White Storm Over the Water
7–12 jun., Australië ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C
We woke to the stillness of the camp, that early country quiet that sits over a small town before it has properly stirred, and set off on a short walk through Maidenwell to stretch the night out of our legs. Like so many of these inland towns it was a modest place, a handful of streets given over to the wide quiet of the bush around them, and it did not take long to see the whole of it. We came back to the bus, packed our small home down, and said our goodbye to the first stop of the leg. One night, and already the road had us again.
The drive was a short one. We rolled into Dalby, a town threaded through Anth's earliest memories, the waypoint of his childhood on all those long runs out west to family properties, familiar to him in that deep and half-remembered way a place is when you knew it as a boy. This time we stopped, long enough for a coffee, before pointing the bus out of town again. Twenty minutes was all it took to reach the next camp, on the shores of Lake Broadwater, the one true natural lake of any size on the whole of the Darling Downs and a known haven for waterbirds. We found ourselves a spot up the far end and settled in among the red gums.
There were corellas. Hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, a white storm of birds strung through every tree and wheeling over the water, and they were loud beyond all reckoning. Their racket filled the days from first light, a relentless, comic, ear-splitting chorus that rose and fell and never quite stopped, to the point where Sal could barely hear herself think, let alone hold a video call. And calls were exactly what she needed to make, for she was settling into the new office Anth had built for her in the cab of the bus. This was the cleverness of his long list of small jobs come good. Sal's counselling work asks for privacy, the kind of quiet, closed space a client on the other end of a line has every right to expect, and Anth had made her one out of the front of the bus, fitting a Lagun swing-out table so that she could take her sessions in private at camp. He had thought ahead, too, to the days when we would be moving: the table swung out for study on the road as readily as it served at a standstill, so that neither the driving nor the destination need interrupt the steady progress of her degree. The corellas, of course, had not been consulted, and on the worst of their mornings Sal could only laugh and wait for a lull.
We took the bikes down off the back for their first proper outing of this new chapter. It was nothing arduous, a gentle ten kilometres looping through an old pine forest, the trunks standing in their long planted rows and the soft needle-fall hushing the ground beneath the tyres. Ten kilometres, though, was ten kilometres, and Sal was quietly pleased with herself for it, the sort of small physical victory that this life serves up when you least expect it. In the afternoons the Pomoly came out, the faithful hot-tent stove that had warmed us through cold Tasmanian nights, pressed now into gentler service for cooking, and we ate the early evenings away beside its glow while the corellas finally, mercifully, began to settle.
The riding was not the only thing keeping us moving. Over the still months at Grammy's, Anth had been quietly working out a training program built around the little equipment the bus could carry, and this was the place we began it again in earnest. Rings hung from the sturdy lower bows of the eucalypts, swaying slightly in the morning air, and from them we worked through push-ups and pull-ups and rows, our resistance bands stretched to the very limit of what they had in them. It was a far cry from the ordered machines and clean mirrors of a gym, this business of hauling ourselves up beneath a gum tree with the corellas jeering overhead, but it did the job. It kept us active, kept the blood moving and the body honest, and there was a satisfaction in it that no gym had ever quite managed, the satisfaction of making do, of building strength out of rope and rubber and whatever the bush gave us to hang it from.
The other quiet luxury of the place was its showers. After so long making do, there is a real and uncomplicated joy in a hot shower at a campsite, and on the morning before we left we indulged in one, washing the dust of the road away and stepping out clean into the day. The last couple of nights brought a little light rain, soft on the roof, the first the new leg had given us. Lake Broadwater had been everything we could have asked of a second stop, generous and easy and alive with birds, and as we packed to move on we agreed between us that the next chapter of the trip had begun about as well as a chapter could.Meer informatie
A Convoy of Two Homes
6–7 jun., Australië ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C
The day came, and we headed out once more onto the open road. Six months had passed at Grammy's, and though every week of them had been a gift, the long unhurried stretch of family that this life so often keeps us from, the time with the kids, the time with our parents, the slow ordinary days of being near the people we love, we had felt for a while now the old pull returning. We were long overdue. The bus had sat too many nights in one driveway, and a home built for movement begins to fret when it is kept still.
Grammy was ready too. Her van was fitted out and packed, her own small home squared away for the road, the three weeks she had spent travelling with us in Tasmania having quietly relit something in her that had never fully gone out. We were as ready as she was. There were goodbyes to be made first, the ones this family has learned to make so often and never learned to make easily. We farewelled Torrin, Soph and Mack, each of them setting out on adventures of their own, each road bending away from ours in its own direction. We had stood in this exact feeling many times, the strange double pull of being glad to go and sorry to part, and we had long since stopped expecting it to soften.
Then we turned the key and went. It was not a long drive, and the bus purred along beneath us, settling back into the work it was made for as though it had been waiting all those still months to be asked. Grammy followed behind in her van, the two homes moving in convoy through the soft green South Burnett country, hills folding gently away on either side. Our first destination lay only a couple of hours off, the small town of Maidenwell, a quiet village set in the hills at the gateway to the Bunya Mountains. There was a particular rightness to that, though we hardly spoke of it: the Bunyas had been our very first stop at the beginning of all this, near two and a half years ago, and here we were again at their foot, the long circle of the journey turning over once more beneath our wheels.
The camp was nothing more than a peaceful oval in the middle of town, a few vans and caravans scattered loosely across the grass, the kind of modest free stop that asks nothing of you but to settle and be quiet. We settled. And the sleep that came was extraordinary, deep and unbroken and complete, the sleep of a body that has finally been returned to the thing it knows. It was good, simply, to be sleeping somewhere other than a driveway again, to wake in a place we had driven to rather than one we had been waiting in. There was a small irony in it that did not escape Anth, who had only weeks before spent six weeks sleeping in the backcountry of New Zealand, in huts and on hard ground far past the reach of any town. He had slept rough in some of the wildest country either of us had ever seen, and yet it was this, a flat town oval in a forgettable little village, with Grammy's van a few steps away and Sal breathing softly beside him, that felt, that first night, like the truest rest of all. Home, it turned out, had never been the wildness or the comfort. It was the moving, and the each other, and the simple fact of being underway again.Meer informatie
Beads on a String
22 apr.–6 jun., Australië ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C
Anth and Torrin drove the bus down the driveway at Grammy's and brought it to rest where the trail could no longer follow. There is a strange arithmetic to coming off a long walk: the legs keep reckoning in kilometres the body no longer has to give, the shoulders still carry the ghost of a pack, and the mind, set for weeks to the simple grammar of one foot and then the other, finds the suburban stillness almost too soft to stand in. For the two of them it was a quiet adjustment, made quieter by the thing that sat beneath it. They had not walked the whole length of the South Island as they had set out to. Weather and the closing season had taken the last of it from them, and that final unwalked stretch stayed out there in their minds, a line on a map left open. They might have let it ache. Instead they did what this life had taught them to do with the things that do not finish on schedule: they folded it up and put it away, not as a failure but as an invitation, a reason to come back, an adventure held in reserve for a season not yet arrived.
