‘Mystic Fire of Wisdom and Love’ as titled by 10yo Hamish 😍
We’re super lucky!!! The biggest leap of faith of our lives over eight years ago has led us to a whole of security now.
We have some news that we are really excited about.
We have just bought and paid for our first block of land.
We purchased a few acres on the Fraser coast just a short drive to the coast and Fraser Island.
We have worked as we travel and found it to be a great way to save money.
Some might find the story interesting as we have achieved an amazing life (so far) that we could not have done living in suburbia.
Here is how it started and how we got to the point of being able to buy land outright.
Lil and I travelled on motorbikes when the holidays came around. We travelled Tasmania on motorbikes for our honeymoon. We have travelled to Europe before the kids came along and we went back OS with the kids a few years back.
We used to Live in Melbourne and moved 115km outside of the city to Warragul just to afford rent. When we had kids Lil wanted to be a stay at home mum and look after the kids rather than having them looked after by strangers at a childcare centre. I travelled to work in Melbourne city 2.5 hrs each way 6 days a week. I hated my Job and hardly ever got any quality time with the family. There was no time for projects, weekend camps or anything really. Money was also tight and it was a week to week scenario feeling stuck in a loop.
We had talked about travelling around Australia in a Bus but the dream was just a dream. Buying a bus and setting up was not within our financial scope.
After 2 years of this rut I got some bad news from general health check at work and the Dr said something has to give. The working week, stress at work and no down time was leading me into a bad place health wise so we decided to just do it.
We had 6 weeks left on our rental so set the date to leave in 6 weeks time.
We had our soft floor camper which we had saved for and purchased using our tax refund the year earlier. It wasn’t ideal for quick setups and pack ups but we owned it and we could make it work.
We set off on April 2012 in our Holden Jackaroo and our soft floor c
What do you do in the car for entertainment ?
We like nothing more than sone old classics and a bit of a singalong. A family friend recently commented on the kids extensive repertoire on classic music 🎶 and this is where it come from. Road trip karaoke 🎤. Hamish rocking out with his sugar cane microphone and Maeryn soon realised she is being filmed and start playing it up for the camera. Just another day in the car covering miles and making smiles. 😊
Taking advantage of their last swim for a while 😞 We’re heading into the station tomorrow as fences are down and a lot of other infrastructure needs repair after the flooding. Stopped at Cloncurry Oasis Caravan Park which is so green, clean and has a good sized pool 🏊♀️. They also only ever charge for the first two kids (according to the many I spoke to today)!
It’s music 🎵 morning at camp. The kids have fired up the keyboard 🎹 and yousician on the computer 💻 and doing vocal and keyboard lessons.
Lil has another couple of days off and, because it’s stinking hot, we decided to skip the freecamp at Grong Grong on the Murrumbidgee and stay in Narrandera instead. What a great move!!! $15/nt at the Showgrounds down the road (quoted $53/nt at the Top caravan park for all of us!! 😳🤯), $20 entry to the pool for the day (10-7) and water slide 50c or $1 a go 👍
It’s always a milestone when your kids ride a bike but our little maeryn has upgraded from her “baby” bike to a proper big girls bike. In order to ride it she had to practice getting on and off herself. She nailed it. Such a proud dad. Maeryn is 4 and on a big girls bike with gears. Very happy girl. 😊😊😊
The trip so far.........
A video of the trip so far. From Far North Queensland to the Victorian high country. We travelled inland a bit further than normal to help out on a drought stricken station for a few weeks and explored the opal mines whilst there. We have endured some epic storms as usual but all the modifications to the car and camper have so far been great in all weather conditions. We towed the trailer over some big hills in the high country spending almost all day in Low range which was a bit nerve racking at times. So far the trip has been a great adventure and we have caught up with a few followers and friends. We have had no shortage of job offers but are just going to kick back a while and get over the full on working year. Let the good times roll...........
Living life to the max 😊🎣🏞🍷
Feeding the sheep 🐑 at Carinya station outside lightning ridge. This place is great. Kids have been bottle feeding the lambs and feeding the chooks. Later in the day they collect and wash the eggs. They are loving it. Alpacas,sheep, geese, horses, roosters and loads of emu's that are a bit of a pest eating all the grain put out for the sheep. The buggers all run in when they hear the truck coming then pounce once the feeds out kicking the sheep off the feed. No good rain out here for 5 years so this place is looking for campers willing to lend a hand with light duties as the drought continues to make life difficult. Check them out on wiki camps.
Burke Developmental road Highbury station
Here is a little movie of the road conditions, needless to say you cant get to this point on the road from any direction unless you live here as we do so not many generally get to see this.
We saved another little poddy from certain death and fed him frozen colostrum milked from a cow last year. Poor little guy was tiny. He is now going great but still small and follows the kids around. He is called Cole.
Summer 2016 trip
Here is a quick video of some of the highlights of or travels over summer. Should be more videos to come over the course of the year as we now have NBN Skymesh internet. Hope you like it :)
Our first National park camping trip was Wollemi National park in the Blue Mountains. This historical township is called Newnes (noons). It used to be a shale oil mill with a railway and massive industrial boilers and kilns with a massive network of iron pipes using the gravity drop of the land to cool and transport the crude oil to the train carts below. The campground was epic with massive sandstone cliff faces. There was a crystal clear creek for the kids to play in and cool off. There was lots of wildlife also with the possoms running around all over the camper looking for the ipad and iphones to get onto facebook it would seem. One wombat beat Lils sudoku score and used up all her internet data, she wasn't to happy. Hamish caught up with the wombat and tried to extract some money from him to no avail. The kids had a great time with a campfire and marshmallows toasting on the coals. A great place to camp and its free. Well worth the visit and would have loved to stay longer.
What happens when the bush kids goto victoria and it rains.......no concern for the clean dry clothes at least they are having fun.
