What are we looking forward to on our lap of Australia?
We made a decision a number of years ago to do a lap of Australia, and have been waiting for a suitable time to pack up and take off, and its not too far away. If you are keen on knowing more about our lap, you can have a read here; We are going on the lap; why, when and how.
In this post though, I want to share some of the things that we seriously look forward to, and hopefully the trip lives up to our expectations.
Developing a tighter knit family
One of my biggest fears is looking back in 10 years and regretting not putting the time in to build a close, healthy and happy family. Life has been incredibly busy over the last 6 odd years and being able to drop everything and spend every minute together as a family will be good for us.
I have no doubt it won’t always be pleasant, and we’ll get frustrated and upset from time to time but that’s part and parcel of growing together. Travelling Australia as a family isn’t a magic bullet. It won’t be the perfect fix, and we are more than aware of this.
I want to look back and feel that I gave parenting a fair old crack, and that our kids are better off for it. Sarah and I get on really well, and I want to grow that much deeper too.
Helping our kids grow
It’s been amazing to see the change in Oliver since he started going to school, and we’ve quickly picked up that he’s fairly clued on. Where he struggles though, is the social side of things, and travelling should absolutely help with this. We want to see our kids become confident, happy and carrying a level of common sense that you’d expect.
Sarah will be doing distance education with the kids, and I’m keen to spend time showing them all sorts, and explaining different concepts. Kids can learn a lot in a class room, but they get a different education when travelling, and we’ve not met too many people who have travelled and looked back, regretting taking their kids out of a normal school.
No more work stress
For me, one of the biggest things that I look forward to is dropping the stress of work. I’ve been responsible for looking after the maintenance in a big manufacturing factory for a number of years now, and its a fair old weight to carry around. I’m responsible for ensuring our equipment is running well, for 24 hours a day and up to 7 days a week.
Getting woken in the middle of the night is not uncommon, and having plaguing issues that are difficult to resolve and personnel issues take their toll. I look forward to being able to forget about it, to head to bed each night knowing I won’t get woken with a major failure, and that my focus can move to other things.
Unless you’ve done this sort of role before, its very hard to explain the toll it takes on your body, and your family, and I’ll be very glad to see it wind up.
Catching up on years of missed sleep, not having to get up at 4:30 every morning always feeling worn out and being able to have breakfast with my family every morning will be greatly cherished.
Epic places
Australia has some of the best places in the world to explore, and we are seriously looking forward to getting off the beaten track and finding them in our Reconn R2 and Isuzu Dmax. We did 3 months back in 2018 when our oldest boy was 18 months old, and although it was fun, he was really the wrong age, and we had a soft floor camper that was nothing short of hard work.
We look forward to spending hours on pristine beaches with no one around, exploring amazing gorges and seeing wildlife like we’ve never seen before.
Inspiring and helping others
The original intention of this blog was to help others travel, camp and 4WD in our amazing country. We try to be as honest and open as possible, and we’ve had a huge number of people thank us for the work that we’ve done. There’s no better feeling than knowing that we’ve inspired, or helped people to buy the right gear, see amazing places, understand what options they have and so on and so forth.
We wouldn’t want to be the only thing that’s made you buy a 4WD, camp and travel, but if it helps you make educated decisions we’re very happy for it.
A simple life
Life has become a complicated beast, and as a society we’ve moved so far away from a basic, simple life that its really quite scary. We look forward to having less material possessions in our life, and going back to basics.
We’ll have more time together as a family, enjoying the simple things in life and not getting caught up in a million possible things that can take your time and energy away. Sarah and I were both bewildered at how many material possessions we’d accumulated over the years, and we’ll be far more thoughtful about what we buy in the future, ensuring it is meaningful and necessary.
Building 4WDing Australia
We want to exponentially grow this blog, and help more people travel Australia by 4WD. We love flicking through the photos that we’ve taken every couple of days, and finding the best ones to share with you. I love sharing truly incredible places with our audience, and finding ways to do things better, or cheaper.
We love finding products that work well, and accurately writing about those that don’t, in an unbiased an factual way. We love finding technical topics and breaking them down into easy to understand guides, and can’t wait to do more of all of this. Sure, sometimes working on the blog is frustrating and not what I feel like doing, but there are plenty of times where I’m literally itching to sit down and work.
I’ve said to a few people that this lap would be a struggle for me if I didn’t have the blog; I have to be up and doing something, and 4WDing Australia is the perfect outlet.
Sarah and I have grand plans of running the blog full time when we return, as our primary source of work and income, and nothing helps that along more than a lap of Australia!
Meeting new people
Sarah and I are both (and probably our kids too!) introverts by nature, but I don’t mind a good chat with fellow travellers. We’ve met some truly amazing people who’ve been helpful, inspiring, educational and just great to hang around.
Often they are older than us, and that’s fine. We’ve been very glad of those that we’ve met so far, and have no doubt that we will bump into plenty more amazing people on the road.
Learning more about Australia
WA has always been home for us, and there’s not too many places we don’t know about. The moment we cross the border into South Australia though, we are complete newbies and know very little, and that’s incredibly exciting. We want to learn more about the history of Australia, different states and life in general.
Less cleaning and no alarm clock
Sarah’s chimed in here, and said that she’s looking forward to not having a house to clean, and not because of the cleaning, but it agitates her already average back. Right now, she’s got another slipped disk, and life is quite unpleasant; we’ll have to manage it as best as possible on the road.
She’s also said not having to wake up to an alarm clock will be greatly appreciated.
Overall, I can’t explain how excited we are to turn our lives upside down, and head off into the sunset in our tiny home on wheels. We might even see you out there!