Two days later Sal was home, and the family closed back around its own centre. This time the drive to fetch her fell to Anth, out to the train station at Gympie to wait on the platform he had waited on before, watching for the figure that turned an ordinary arrival into the end of the longest goodbye they had ever set themselves. With everyone gathered once more under the one stretch of sky, the talk turned, as it always did, to the road, and to when the wheels might begin to turn again. A shape emerged, tentative as all their plans were tentative, plans being suggestions the road might or might not honour: they would leave just after Pop's birthday on the fifth of June.
Until then the days had no shortage of work to fill them. Sal was back inside the books, though her study break had come and gone while Anth was away in New Zealand, so the two of them never got to share it; the rest she had earned had been a solitary one, spent against the backdrop of those sparse satellite messages. Anth turned to the bus and to a list that had been growing in the back of his mind for months. Nothing on it was large. It was the slow accumulation of small things, a fitting here, an adjustment there, the hundred minor attentions a home on wheels asks of the hands that keep it, and he worked through them steadily in the mild autumn light, the days warm enough still at twenty-four degrees to make the labour pleasant.
The weeks carried a run of birthdays, one after another like beads on a string. Anth's came first. Then Shea's, who was back among them by then from his stint down in Sydney. And finally Pop's, the one the departure plan was built around. Torrin did what Torrin always does and made the cakes, the ones the whole family looks forward to year on year, and this year was no exception; there is a particular kind of homecoming in a familiar cake, in the proof that some traditions travel with you no matter how scattered the household becomes. Sophie and Shea had set up in Soph's van, tucked into a corner of the property, the vehicle still carrying a few mechanical complaints that wanted sorting before it would be trusted with real distance. Their intention was to leave when we left, though the road would take them sideways from us almost at once, their path and ours not due to braid together again for a couple of months. Torrin, for his part, was already looking past all of it, toward the end of the year and a trip with Shea to Canada for the ski season, busy with the long tail of arrangements such a journey drags behind it and looking into trials to help cover the cost. Mack would stay on in Gympie. And so, as it had so many times before, the family was quietly preparing to scatter to its separate roads. We had done this often enough to know its shape, and knowing the shape did not lighten it. The going of people you love in different directions is a weight you simply learn to carry without complaint.
Pop's birthday arrived and passed gently. All of us gathered at the home to mark it, carrying in cake and small treats, sitting with him through one of those afternoons whose worth lies entirely in its plainness, in being there, in the cake on the plate and the people in the room. And then, almost before it seemed possible, it was the eve of departure. Tomorrow the bus would point itself outward again and the chosen life would pick up its old rhythm, the engine and the open gate and the country unrolling ahead. That last still night held the two feelings it always held, side by side and inseparable: the excitement of the road remembered, and the nervousness of leaving the known behind. We had felt them both many times. We had learned, by now, that they always came together, and that the coming of them meant it was nearly time to go.Meer informatie
The Longest Goodbye
10 mrt.–22 apr., Australië ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C
Sal drove away from the airport with the cabin of the bus suddenly too quiet around her. She had handed Anth over to the sliding doors a hundred times before, but this was the longest goodbye they had set themselves, six weeks marked out against the shape of her trimester, and the distance felt different for being chosen. There was no resentment in it. Some things you do not stand in the way of, and walking a New Zealand trail beside Torrin was one of them; a stretch of days that might never come round again, father and son on the same track, the sort of thing you carry for the rest of your life. So she pointed herself south to her parents' place and let the missing of him sit beside her, neither fought nor fed, the way the road had taught them both to travel.
University came back at a sprint. Two units, both dense and theoretical, neuroscience and grief therapy, and both close to Sal's heart for the nursing years behind her. They asked a great deal: extra lectures, weekly readings, new concepts that did not settle on the first pass or the second. The assignments were as vast as ever, and she gave each one the long, careful hours it wanted, researching and drafting and polishing until it held. A High Distinction and a Distinction came back for the effort. At the same time her work doubled when a colleague resigned, and the timing could hardly have been worse, falling across the new trimester and a two-day workshop down in Melbourne.
The stress of it was real, with Anth away and uni, work and family all pulling at once. Sal kept herself afloat by the small reliable things: five kilometres on foot each day, strength sessions at the gym nearby, and the steady company of her mum and dad, their conversation rich enough to be its own kind of rest. There was relief, too, in finally closing what she had come to call her tooth-troubled era, the last of eleven appointments over nearly a year for one stubborn tooth, six thousand dollars and twelve months put behind her at last.
The missing was sharpest in the silences. For long stretches there was no proper contact at all, only sporadic satellite messages pinging in as Anth and Torrin pushed through the remote heart of the South Island, the Te Araroa carrying them far past phone signal and into country that answered to no timetable. A few clipped words on a screen, hours or days apart, were all she had of him some weeks. She learned to read a great deal into very little: that he was well, that the weather held or did not, that the next hut was reached. It was enough, and it was not enough, both at once.
Through all of it loomed the placement she had to organise, and the silence she met when she tried. The university did not reply. The agencies she emailed did not reply. Then a thought arrived almost on its own: her old school in Canberra, the one that already knew her, might be glad to have her back. A few calls and emails later it was settled, the face-to-face counselling hours secured to sit alongside the online group work she was already doing through SMART Recovery Australia. One more knot loosened.
The weeks with Grannie and Grandad steadied her in ways the to-do list never could. Mornings often began with a walk alongside Grannie around the broadwalk, the two of them peeling off to Flinders Lane for coffee as a matter of ritual. They drank a good many coffees at that cafe over the season, with Sophie when she came to visit, with Shea when he came, with Andrew when he drove up for the Easter weekend. Sophie stayed about a week, working through crucial assignments of her own for her counselling diploma; for a stretch, mother and daughter studied side by side. With her brother Andrew, Sal walked up Mount Coolum a second time, the challenge of it entirely tangible, her heart going hard against her ribs with every step of the climb to the top.
Easter was lovely. Sal's sister Al and her brother-in-law Paul joined them, and Andrew, for Sunday lunch. There was a Brisbane workshop tucked into the calendar as well, where Sal stayed with Andrew and Tania for the last time. They had hosted her through two years of Brisbane workshops with a warmth that never thinned, and Tania's cooking had been a thing of quiet artistry, every meal considered and set down with care.
Then word came that Anth was coming home early, the trail's last days closed off ahead of schedule by snow and weather. After six weeks of screens and satellites, the thought of him in front of her again felt almost unreal. Sal had built her days around seeing Grandad give a talk at the Anzac Day service, and the homecoming threaded itself awkwardly through those plans, the way real life rarely arrives on cue. Anth and Torrin came through customs at a crawl, slow enough that the neat version of the reunion fell away; in the end they could get only as far as Nambour by train. So Sal drove the bus out to meet them there, and when she finally saw the pair of them step down onto the platform, road-worn and grinning, all the clipped little messages of the past six weeks resolved at once into something solid she could put her arms around. They drove back to Maroochydore to gather the loose threads of plans and belongings, and from there Anth and Torrin took the wheel home to Gympie while Sal stayed on a couple of days more for Grandad's service. The longest goodbye they had ever set themselves had ended the way all the others had, with someone walking back through a door, the bus full and humming once more, and the quiet of those first solo kilometres already fading into memory.Meer informatie
Six Weeks and the Open Gate
6–10 mrt., Australië ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C
The store rang the morning after Anth pulled back into Grammy's place at Gympie: the phone had finally come in. There was a rhythm to these things, the way a part or a parcel always seemed to land the moment you stopped waiting for it. He sorted it out with a few calls. Grannie would collect the phone, and Anth would gather it from her on the same run that brought Sal home, folding two errands into one trip to the airport.
