About Us

Our Story

Like everyone reading this, we also have our favourite social media content creators.

It’s possibly a little voyeuristic, but we like to know who we’re investing in and onto our screens. We like to know the back story of the bloggers, vloggers, plonkers, and fluffers we follow. Credibility is an important criterion for us when negotiating the vast world of social media and credibility helps us to follow or ditch, listen to or dismiss and for the most part work out quickly if they’re tossers before we invest too much of our precious time.  

We can then assign something of a subconscious credibility or connection score. Sometimes we want to join our favourite creator’s world, other times we want to just grab a snippet of info and run, and other times we want to erase the cache.  Everyone wants something out of their venture into social media, whether it be entertainment or knowledge and advice, and you’re absolutely entitled to know who you’re listening to and whether what they are selling you are happily buying with eyes wide open.

Nothing will turn us off quicker than unashamed inappropriate product placement, or brand fluffing. Right up there when it comes to fluffer dumping is any video or review that starts with “this is our genuine, unbiased, honest opinion” or anything you know they have been given … we all know the ones.

So who are we??   We are your reasonably average suburban Melbourn’ites, we have three independent adult kids with their own families.  We had (technically still have) a renovation and manufacturing business supplying the building industry although nowadays we only tinker, and help out friends and family.

Whilst it’s great to keep physically active, keeping mentally active is just as important and is where the website and social media motivation comes from. We’re been avid travelers and outdoor people all our lives, camping, 4wding, caravaning, motorbiking (on and off-road), boating, kayaking, fishing, and even sailing. The outdoors has been our passion and our release for as long as we can remember.

Most years over our working life (pre-retirement, woo hoo) we would average at least 3 months per year on the road, including la few longer blocks of time and a period where we traveled full-time for a year living in an offroad caravan.

With a lifetime of vanning and camping, remote, self-sufficient, and self-reliant travel when we (semi) retired we wanted to create a kind of low-key hobby or interest to keep ourselves amused and mentally active, so why not pass on some of what we’ve learned, and have some fun at the same time.

There are many ways to do everything and we certainly don’t have all your answers by a long shot, we simply have the way we do it. We’ve developed our own hacks, and just as often pinched or modified someone else’s hack.

We’re always learning, experiencing, and adapting. Ross is an avid reader and researcher, he’s also a very active learner. Running a manufacturing business in the building industry required a degree of resourcefulness, quick thinking, problem-solving, and rapid adaption …. when combined with a very cool head in a crisis they’re all really good skills to have traveling remote Australia.

We encourage you to listen to everything politely, and take away or modify only that which suits you. We’re happy to just plant the seed or start the conversation and we encourage you to digest, adopt, adapt, or completely reject whatever you find here.

Our Website Motivation

Nomading is an incredibly wonderful lifestyle, but it’s not for everyone nor is it without its challenges, pitfalls, and downsides. That old chestnut “you don’t know what you don’t know” applies equally to nomad traveling. Make no mistake this lifestyle is most certainly not for everyone, and despite the rosy social media facade everyone struggles at some point

After retiring many people consider the caravaning lifestyle for the first time in their lives, and the entire concept can be daunting, expensive, and a little overwhelming.

We’ve enjoyed watching family and friends launch themselves into caravaning and nomad’ing for the first time and we’ve witnessed firsthand the learning curve and challenges that we have long forgotten.

We’re giving ourselves a bit of a hobby with our social media presence where we control and limited the workflow to suit us.  We aim was to gather up and document some of the questions, knowledge, tips and tricks that we find useful now and would have found useful had we known it earlier.

Knowledge is confidence, and we want to share our experience and knowledge so that anyone considering or embarking on long term (or short term) caravan travel has some added resources. One overriding driver for us is, where possible, to pass on some knowledge to save some money with DIY repairs and maintenance. We don’t want your money, and we would prefer you kept as much of it as can.

We certainly don’t have all the answers, but we know works, what doesn’t, and what’s helped us.

Transparency is important to us, and we don’t publish influenced or sponsored advertorial content under any pretense that it’s our own genuine opinion.  Our opinions aren’t sponsored and as a visitor to our website, you’re entitled to expect that we are transparent with the information we publish.

If we’re wrong it’s more because we’re stupid, and less than because we’re being paid.   Now that all seems so much better, doesn’t it ??

This is a labour of love; just a hobby really.   Our website, Instagram and Youtube accounts are not platforms we want to push in order to fund a thinly veiled extended holiday ultimately paid for by you.  This isn’t a job …. this is a lifestyle choice aka a holiday.

Fluffing, influencing, product placement or financially motivated reviews are available in spades elsewhere. You won’t have to go far to find that.

We love this traveling lifestyle. We’ve made wonderful memories and found some wonderful lifelong friends during our travels.  We’re happy to increase the potential hit rate of making more traveling friends.   There’s plenty of room around the fire for everyone.

So ….. hitch up, hit the road.   You’re going to love this lifestyle.

Now to meet the permanent crew members

This is the crew, all three of us.  Two regular humans and a hairy dog.    Although it’s always nice, if not a little voyeuristic to be able to put a face to a name we’re hiding behind these caricatures.

We actually appear in many of the site’s images and videos anyway, so consider it to be a little bit like Where’s Wally.

These awesome caricatures were done at the Melb Caravan and Camping Show a few years ago and we thought where better to display them for a while.

Ross

Not-so “Former” Director/Owner Renovation Company

Ross is very easy going (mostly), and after a recent promotion is now proud to be 3rd in charge of our crew of three.

Ross is incredibly calm in any crisis, no more so than when the crisis is someone else’s.

Ross will talk to anyone and everyone … a lot … often … very often.

A lover of good coffee, Barb, a quiet bush camp, a campfire, and good company; pretty much in that order.

Barb

Former Teachers Aid and all around champion

Entertainment Director, Bursar, Moral Compass and crew conscience.

Barb is a tiny pocket rocket, and she just gets shit done.   Barb is also the glue that holds everything together, including the rest of the crew.

Barb is the unfortunate target of way too much of Ross’s constant humour and sarcasm

Barb is also the crew Wanker Detector, she can spot a wanker at 100mtrs and will alarm.

Barb spends a lot of hours, and accumulative days waiting almost patiently for Ross to stop talking to people … which is often at the most inconvenient times.

Max.

Maximus Decimus Meridius. Maxie the Moo Moo when he’s good, and Max when he’s not.

Max is mostly pretty obedient and a pretty good poster boy for all traveling animal companions.

Unfortunately, Max can’t swim for whatever reason, hates bones but loves veggies and yogurt; weird hey?

Max likes people, but loves his people immensely.  Max loves the beach, he also loves being active and exploring, and Max loves to be very close to his Barb.   Above everything else Max likes it best exploring, being active, at the beach and very close to his Barb all at the same time.

Max tolerates Ross.   No matter how hard Ross tries ….. he’s just not Barb