About

This is the travel journal of Nikki, Drew and Maddy (age 6).

We’ve always dreamed about travelling around Australia together and thought that we might have to wait until Maddy had left home, we’d retired and become grey nomads, in April 2014 we made that dream a reality, rather earlier than anticipated!

We’ve always enjoyed camping and travelling and have seen a fair bit of NSW and the East Coast of Australia, Nikki’s mum and dad have also been doing the grey nomad thing on and off for the past 4 or 5 years or so, so it’s long been a dream to see more of this amazing country.

The idea had kind of started to develop after a few of Nikki’s work colleagues had taken time out to go travelling, and then a conversation with Annie Crawford from Can Too really got the imagination fired, she’d travelled as a child from a large family around Europe and raved about it.  I think what concerned us most of that Maddy was just starting school in early 2013, surely we couldn’t take her out of school, or could we?

On a rainy day in February 2013, we were staying at Lake Macquarie with a group of good friends, it was too wet for water skiing so Julie Capes and Nikki went for a walk along the shore of Lake Macquarie, we talked about Julie and Pete wanting to take some time out and do something different for a while and how we had started to think about taking time out too and travelling Australia.

By the time Jules and I had completed our walk the plan was formed, we were going to both buy caravans and travel around Australia together, when?  Christmas!  The boys weren’t party to this plan at this stage, Jules knew Pete would be up for it no worries, Drew was the potential problem, but we had the solution!  Let’s not mention the idea until later in the evening, when we’ve all had a few wines and everyone is together and the idea will kind of get everyone excited, we were giggling like school girls, hardly able to contain our excitement about this great plan!

So that evening we waited until enough wine was consumed and started to sow the idea, Pete was as expected up for it without question and to our delight, so was Drew, straight away, with very little initial resistance.

Within a few weeks we were visiting our local caravan centre, in Narrabeen, just to check out how much caravans were and start to determine what we could get.  We all instantly fell in love with the New Age caravans, no net curtains and no chintz, phew! Other hurdles were work, school and funding.  Bit by bit and step by step we worked each one out and how we could bring this plan together.  Within a few months after much more research, we were ready and we both bought New Age Caravans, we were committed now!

Our new van!  We had to buy a new car to tow it too!

At this stage we hadn’t really told anyone much about our plans, Nikki’s General Manager Sam as she was key to the decision as she would be running Nikki’s business, we needed to make sure she was comfortable with the plan and that sufficient time was given to hand everything over.  We also told both sets of parents too who were totally supportive.

As it turns out December was too soon, we both needed more time to get ourselves ready financially and with other commitments etc.  So we put it off until April 2014, the start of the school hold to maximise our time on the road in between Maddy’s school year.