Two days until Sal landed. A handful more until he left for New Zealand. In that narrow gap there were jobs on the bus that wanted finishing, and one in particular had been waiting longer than the rest: the electromagnetic drawer locks. He had planned them for months, sketched them, set them aside, returned to them. Saturday was marked for the work, and Saturday delivered. The iron infusion had left him with a surge of energy he had not felt in a while, and he spent the whole day at it, wiring and fitting until the drawers finally held themselves shut the way he had imagined. A small thing, perhaps, but the kind of small thing that makes a rolling home feel finished.
The loose shape of what came next sat warm in the planning. When Anth returned from the trail, we would point the bus at the horizon again, only this time we would not travel alone. Sophie would fall in beside us in her new van, and Grammy too. Three weeks with us in Tasmania had stirred something in her that had not settled since; the nomad in her, it seemed, had only been resting. There was a particular pleasure in imagining the convoy of us, each in our own home on wheels, choosing the same road.
Soon enough Anth was driving the familiar stretch to the airport, waiting at the gate for Sal to walk back into our days. Melbourne airport had handed her back to him so many times over these two years that the ritual had worn a groove; this reunion was no different in its relief, and no less sweet for being practised.
The last two days went to the pack. Anth laid it out and took it apart and laid it out again, weighing every item against the weeks of walking ahead, the way you do when the country is unfamiliar and the load is yours alone to carry. Our time together was short and we both felt the shortness of it. But Torrin was out there on the track, and the chance for Anth to walk beside our son through that country was not one he was willing to let pass.
Then the final drive to the airport. We had made the run to those sliding doors more times than we could count, learned the ache of the departure lounge and the gladness of the arrivals hall. This parting set a record we had never wanted: six weeks, dialled in now around Sal's university dates, longer than any stretch before it. Sal watched Anth go through to the gate and the gap opened ahead of them both, and he went towards it anyway, because the life they had chosen asked it of him, and because every separation either of them had ever counted had ended, in time, with one of them walking back through a sliding door.Meer informatie
Where the Bus Was Born
4–6 mrt., Australië ⋅ ☀️ 27 °C
While Sophie was away visiting Shea in Sydney, we'd been making good use of her new van. But with the vehicle waiting for the mechanic for some fine tuning, we decided to take the bus down for our next trip instead. Even though it meant another departing moment in what had become an exhausting season of goodbyes, there was genuine joy in travelling together again. The bus hummed beneath us with familiar reassurance, our golden home carrying us through landscapes we'd missed from behind its panoramic windows. We both lamented how long this chapter of separations had stretched, each reunion seeming to carry within it the seeds of the next farewell. We ached for the season to turn, for the moment when we could simply be together without a countdown ticking somewhere in the background.
But that moment hadn't arrived yet. The bus pulled into the Sunshine Coast Airport, and Sal gathered her things for the flight to Melbourne. University workshops awaited. Another platform, another departure, another figure growing smaller through glass. The familiarity of it didn't soften the sting.
Anth watched her disappear into the terminal, then continued south down the coast. The bus needed a few things, and practical tasks provided welcome structure for the hours that followed. But a more pressing matter occupied his thoughts. Twelve months of clinical trials had extracted their toll on his body, and his iron levels had dropped to concerning depths. Under normal circumstances, he might have let time and diet do their work. But with a two-month hike alongside Torrin looming on the horizon, the South Island of New Zealand demanding everything his body could give, a quick fix was needed. An iron infusion appointment had been booked for the following day.
Grannie and Grandad's welcomed him for an overnight stay, their home performing its familiar role as waypoint between obligations. One more night under a solid roof before the next chapter of logistics unfolded.
The following morning, Anth navigated the bus toward his appointment, searching for somewhere to park a vehicle that didn't fit neatly into standard bays. Street after street offered nothing suitable until, by a coincidence that felt almost scripted, the only available space revealed itself directly outside our old house on the lake at Wurtulla. The very same spot where Anth had spent countless days building the bus when we'd first bought it, back when this entire adventure existed only as blueprint and ambition. The bus now sat polished and proven in the exact location where it had been born, a full circle moment that demanded quiet acknowledgement before he walked to his appointment.
The infusion went smoothly, iron flowing into veins that had been depleted by months of blood draws and clinical protocols. With it came the hope of renewed energy, the kind of deep cellular restoration that would prove essential when mountain passes and river crossings replaced waiting rooms and observation wards.
A quick phone call to check on his device. Still on its way from repair. Hopefully tomorrow, they said. Anth weighed his options. A phone was crucial for the upcoming hike. Navigation, communication, safety. It couldn't be left to chance. He decided to wait one more day, pulling the bus into a park not far from Grannie and Grandad's. A quick check confirmed he could stay another night, and the rest of the day filled itself with the endless list of small tasks that preceded any major departure. Adjustments, preparations, the quiet tinkering that transformed anxiety into productivity.
Friday morning brought farewells and genuine thanks to Grannie and Grandad, whose home had served as staging ground for so many of our comings and goings. The girl at the repair shop had said around three o'clock, so Anth used the intervening hours wisely. Hiking supplies were purchased, those final items that separated a well-prepared tramper from a hopeful one. A couple of remaining bits for the bus found their way into bags. The list shortened with each errand completed.
At three o'clock, Anth arrived at the shop with expectation. The phone wasn't there. It's at the depot, the girl explained, her expression carrying the particular discomfort of delivering news she couldn't control. There was no point or reason to direct frustration at her. The situation sat beyond her means to influence, just as it sat beyond Anths. These small moments of forced acceptance had become familiar teachers on this journey, reminders that flexibility mattered more than frustration, that plans existed only as suggestions the universe might or might not honour.
With a tentative plan to collect the phone on Monday, the last possible opportunity before his flight, Anth pointed the bus back toward Gympie. The road north unwound through late afternoon light, another day of preparation behind him, the trail in New Zealand drawing closer with each sunset. The season of departures continued its relentless rhythm, but somewhere ahead, beyond airports and infusions and delayed phone repairs, father and son would meet on a trail at the bottom of the world. That thought alone made every logistical frustration feel remarkably small.Meer informatie
The Long Wait: 49 Days of Becoming
14 jan.–4 mrt., Australië ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C
The weeks that followed stretched like Queensland summers do: slow, sticky, and seemingly without end. With Anth confined to Melbourne's clinical facility and Sophie's temporary accommodation coming to its conclusion, the first order of business was consolidation. Mack helped move Sophie's belongings out, the logistics of dismantling one living arrangement to create another requiring the particular patience that only siblings can offer each other.
Sophie moved into the bus with Sal, and suddenly our rolling home held two women, one dog, and the accumulated possessions of someone in the process of reimagining her entire life. The sorting began immediately. Every item interrogated: keep, store, or release. The measuring stick was ruthless — would it fit in a van? Sophie was building toward her own nomadic chapter, and the curation of belongings became its own form of meditation. What truly mattered? What had been carried out of habit rather than necessity? Storage units absorbed the undecided, those objects too weighted with sentiment to discard but too bulky to carry forward.
