Such a good question and one that felt a bit perplexing when Jay said we needed to do a blog post on this topic.  I will take a crack at explaining it here with the disclaimer that I find myself saying several times a day (often aloud) “What a

In 2007, Jay and I left our jobs and went on a round the world trip.  We spent a couple of months in Australia on that journey and fell in love with the country, particularly the red dirt.  We spent the second month of our Australia travel camping in Western Australia, completing a 2,000km journey up the coast. We were stunned each day with all that we saw (stunning landscape) and all that we didn’t see (people and buildings).

At the end of the six month journey, we returned to our lives and careers in Brooklyn. Over the years, we would joke about trying to get a job to move us to Australia, but it was always a fantasy.  Fast forward several years, two kids and some interesting times and we decided we were actually going to make it happen.  After working through several scenarios (ranging from reasonable to harebrained), we settled on the idea of buying a camper trailer and traveling around Australia.  I’ll let you decide which end of the spectrum we settled on….

What is a camper trailer, you may ask?  (You may also ask “Why would one want to live in a camper trailer?,” but I am going to let the next few weeks unfold before I determine whether I should be selling you on this idea…) A camper trailer is either a wholly Aussie or largely Aussie product. It folds up like a box trailer, but rather than popping up like the ones in the US, these unfold when set-up.  This design provides more internal floor space, making them more livable for extended periods on the road and more durable for off road adventures, which are plentiful in this part of the world.

They look like this when traveling:

And this is what they look like unfolded:

We are going to see one of these in person for the first time tomorrow and funnily enough, we will also start calling it home on the same day.   Here’s to adventure!

Over the next few days, we will go from our cozy rental apartment in Manly to the open road.  We are going to pick up a used 4WD later today that has been in the shop for the last few weeks getting fully outfitted for our adventure.  Tomorrow, we will do a full walkthrough of our own Supamatic Cub Camper.  At the end of the week, we will be heading south to do a 4WD training course through Great Divide Tours.  Vic Widman of Great Divide Tours has helped us immeasurably in preparing for this trip and we are so lucky that the timing worked out to join one of his courses immediately after picking up our vehicle and camper trailer.

Have I mentioned that we haven’t driven on the opposite side of the road in several years and we will start by driving a souped up Land Cruiser towing our home?! Should be an interested few days!