiling.

I had to fill in a few forms – including my number one hands-down all-time favourite form ever. The whale watching form, giving Emmie permission to leave the school grounds with her class to whale watch when whales are in the bay. Locals will call the school when whales are spotted and then it’s tools down and everyone hot steps it to the lookouts. OMG!

Emmie’s teacher welcomed her to the class and she went off smiling and joined the room. Her class is small, with only 160 students in the whole school each class is a lovely manageable size.

School starts at 8.25 each day and is finished at 2.25 – leaving many wonderful hours in the day to explore. After I pick Emmie up today we will walk over to Alma Beach and collect some school supplies from the newsagent at Arcadia Bay along the way.

I was so happy as I left the school and wandered back to our apartment. I’m so glad I trust the Universe to gently nudge us along our way, guiding us in the right direction and into little gems like Magnetic Island. I can’t wait to see Emmie this afternoon and hear all about her day.