The Queensland heat showed no mercy throughout. The humidity wrapped around everything like a second skin, relentless and inescapable. Mornings that promised freshness surrendered to oppressive afternoons within hours. Even simple tasks — moving boxes, organising storage, walking Chia — became endurance exercises against the climate. We'd lived in Queensland for years, yet the heat felt newly hostile after months of southern travel.
Sal found her rhythm despite the conditions. She joined a local gym, and the discipline of consistent training three days a week provided structure to weeks that might otherwise have dissolved into shapeless waiting. Iron didn't care about humidity. Barbells demanded presence regardless of who was missing. Between sessions, CPD courses kept her professional development moving forward, and client work continued, the online coaching that followed wifi signals wherever we happened to park. The days filled themselves, though the space where Anth should have been remained conspicuously empty.
She missed him. Not in the dramatic way of novels, but in the quiet accumulation of moments unshared. A sunset that deserved commentary. A meal that would have tasted better across from his familiar face. The particular loneliness of sleeping in a bus designed for two when only one remained.
Yet brightness punctuated the waiting. A day trip to Widgie Hip Camp for Sav's birthday brought reunion with the Rookie Adventurers, that community of like-minded souls whose paths intersected with ours along the travelling circuit. Sophie disappeared for four days to Double Island with Sal's sister, leaving Sal on Chia duty. The dog proved an undemanding companion, her simple needs and boundless enthusiasm a remedy for quieter days.
One afternoon stands luminous in memory. Mack and Lachie visited, and someone produced a deck of Uno cards. What followed was less card game and more theatrical performance. Lachie was particularly relaxed that day, and a surprising talent for the creative arts emerged from behind his usual demeanour. Every card played became an event. Grand gestures accompanied each draw. His vocal prosody shifted between dramatic whisper and flamboyant declaration, each Uno call delivered with the flair of a Shakespearean actor discovering comedy for the first time. We were in stitches, the kind of laughter that leaves stomach muscles aching and eyes streaming. It was a really fun afternoon, the sort that imprints itself precisely because it arrived unplanned and unexpected.
The weeks continued their slow procession. Mother and daughter found their rhythm on the bus, that particular intimacy of shared small spaces creating conversations that larger houses might never have prompted. Then, quietly and with the satisfaction of months of searching, Sophie found her van. The purchase marked a turning point, her own nomadic vessel secured, the dream of vanlife and overseas adventures suddenly tangible rather than theoretical.
A trip to Grannie and Grandad's brought family connection and the celebration of Grannie's birthday, another gathering that reminded us how these milestones gained significance through our travelling life. Chia went to stay with Sav, and Sophie headed to the airport for her own screening appointment, the clinical trial pathway that had funded our adventures now extending to the next generation.
And then, after just over thirty days of separation, Anth came home. The trial complete, his body released from medical obligation, the distance that had stretched between us finally collapsing into reunion. Grammy's driveway witnessed another homecoming, the bus feeling whole again with both of us in it.
But reunion, as we'd learned, often carried the seeds of the next departure. Plans took shape quickly. Sal booked flights to Melbourne for her latest university workshops, the professional commitments that kept her qualifications current. And Anth, his eyes bright with possibility, made a decision that had been quietly forming throughout those thirty days of clinical confinement. He would join Torrin on the trail in New Zealand. His son had just completed the North Island of Te Araroa and was preparing to tackle the South Island. A flight was booked. Potentially two months apart from Sal stretched ahead, longer than any separation we'd yet navigated.
The weight of it settled between us in the quiet moments. Two months. And yet Sal, despite knowing how deeply she would miss him, would never deny such an extraordinary father-son adventure. Some opportunities arrive once and never again. Torrin was out there walking the length of a country, and Anth had the chance to walk beside him through some of the most spectacular wilderness on earth. The strength of what we'd built together over these nomadic years meant trusting that distance couldn't diminish it. Love, we'd discovered, didn't require proximity. It required faith.Meer informatie
Tolls, Tears, and Google Maps
11–14 jan., Australië ⋅ ☁️ 26 °C
The airport had become a revolving door of goodbyes. First Anth, disappearing through the terminal for his pending trial in Melbourne, that familiar walk toward automatic doors and clinical confinement. Then, several days later, Shea. His departure carried a different flavour: not temporary medical obligation but a new chapter entirely, a season of living and working in Sydney that would stretch the distance between him and Sophie into something more permanent than a few weeks.
Two farewells in quick succession left Sophie and Sal lighter in number but not in spirit. They had each other, and they had an appointment in Brisbane that had been a long time coming.
Google Maps, however, had other ideas about how they'd get there. The route it charted read less like navigation and more like punishment. Three tolls on the way in, the kind of unwelcome surprises that pinged through the car like a financial countdown. The algorithm dragged them through side streets and back streets, past suburbs neither of them recognised, through intersections that felt improvised rather than planned. Sophie and Sal exchanged glances that oscillated between disbelief and laughter as each new turn revealed another questionable directional choice.
Somehow, against all reasonable expectation, they arrived on time. The appointment was kept, whatever anxiety the journey had generated dissolving into the relief of actually being where they needed to be. The return trip proved marginally kinder. A single toll this time, Google apparently having exhausted its appetite for financial extraction on the outbound leg.
They collected Chia from Grannie and Grandad's on the way back, the dog's unbridled enthusiasm at their arrival a tonic after a day of navigational chaos and farewell residue. With Chia loaded and bags packed, the three of them pointed north once more. Grammy's driveway waited, that familiar patch of concrete that had become our default base in Queensland. The bus would settle there again, and life would reorganise itself around this smaller, quieter configuration: mother, daughter, and one very happy dog, finding their rhythm while the men in their lives pursued their separate paths elsewhere.Meer informatie
Summer Heat and Family Gatherings
5–11 jan., Australië ⋅ ☁️ 24 °C
Grammy's driveway became our home once more, the bus settling into that familiar patch of concrete where so many of our journeys had begun and paused. Anth had screened for another trial, a bigger one this time, and the calendar showed less than a week before he'd disappear into Melbourne's clinical facility for just over thirty days. The countdown lent urgency to ordinary moments, transforming simple togetherness into something precious.
We made the most of every hour. The kids descended for summer barbecues, smoke rising from the grill while laughter filled Grammy's backyard. Sophie arrived with Shea, their partnership evident in the easy way they moved around each other. Mack and Lachie added their voices to the chorus, our son and his partner contributing to the particular chaos that adult children gathering always creates. Cold drinks sweated in the Queensland humidity as conversations wandered from memory to plan to comfortable nonsense.
These gatherings carried bittersweet undertones. Shea was preparing to leave for Sydney, trading familiar Queensland landscapes for the southern city's faster rhythms. Work and adventure called him there, and we recognised the restlessness that drove such decisions. Our own journey had begun with similar impulses, the need to see what lay beyond the known horizon. Sophie would miss him, that much was clear, though she supported the move with the understanding that comes from loving someone with their own ambitions.
Sophie herself had caught the wanderlust. Between barbecue servings and card games, she scrolled through van listings, her imagination populating each vehicle with possibilities. Vanlife and overseas travel danced through her planning, that familiar itch to move manifesting in saved searches and budget calculations. The apple, it seemed, hadn't fallen far from the travelling tree.
