Even now, as I write this to you all, it seems surreal.

Years of discussion, hard work, hard decisions, uncertainty, guilt and struggles both mentally and financially have taken their toll.

I truthfully can’t remember the first moment we decided we were really going to go on the biggest ever holiday with kids and tour Australia full time, it was something we’d always said we wanted to do. What we didn’t realise is just how difficult the journey to get to this point would be.

What we did realise though, was that we were on the way to finding our happiness, and yet didn’t feel happy. Things felt hard, and difficult, we were waiting for things to be right, and easy, and that just wasn’t going to happen.

Then, when Matt got sick, we realised the waiting had to be over, and we needed to be present in the moment and force our dreams to come true. Our dream of travelling full time has been a tough one to achieve, but, it taught us the most important lesson we’ve ever learned:

Dreams are hard to achieve, but it makes achieving them feel even more amazing

So, instead of waiting until we had the perfect gear, and the perfect finances in the bank, and the perfect work done to the car, we put all our effort into doing what we could with the time and money we had, to be prepared enough. “Perfection” is the killer of dreams, “enough” is a word that will set you free. So we have been quiet, we haven’t been blogging much, or on social media pretty much at all, but we’ve been busier than we’ve ever been in our lives, and here’s why:

A few “all nighters” and we stopped procrastinating, got done what we needed to, and here it is… the only picture I have of us driving off to our new lives, snapped by my sister in law.

At 11pm on January 20, 2014, we rolled out of my brother and sister in law’s driveway near Dubbo. Waved them goodbye, along with my 2 nieces and nephew, and drove off into the wilderness to live our new nomadic lives. I would be lying if I said I was tear free, I couldn’t help but let a few tears flow, we’d been living with them for around 8 months while Matt was working and as chaotic as it was having 2 families living on top of each other, we’d all survived it pretty well and had a rhythm, even if it was a chaotic one. We’ll be forever grateful to them for everything they’ve done to help us achieve our dream.

We arrived at Mendooran, to the free campsite there, which is a beautiful camp ground with flush toilets and cold showers with lots of space and beautiful open skies, set up our van for the first “official” night on the road, and settled in to take in everything that we’d experienced on the path to that moment. Seeing as we arrived so late, we were happy to figure out that the Swan is able to be put up while still hitched to the car, and it doesn’t take long to set up either. Check out the picture below, it took my tears away and brought a smile to my face.

So there you have it, we’re one the road. We’re full time nomads. No more short or medium trips, no more real home base to return to, this is it, we’ve got everything with us we need to get by. We feel excited, vulnerable, and no matter what happens throughout our journey, we all feel proud of sticking to our dreams and getting this far.

Look out Tasmania, we’re on our way……..