… And just like that I was 30! Just another day for some but for me, it was a time to reflect. I was 30 years old, working full time as a nurse. I had my career sorted, a partner Leigh, a dog Brutus, two houses – one was an investment property, the other our new home. My career was going well and we lived in a beautiful beach town in Victoria with our family (well most of it) and friends close by. But for some unknown reason, I wasn’t happy. Was it my job? Was it my relationship? Was it my lifestyle? Did I not have enough hobbies to enjoy? Was it just a funny feeling that’d pass again? What was it? Then it dawned on me, something was missing, it was the fact I never did what I had set out to do.
I started my 20’s with no responsibilities. I partied with my amazing friends, we went to endless music festivals, I travelled a little overseas (no matter how long its never enough), found myself a man, I completed a bachelor degree, a graduate year and a post graduate diploma and I got a great job not too far from home. We bought our first home, built another one a few years later and before I knew it, everything I dreamed of had faded in to the background. It all seemed like a random thought I once had, and would never achieve.
I chose a nursing career so that I could travel. I dreamed of traveling overseas, to the U.K, all through Europe, to work as a nurse in London and to see the world. Getting a visa isn’t so easy after you turn 31 and I didn’t have much time to plan a trip to Europe, plus we had our dog, Brutus, there was no way we’d leave him behind. I dreamed of traveling anywhere I could in Australia, visiting new places and one day deciding where I’d call home.
I thought perhaps it was too late, could it really be too late? Knowing where I was and where I wanted to be, it just wasn’t sitting right. There was this itch inside that I just couldn’t scratch. This disappointment that now I was 30 and I hadn’t done what I always intended to do, TRAVEL!
But here I was, running a race against myself, working more often than not, living a mediocre life based on routine and tied down by commitments and responsibilities. I wasn’t living the life I dreamed of. To me, I was just existing, just making ends meet and getting by one week to the next. All this hard earned money was nowhere to be seen and our lives reflected it. We weren’t taking many holidays, Leigh was only getting 4 weeks annual leave a year and I couldn’t take time off every Christmas – hospitals don’t close for two weeks over Christmas and New Years and people don’t stop getting sick.
As much as I loved my career and my job, the place we were living – coastal Victoria, living by the ocean, our family and friends being close by, I knew in my heart, that my life wasn’t mean to look like this. I spoke to my partner Leigh, about traveling. We had a dog, so leaving the country wasn’t an option, but we could take off, leave Victoria and go somewhere new, we could travel right around Australia, the three of us, go anywhere we wanted and stop where ever we liked.
Leigh didn’t take it so well. Over the last 10 years, he had completed a 4-year apprenticeship, he was working for a good boss who treated us like family, and he went back to TAFE for 12 months and completed a business course so he could become a licenced roof plumber. He injured himself, had time off and ended up starting up his own company with an old work mate. This was good for him as he could work less hours and rest when he needed. He had worked hard to build a clientele and work was never short. The money was better and the work was less. This is what he always wanted, a good secure job that pays well with less work, that and to retire by the age of 40!
At this stage, we’d only been in our new house a few months, the house we were planning on calling home for the next 5-10 years. In his eyes, he had worked the past 10 years to get to where he was. In my eyes, I’d worked the last 10 so I could leave where I was! He didn’t want to leave the life he had. He valued security and I valued flexibility.
What do you do in this situation? Part ways? Leave everything behind and follow your heart? Or stay and turn around in 10 years time and regret being in the same situation 10 years older with only more commitments! But … we are never promised tomorrow; we might not even make it to 10 years down the track! Its true! How many of you have lost a loved one suddenly? How many of you have had a health scare, a life threatening accident, become unwell so much so that it debilitates you from doing much, if anything, at all, for a long time until you recover, if you recover? I bet all of you have experienced this in some way, shape or form. Life is short.
Of course I thought about our families, our friends, our life, our home. How do you leave all that behind? How would I tell my family that I’m leaving and I don’t know when ill be back? What if they needed me? Maybe I was just being crazy! Who just leaves all of that hard work and love behind? But then I thought again, imagine the family holidays, traveling the West Kimberley’s with my family? Imagine friends coming to visit in some of Australia’s most incredible places? Imagine being able to travel with friends? Go to Cape York and do the Crebb track with some of our favourites, or seeing the most amazing beaches or anywhere new together! That’s got to be far better than a short visit every so often, when your work hours don’t clash, and never having holidays! Imagine the quality times we’d have and the amazing memories we’d make! If something were to happen tomorrow, I’d rather have a heart full of memories and laughs than a bank account full of equity and debt. Money comes and goes, you don’t need a lot to survive and be happy, you really don’t, and you really can’t live your life based on other people right? You’ve only got this life once, so best you live it how you want!
But this mindset of mine was starting to take its toll on our relationship, so I thought it’d be best if I just took a step back and left it. Annoyed at the time, I knew this was getting nowhere so I decided to leave it. Forget it. Carry on and pick up from where I was. One thing I’ve learnt in my life is that the universe has a way of making things fall in to place one way or another. I was hoping this was out of my control enough for the universe to decide for me. So on I went. Back to working, having only 1 weekend off a month, barely seeing my friends so I could pay the mortgages, the bills and perhaps save for a two-week holiday once a year with my other half.
And then, a few months later it happened. Leigh turned around and said ‘O.K lets do it, let travel around Australia”!!! Id almost forgotten I asked it’d been so long. So, as I always do, I started throwing out ideas, I started dreaming, thinking about what we could do, would we just move interstate? Would we travel? How would we travel? OMG the possibilities were endless! Leigh had it figured out we’d buy a camper trailer or caravan take our four-wheel drive and hit the road. We’d heard that this travel Australia life was cheap, there are free camps everywhere and we wouldn’t even need to work. Although, we only knew a hand full of people who’d travelled like this before, we were never exposed to traveling Australia much at all. I had a friend in grade 3 who travelled with her mum and dad for 3 months. I remember them coming back with smiles from ear to ear with stories to last a lifetime.
We use to go camping and our friend’s mum and step dad would bring their caravan. They did a fair amount of traveling; they even had a van with a full kitchen and bathroom! I never even knew they existed until I met them. We had a canvas tent, a small single gas cooker and a solar shower! Apparently Australia has more dirt roads than sealed, our beaches are hard to access and you need a four-wheel drive to get to the good spots like where we use to camp, at Aire River on the South coast of Victoria.
We literally had NO IDEA! But we were so excited to find out!!!
So now, it was time to figure it out for ourselves. We had to start from scratch. We had to think about how we could make this possible. How do you turn a dream in to a reality?