Torrin's voice reached us across the Tasman through video calls, his trail updates painting pictures of New Zealand's rugged beauty. He was making progress southward, each conversation revealing new challenges overcome and landscapes conquered. These digital connections anchored our scattered family, technology bridging distances that would have felt impossible a generation ago.
We visited Dad at the high care facility, those hours carrying their own particular weight. Dementia had claimed so much from him, yet when we walked through his door, recognition flickered in his eyes. He knew us still. That simple fact, that he remembered who we were when so many other memories had slipped away, felt like a gift we'd never take for granted. We sat with him, filling the room with gentle conversation, holding onto these moments while they remained possible.
Most mornings, we laced up shoes for walks through the neighbourhood, though the Queensland summer had other ideas. The heat hit differently now. After months in Victoria's milder climate, the subtropical humidity felt foreign despite having lived here for years. Sweat bloomed before we'd completed a single block, our bodies protesting conditions they'd once considered normal.
Between family gatherings and melting walks, Anth continued his endless tinkering. The bus always needed something: adjustments, improvements, repairs that had waited for the right moment. Each task completed felt like preparation for whatever came next, the mechanical meditation that kept our home running smoothly.
Finally, the day arrived. We packed what Anth would need for his thirty-day confinement and pointed the bus toward Grannie and Grandad's place on the Sunshine Coast. Their home sat just fifteen minutes from the airport, the perfect staging ground for early morning departures. One more night of borrowed beds and family warmth before separation claimed us again.Meer informatie
Bikes, Dentists, and Detours
4–5 jan., Australië ⋅ ☁️ 27 °C
Being back in familiar territory meant access to trusted professionals, and Sal wasted no time booking a dental appointment with Noah, our powerlifting dentist. Having owned a strength gym for many years, there was comfort in sitting in a chair where the person wielding the instruments understood the demands we placed on our bodies. The conversation flowed as easily as the fluoride rinse, talk of training and travel filling the gaps between examinations.
The day before the appointment, we headed south from Gympie, the highway unreeling through landscapes that had once been daily backdrop but now carried the gentle weight of nostalgia. Grannie and Grandad's place offered its usual warm welcome for a single night's stay, their home a reliable waypoint in our Queensland wanderings.
While there, Anth's phone screen lit up with possibility. A second-hand mountain bike had appeared on the local marketplace, specifications promising and price reasonable. Months earlier, Anth had secured his own bike, the anticipation of trail riding building with each passing week. Now Sal could join him, if this one proved suitable.
The dental visit passed without drama, Noah's familiar efficiency making quick work of the check-up. But the day's real mission lay ahead: a longer drive out to Samford, tucked behind Brisbane's suburban sprawl where rural properties still claimed the landscape.
Hunger caught up with us in Samford Valley, neither of us having eaten properly all day. A pizza shop provided salvation, the simple pleasure of hot food restoring energy depleted by driving and waiting rooms. We ate with one eye on the clock, aware that the bike seller expected us and daylight wouldn't last forever.
The rural property revealed itself down a winding driveway, the bike waiting in a shed that smelled of cut grass and stored machinery. We inspected it thoroughly: frame geometry, brake condition, gear shifting, tyre wear. Everything checked out. More than suitable for the trails that awaited us.
The teenager's father, however, had other plans for our afternoon. He loved to chat, and chat he did. Stories of his own cycling days gave way to questions about our bus life, which prompted tales of his mate's caravan adventures, which somehow connected to local council politics, which led to observations about the weather patterns this season. We nodded and smiled, genuinely enjoying his company while watching the shadows lengthen across his paddock.
Eventually, polite farewells were exchanged and the bike loaded into the bus. The floor space it occupied transformed our living area into something resembling a bicycle shop's storeroom, wheels and handlebars creating obstacles where open floor had been.
We briefly considered bush camping somewhere nearby, finding a quiet spot to break up the return journey. But with Sal's new acquisition dominating the interior, the logistics of cooking and sleeping around aluminium and rubber seemed unnecessarily complicated. The sensible choice won: back to Gympie, where we could properly reorganise before the next adventure.
The return drive passed in satisfied silence, two bikes now part of our travelling household. The trails of Queensland awaited, and soon we'd be exploring them together, wheels spinning over terrain that our bus could never reach.Meer informatie
Circle Incomplete: Christmas at Gympie
23 dec. 2025–4 jan. 2026, Australië ⋅ 🌧 25 °C
The final days in Melbourne passed at Jack's place once more, that familiar sanctuary providing base camp while Anth completed his outpatient appointments. The clinical trial's aftermath required follow-up visits, blood draws confirming that his body had processed whatever compound had been tested, paperwork closing the chapter on weeks of confinement. Then, with medical obligations satisfied, the journey home could finally begin.
The route north combined sky and rail: a flight to Brisbane followed by the train to Nambour, each leg bringing Anth closer to reunion. Sal and Sophie tracked his progress through intermittent messages, timing their departure to meet the train's arrival. The platform at Nambour station became the stage for reconnection, weeks of separation dissolving in the particular joy of being complete again.
Well, almost complete. Chia bounded into the reunion with the enthusiasm only dogs possess, Sophie's faithful companion adding four-legged energy to our gathering. The four of us piled into the vehicle and pointed toward Gympie, toward Anth's family, toward Christmas celebrations that had been circled on calendars for months.
The drive carried unexpected weight. Almost two years had passed since we'd departed from this very region, setting off with no fixed timeline, no predetermined endpoint, just the open road and curiosity as guides. That freedom had proven itself wise, our nomadic existence flowing organically from one adventure to the next without the pressure of arbitrary deadlines. Returning now felt like approaching a circle that refused to close. We had travelled so far, yet so much road still called to us. Gympie wasn't an ending but a waypoint, a pause in a journey whose conclusion remained beautifully undefined.
Christmas Day at Grammy's unfolded with the particular magic that only family gatherings can conjure. She had prepared an arsenal of games, activities designed to draw everyone from their corners and into shared laughter. The hours dissolved into competition and collaboration, into jokes that landed and others that groaned, into the kind of unstructured joy that makes certain days stand out in memory's catalogue. One of the best Christmases ever, we agreed later, the assessment carrying no exaggeration.
Yet one absence made itself felt in quiet moments between the laughter. Torrin, our eldest, was spending his Christmas on a different kind of adventure. Somewhere in New Zealand, he celebrated among fellow hikers on the TA track, sharing trail food and stories with strangers who understood why someone might choose mountains over family gatherings. We understood too, recognising in his choice the same wanderlust that had put us on the road. Still, his empty chair at the table, his missing voice in the chorus of celebration, reminded us that our scattered family paid prices for their various freedoms.
The games continued into afternoon, Grammy's seemingly endless supply of activities keeping everyone engaged long past the point where food comas might have claimed us. Sophie and Chia found their rhythm within the chaos, her laughter mixing with the general merriment while her dog navigated the forest of legs beneath the table, hoovering dropped morsels with opportunistic precision.
As evening settled and the day wound toward its natural conclusion, we found ourselves reflecting on the strange mathematics of nomadic life. Two years since departure, countless kilometres behind us, and yet here we sat in the same region where it all began. The circle had brought us back but refused completion, its arc continuing toward horizons we couldn't yet see. This wasn't failure to close a loop but rather recognition that some journeys have no proper endings, only pauses where family gathers before the road calls once more.
