Turning for Home

We’re on the downhill run towards home now, and it has caused a bit of reflection about the trip so far, as well as lots of planning about our life of the future. We are all looking forward to getting back to a more normal life, but at the same time we’re already starting to worry about the transition from being the Wordsworth Travelling Circus to just being another circus in Bardon.

Many might wonder why we would be looking forward to leaving our apparently idyllic lifestyle, although I am sure there are others who might wonder how we were able to ever contemplate living in a one-room canvas house for 16 months. I can assure you that both sides of the coin have been examined in detail over recent weeks, and there is plenty that could keep us on the road, and plenty of reasons why we are ready for home.

Number one on my list for reasons to get home is loneliness. It is not what I expected before we started our adventure. I have a fair bit of experience of being on my own, with many years of living in a plush donga in a variety of exotic locations in Central Queensland. That is a Single Persons Quarters (SPQ), and is definitely a life for a single person, with the X-Camp ay Burton Downs and Contractors’ Camp at North Goonyella being top of my list of places I will happily never revisit.

What we have experienced on this trip can be lonely for one of us, but more often it is a whole-of-family thing. We have each other, and spend 24/7 together, but have at times had very little interaction with others, and certainly very limited contact with our friends. Family has been good, and the internet allows us to stay in touch pretty often, but it is harder to stay in touch with friends.

We notice it with the kids particularly. They spend an inordinate amount of time together, and they get on particularly well (I am a bit concerned about how they will go back at school when they are not together for much of the day). They are great at entertaining themselves, but on the (surprisingly rare) occasions when they meet some other kids on the road, they brighten up significantly, and we can see what a great time they are having just hanging out with some other kid (or kids). We’ve seen this from the other travelling families that we have met, and like us, they will let their kids play with the others as much as possible.

There are people travelling Australia everywhere we go, but by far most of them are oldies, and the families we have had the opportunity to interact with have been surprisingly few and far between. In some places in the country there are very few options of places to stay for travelers and in those places we have generally found other kids. Otherwise, it has at times been months between kiddy interactions.

Sarah and I have had even fewer “friends” along the road. We keep each other amused, and there is no doubt that being together all the time has its challenges, but it has also created a lot of resilience in our relationship.

The last time we saw friends was in Perth in October and before that was in Katherine which was back in July. Prior to that, Sarah had a couple of days off for good behavior while we were in Adelaide and I had a liquid lunch with Lovell while I was there (not as liquid as I would have liked, but I was in charge of the kids, so needed to keep my wits about me).

Sarah’s parents came and joined us for a week in South Australia in April, and recently visited with us again in The Margaret River for another week. Mum joined us in Darwin in July, and we saw her again briefly in Perth while we were there. All of those visits were like little holidays from our travels, and rejuvenated us, while at the same time creating a bit of the post-holiday blues when we found ourselves back on our own.

From my point of view, I have found that I am not really interested in speaking with most grey nomads. Mostly they seem pretty judgy (although we sit and throw judgements at them from the safety of our tent), and the conversations are often the same as other conversations I have had with other oldies on the road. There are plenty of them who don’t like kids and don’t like dogs, and they seem to lead pretty insular lives. Not my thing.

There are other things that we are all sick of about living in a tent – top of that list is going to the loo in the night. Bed is warm, the tent slightly less warm and the outside world where the loo is found is normally a lot colder than bed. When the loo is a hike across the campground, then there is generally a lot of time spent lying in bed trying to come up with an alternative to getting up (for the record, there is no other option). We’re looking forward to the comforts of a loo being in the nice warm house where we are sleeping (probably a really hot house at the moment in Brisbane – it is not hot in Bremer Bay).

Lots of little things that are wearing a bit thin – the 75L fridge-freezer limits the variety of things that we have on hand (not always a bad thing). The small two burner gas stove has given us plenty of challenges in maintaining some variety in our meals. Many camp kitchens where we have stayed have not had better cooking facilities (no oven is always a real disappointment for all of us, since we’re always hoping to be able to roast something, or have nachos, or a pie, or something from the oven (I did cook a cake on the stove this week and was pretty chuffed with the outcome, although I should have tried it 12 months ago – back then I thought that we’d be having camp fires pretty regularly).  

Sandwiches or wraps for lunch – we’re all over that. Biscuits from the packet for morning tea – Heidi was saying to me this morning that she is really looking forward to having some home-cooked biscuits when we get home (you’re on notice, Grandma!).

Chasing the sun for power for the fridge, internet, lights and computers is something I am completely over. I am also quite sick of fixing stuff, and I am sure Sarah has noticed how long it is taking me these days to get to those little things that need fixing. Solar stuff always needs monitoring and fixing, and I am glad that I had the foresight to pack all of the things I need to fix that stuff (most recently had a solar voltage control unit stop working properly, but it was an intermittent fault, and took me forever to figure out what was wrong with the system).

Solar stuff is 90% about problem connections, but every now and again a different problem arises that takes a bit more time to figure out. While in Albany I spent about four hours one day checking and fixing and making new connectors and 12 volt double-adapters, so everything seems to be working well at the moment – but I have to remain vigilant and check everything every day. I am really looking forward to being back on mains power.

Finally I think that sleeping in a different room to the dog will be very pleasant. I have noted before that I suspect we all smell a bit like dog, and I am looking forward to having a dog-free scent. Luckily we interact with very few people, so it isn’t really much of a problem.

Here are some photos of our recent excursion to the Valley of the Giants. It is certainly not all bad – we’re seeing things that we simply wouldn’t get to in a working lifetime of annual leave, and overall the negatives of life on the road are quite trivial when compared with the upsides. Still, I look forward to catching up with a few people in the new year.