Torrin would complete his trail eventually, returning to orbits that might intersect with ours. The bus waited for whatever adventures the new year would bring. And Christmas at Gympie, with its games and laughter and one notable absence, would take its place among the memories that made this unconventional life worth choosing.Meer informatie
Christmas Without the Complete Set
14–23 dec. 2025, Australië ⋅ ☁️ 29 °C
The Sunshine Coast welcomed Sal and Grannie with familiar warmth, their road trip concluding with a day to spare before Mackenzie's birthday celebrations. The timing felt deliberate rather than lucky, allowing bodies to recover from highway hours before festivities demanded energy and presence.
Sophie's flight from Canberra touched down the following evening, her arrival at the airport marking another thread of our scattered family weaving back together. Sal collected her with the particular joy that comes from reuniting with adult children whose lives have grown their own orbits. Together, mother and daughter embarked on a road trip north for Mackenzie's birthday, the journey itself becoming part of the celebration.
The Priest family Christmas gathered at the RSL Club on the twentieth of December, a venue choice that delivered twin gifts: delicious cooked meals and zero washing up afterwards. Plates arrived laden with traditional fare, and empty dishes disappeared without requiring anyone to stand at a sink. The whole family filled their corner of the club with conversation and laughter, generations mixing across the table in the particular chaos of holiday gatherings.
Yet two chairs remained empty. Anth, still confined within Melbourne's clinical facility, and Torrin, making his way south along New Zealand's TA track, existed only as absent presences felt most keenly by Sal. The sadness surfaced unbidden between courses, in moments when a joke would have landed perfectly for Anth's sense of humour, or when adventure stories would have prompted Torrin's knowing nod. Still, the connections that were possible provided their own richness. Sophie and Mackenzie drew Sal into conversations that reminded her why these gatherings mattered, their presence filling some of the space that distance had created.
The days at Grannie and Grandad's settled into comfortable routine. Morning walks became ritual, feet finding familiar paths while conversation wandered wherever it pleased. Coffee dates punctuated afternoons, café tables hosting the kind of unhurried talk that only happens when time feels abundant. Retail therapy addressed practical needs as summer clothing supplies required topping up, the Queensland heat demanding wardrobe adjustments after months of Victorian layers.
Christmas shopping consumed an afternoon at Sunshine Plaza, the three generations navigating crowds with shared purpose. Bags accumulated as gift lists shortened, each purchase representing someone loved, someone who would unwrap these choices in mere days.
Evening brought the Priest family tradition that Sal treasured most. Sophie, Grannie, and Sal gathered with wrapping paper, ribbons, and scissors while Deck the Halls played on the television. This annual ritual transformed gift preparation from chore into ceremony, the familiar movie providing soundtrack to flying scissors and creative bow construction. Laughter punctuated the rustling of paper as wrapping disasters were rescued and triumphs admired.
Through it all, Sal's thoughts drifted south to Melbourne, where Anth counted down his own days of confinement. His return drew closer with each sunrise, Christmas Eve circled on mental calendars as the moment when their separation would finally end. The trial that had kept them apart would soon release him, and their story would resume its usual rhythm of togetherness.
Until then, these Sunshine Coast days offered their own gifts: family gathered despite incomplete numbers, traditions maintained across generations, the particular sweetness of anticipation sharpening appreciation for what was present while honouring what was missed.Meer informatie
When Mum Said the Word
13–14 dec. 2025, Australië ⋅ ☁️ 26 °C
The journey from Mike and Tricia's unfolded through conversation that made the kilometres disappear. Mother and daughter settling into the particular rhythm of road trip dialogue, topics flowing from memory to observation to comfortable silence and back again. The highway cooperated beautifully, its bypasses eliminating the stop-start frustration of town centres, creating smooth passage northward through landscapes that shifted gradually from Central Coast to Mid North Coast.
Mum's local knowledge surfaced as they approached Newcastle's outskirts. A pie shop she remembered, famous enough to warrant deviation, promising decent coffee alongside its pastry offerings. The detour felt worthwhile for more than just food. During the stop, both women reached for their phones with the synchronised instinct of those temporarily separated from their partners. Mum dialled Dad while Sal connected with Anth, parallel conversations sharing parallel journeys, the invisible threads of partnership stretching across whatever distances circumstance created.
Coffs Harbour announced itself as the day's end approached, and Sal felt the accumulated weight of hours behind the wheel settling into her shoulders and lower back. These past two days represented the longest stretches she'd driven the bus, her muscles reminding her that stamina required building. The Big 4 offered no-frills sanctuary for a single night, its facilities adequate for their simple needs: a place to park, a place to sleep, nothing more.
They did almost nothing that evening, the particular exhaustion of extended driving demanding early surrender to rest. Sleep came quickly and deeply, bodies grateful for horizontal stillness after hours of vibration and concentration.
The 7am departure felt almost luxurious compared to some of their earlier starts. First priority: coffee. The servo that presented itself seemed promising until they walked inside. No barista stood behind gleaming machinery. No coffee menu offered choices. Just a self-serve machine, its digital screen awaiting selections from whoever was brave or desperate enough to trust it.
A truckie stood at the machine, his weathered hands navigating the touchscreen with practiced efficiency. His selections indicated someone who'd made peace with roadside caffeine long ago: extra large, extra shot.
"Any good?" Sal asked, nodding toward the machine.
He turned, his face carrying the particular character of someone who'd logged thousands of highway kilometres. "Dunno," he muttered in an accent as authentically Australian as red dust and eucalyptus. "But I get a long black so I can't fuck it up too much."
The words hung in the servo's fluorescent air for a moment before Sal processed what she'd witnessed. She glanced at Mum, whose expression had frozen somewhere between shock and disbelief. Mum's generation, her upbringing, her entire relationship with language had not prepared her for such casual profanity from a stranger at seven in the morning.
After the truckie departed with his unfuckupable long black, Mum turned to Sal with an expression that would fuel family stories for years. Then, carefully, almost experimentally, she repeated his exact words. Every. Single. One. Including the one she'd never, in Sal's fifty years of existence, ever heard cross her mother's lips.
The moment dissolved into laughter so consuming they nearly forgot about their own coffee. In half a century of daughter-mother relationship, through childhood scoldings and teenage rebellions, through weddings and grandchildren and every conceivable circumstance, Sal had never once heard Mum deploy that particular word. Yet here, in a roadside servo outside Coffs Harbour, a truckie's throwaway comment had achieved what nothing else ever had.
"I can't believe you just said that," Sal managed between giggles.
"Neither can I," Mum admitted, looking both scandalised and slightly thrilled by her own transgression.
The longest leg of their journey stretched ahead, the Pacific Highway unspooling northward through hours of concentrated driving. Multiple stops punctuated the passage: diesel for the bus, food for themselves, stretches for legs that protested their confinement. Each pause provided brief relief before the road reclaimed them, the Sunshine Coast drawing incrementally closer with every kilometre.
Mid-afternoon delivered them to their destination, the familiar landscape of Mum's home territory finally surrounding them. Dad waited with the particular patience of someone who'd been tracking their progress through intermittent phone calls, his greeting carrying relief that the journey had concluded safely.
The mother-daughter road trip had delivered exactly what it promised: shared time, shared stories, and one unforgettable servo encounter that would be retold at family gatherings for decades. Some journeys are measured in destinations reached. Others are measured in moments collected along the way. This one had provided both, plus the unprecedented bonus of hearing Mum say something she'd never said before, courtesy of a truckie who just wanted a coffee he couldn't ruin.Meer informatie
Where Grandpa's House Once Stood
12–13 dec. 2025, Australië ⋅ ⛅ 22 °C
The highway stretched northward as Sal and Grannie began their journey back to Queensland, the bus carrying them through landscapes that would gradually shift from temperate to subtropical over the coming days. This mother-daughter road trip had been circled on calendars for weeks, a chance to share the nomadic experience with someone who'd watched our unconventional life unfold from afar.
Their first stop carried weight beyond mere logistics. Bateau Bay, that stretch of Central Coast where childhood memories clustered like shells on sand. This had been the stomping ground of family holidays past, when Grandpa's holiday house had served as summer headquarters for generations of beach days and backyard barbecues. The coastal air still carried those echoes, salt-tinged and familiar, even as the landscape had evolved around them.
Mike and Tricia's home sat directly across from where Grandpa's place had once stood. The original house, repository of so many family memories, had long since surrendered to progress. In its place rose a modern beach house, all clean lines and contemporary design, bearing no resemblance to the weatherboard cottage that lived on only in photographs and recollection. Yet staying with Mike and Tricia created its own bridge between past and present, their hospitality transforming what might have been melancholy pilgrimage into warm homecoming.
The welcome began before luggage had even been unloaded. Coffee appeared with the particular timing of hosts who understand travellers' needs, the caffeine cutting through road weariness while conversation flowed easily. A delicious meal followed, home cooking that tasted infinitely better than anything prepared in a moving vehicle. The hot shower, after a long day behind the wheel, felt almost decadent in its abundance and pressure. Finally, a proper bed awaited, stationary and spacious, the kind of sleeping arrangement that reminded Sal how different life had become since choosing wheels over walls.
Evening wound down gently. Sal and Grannie retreated to their room, sneaking in a Law and Order episode with the particular pleasure of familiar entertainment in unfamiliar surroundings. Sleep claimed them quickly, bodies grateful for horizontal rest after hours of highway hypnosis.
The alarm at 6:30am felt less cruel than expected, morning light already promising another good travel day. Breakfast materialised with the same generous efficiency that had characterised their entire stay, fuel for the kilometres ahead. By 8:30am, goodbyes had been exchanged and the bus was rolling once more, Bateau Bay shrinking in the mirrors as the Pacific Highway beckoned northward.
The drive required more stops than usual. Sal hadn't navigated solo for this length of time in a while, and the bus demanded respect and attention that shared driving typically distributed. Each rest area provided opportunity to stretch, to reset, to remind muscles that sitting wasn't their natural state. These pauses punctuated the journey without disrupting its momentum, necessary interruptions that kept driver and vehicle in harmony.
Coffs Harbour would provide the night's accommodation, another step closer to Queensland's familiar embrace.
Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres south, Anth's situation had shifted in his favour. The clinical trial that had initially placed him as alternate had opened its doors properly. Someone had been excluded, the medical lottery spinning in his direction for once. His stay was now secure for the next eight days, confinement transformed from possibility to certainty. The funding this would provide rippled forward into future adventures, each day of blood draws and medical monitoring translating eventually into diesel and groceries and freedom.
The parallel journeys continued: Sal and Grannie navigating highways and memories, Anth navigating protocols and patience. Different roads leading toward the same eventual reunion, our family's familiar pattern of divergence and convergence playing out once more across the Australian landscape.Meer informatie
Parliament, Pedicures, and Play
8–12 dec. 2025, Australië ⋅ ⛅ 25 °C
After almost two weeks moving between Jan and Liz's homes, those friendships spanning over thirty years providing anchor and comfort, our girls' gathering was about to expand. Sophie and Grannie were flying in to join the celebration, transforming what had been intimate friend time into multigenerational reunion.
Sophie's flight arrived from Melbourne in the morning, her clinical trial finally complete after weeks of confinement. Grannie's plane from the Sunshine Coast wouldn't touch down until evening, necessitating two separate airport runs through Canberra's orderly streets. The logistics felt less like inconvenience and more like building anticipation, each trip adding another layer to our gathering.
The reunion between Sophie and Jess carried particular sweetness. Over three years had passed since they'd last seen each other, time and distance creating gaps that evaporated the moment they embraced. Watching them fall immediately back into easy conversation reminded us how some connections transcend physical absence, picking up mid-sentence despite years between words.
The two days that followed dissolved into laughter and leisure. Cards appeared on tables and refused to be put away, games stretching across hours with scores forgotten in favour of conversation. Sophie introduced us to Chameleon, her newest gaming discovery, its blend of deception and deduction prompting accusations and hilarity in equal measure. Pedicures transformed ordinary afternoon into spa session, feet emerging pampered while talk flowed freely. Coffee cups emptied and refilled with such regularity that the kettle barely cooled between brews.
Grannie's presence added unexpected dimension to our Canberra exploration. Despite having lived in the capital for almost thirty years, she had never visited Old Parliament House. This gap in her local knowledge seemed almost impossible, yet life has a way of making the familiar invisible. We decided to remedy this oversight with a day trip, piling into the car with the particular excitement of showing someone something new.
The formal tour held no appeal. Instead, we wandered throughout the historical building at our own pace, lingering where interest pulled us and moving on when curiosity was satisfied. The rooms carried weight of decisions made and unmade, of political theatre performed before audiences now dust. A display marking the fiftieth anniversary of the constitutional crisis drew us in: that extraordinary day when Governor-General John Kerr dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, fracturing conventions that Australians had assumed unbreakable. The photographs and documents sparked animated discussion about democracy's fragility and the peculiarities of our Westminster inheritance.
Afternoon tea in the parliamentary café provided perfect conclusion. Cappuccinos arrived alongside scones still warm from the oven, accompanied by dishes of jam and cream. We debated the correct order of application, cream first or jam first, this trivial controversy generating more heat than any political discussion had managed. The scones disappeared regardless of condiment sequence, their buttery crumble pairing perfectly with strong coffee and stronger opinions.
Throughout our time together, Grannie's excitement about the upcoming road trip bubbled beneath every conversation. She and Sal would travel together back to the Sunshine Coast, mother and daughter sharing the bus for days of highway and conversation. This journey stretched ahead like a promise, offering extended time together that our scattered lives rarely permitted. The anticipation in Grannie's voice when she mentioned the trip revealed how much she valued this opportunity, how precious these stretches of togetherness had become.
Our Canberra chapter was drawing toward its close, but not before squeezing every moment of connection from these gathered days. Sophie's laughter, Grannie's stories, Jan and Liz's generous hosting, Jess's reunion joy: all of it wove together into something that transcended simple visit. These were the moments our nomadic life made possible and precious, the gatherings that distance transformed from ordinary into essential.Meer informatie
Cherry Pie and Airport Goodbyes
7–8 dec. 2025, Australië ⋅ ☀️ 26 °C
The return journey reversed Anth's path through Namadgi, the familiar landmarks scrolling past in opposite order, wilderness surrendering to suburban sprawl. Three days of solo exploration complete, the national park releasing him back to civilisation and reunion.
Sal had settled at Liz's place following the coastal getaway, and her suggestion arrived via text as Anth navigated the city's edges. Stay the night here. She could drive him to the airport in the morning for his Melbourne flight. The logic was sound, the opportunity for one more evening together too valuable to decline.
But logistics intervened, as they so often did. His bag remained at Jan's, on the opposite side of Canberra from where Sal now waited. The last-minute change of plans translated into thirty minutes of driving north, a quick collection of belongings, then an about-face and thirty minutes heading south. An hour of navigation through suburban streets to achieve what should have been simple. Yet even this minor frustration dissolved when the bus finally pulled up at Liz's and Sal emerged to greet him.
The evening unfolded with the particular warmth of genuine hospitality. Jeff, Liz's husband, had been busy in the kitchen, and the aromas that greeted us carried promises of comfort. Homemade pizza emerged from the oven, its crust achieving that perfect balance of crisp and chewy that only home baking produces. But the true centrepiece arrived afterwards: cherry pie, the fruit picked fresh that very day by Sal and Liz from the garden. Each bite burst with the intensity of sun-warmed cherries transformed into something approaching perfection. These were the moments that made the logistics worthwhile, the driving and planning and constant adaptation rewarded by connection and generosity.
Night brought restlessness rather than rest. The unfamiliar bed contributed its share of discomfort, mattress and pillows arranged in configurations that didn't quite suit. But the physical unease merely amplified what our minds were already churning through: another separation approaching with morning's light. We lay in the darkness listening to each other's breathing, the quiet broken by occasional repositioning, by sighs that carried weight beyond their sound.
Dawn arrived regardless of our readiness for it. The drive to Canberra Airport passed in that particular silence of imminent parting, words feeling inadequate against the reality of what approached. We said our goodbyes at the departure zone, the familiar ritual of embraces and reassurances performed once more.
This time the uncertainty carried different flavour. If Anth entered the trial as scheduled, a week of confinement awaited. But if he turned out to be an alternate, the plan pivoted entirely: a flight straight to Queensland, arriving ahead of Sal's slower journey north with Grannie. Either outcome would find us reunited eventually, though the paths diverged dramatically depending on factors beyond our control.
The automatic doors swallowed Anth into the terminal's clinical brightness, and Sal drove away with the particular hollowness that farewells always leave behind. Somewhere between cherries picked in friendship's garden and clinical trials awaiting in Melbourne, our story continued its familiar pattern of convergence and separation, trusting always that the threads would weave back together when the time was right.Meer informatie
Rain, Recovery, and the Road Back
6–7 dec. 2025, Australië ⋅ ☁️ 27 °C
The final campground in Namadgi lay forty minutes deeper into the park, the longest drive of this three-camp exploration. Mount Clear marked the last stop before the ACT surrendered to New South Wales, a fitting endpoint for this solo circuit through Namadgi's wilderness offerings.
The sealed road gave way to dirt, and immediately the bus began trailing its familiar plume. Dust billowed up behind the wheels and lingered in the still air, a brown cloud marking progress through the landscape. Anth smiled as he activated the "Dusty Road Mode" on the smart bus system, that particular modification he'd spent hours perfecting. The system pressurised the interior, creating positive airflow that kept the fine particles outside where they belonged. Small victories of engineering made bush travel considerably more pleasant.
The turnoff appeared eventually, and Mount Clear campground revealed itself through the trees. Empty again. Three campgrounds, three arrivals in solitude. This pattern of finding places deserted felt like a gift, though Anth knew the weekend would change things.
This site operated as tent camping only, the large grassed area strictly off-limits to vehicles. The bus found its place on the dirt parking zone, positioned with careful consideration for later arrivals. Views remained unobstructed, access unrestricted. Even in temporary solitude, courtesy for those who'd follow felt important.
As predicted, the afternoon brought company. Vehicles rolled in steadily, just as they had at Orroral, tents sprouting across the grass like colourful fungi. The downside of exploring on weekends made itself apparent in the gradual filling of available space. Yet even busy, Mount Clear maintained breathing room between camps.
Sunset drew Anth out for a recovery jog, muscles still holding memory of yesterday's run among the kangaroo mobs. The tracks here ran wide and inviting, perfect surfaces that sparked anticipation for future adventures. His new mountain bike waited in Queensland, and these trails whispered of possibilities: return visits with wheels beneath him, exploring further than feet alone could carry.
Night brought something the mainland had been withholding since their return from Tasmania. Rain. Large drops began striking the bus roof with that particular percussion that transforms a vehicle into a drum. The sound came in waves, downpours followed by quiet followed by renewed intensity. Anth lay listening to the rhythm, appreciating how rarely this soundtrack had featured in recent weeks.
Morning arrived grey and damp, the rain having passed but leaving its signature across every surface. The weekend visitors departed in ones and twos through the day, engines starting and tyres crunching on wet gravel, until Mount Clear returned to the emptiness that had greeted Anth's arrival. The cycle complete.
A call to Torrin connected continents, father and son separated by the Tasman Sea. Torrin was making his way south along the TA track in New Zealand, that epic trail threading the length of both islands. Progress was slow but steady, adventure unfolding step by step on the other side of the water. These conversations anchored our scattered family, digital threads maintaining connection across whatever distances our various journeys created.
With the campground deserted and departure imminent, the moment felt right for testing. The shower system, upgraded during those productive days in Jan's driveway, had been waiting for proper trial. Anth set up the equipment in the sunshine, the new high-flow pump and generous rain shower head gleaming with promise. The water came hot and plentiful, cascading in a way their old system had never managed. An absolute treat, this simple luxury of proper showering in the bush, privacy guaranteed by empty surroundings.
Clean and satisfied, Anth packed up for the return to Canberra. One more reunion with Sal awaited before their paths would finally diverge until Christmas. The girlfriend getaway had concluded and now a brief convergence before the longer separation that clinical trials and Queensland journeys demanded.
Namadgi had offered three distinct camps across three memorable days: Honeysuckle Creek with its space-age history and Ghost Gums, Orroral Valley with its rusty windmill and kangaroo mobs, Mount Clear with its rain and recovery runs. Solo exploration had its own rhythm, different from but not lesser than shared adventure. Sometimes the road called one of us while the other found different nourishment in friendship and stillness.
The bus rolled back toward Canberra, dust rising once more behind wheels pointed toward reunion.Meer informatie
Running with the Mobs
5–6 dec. 2025, Australië ⋅ ⛅ 29 °C
The drive from Honeysuckle took barely twenty minutes, the road winding deeper into Namadgi's bushland before delivering Anth to his second destination. Orroral Campground lay empty on arrival, not a single vehicle occupying the cleared sites scattered among the trees. This solitude felt like a gift, the freedom to circle slowly and select the perfect position without negotiation or compromise.
With only one night planned here, solar orientation mattered less than usual. A fortunate thing, since Ghost Gums dominated this campground too, their pale trunks and spreading canopies creating dappled shade that would challenge any panel's efficiency. Anth chose his spot for aesthetics rather than practicality, positioning the bus where morning light would filter through white bark and eucalyptus leaves.
A walking track led toward the local waterhole, and curiosity pulled him along its winding path. The bush closed in with the particular intimacy of Australian scrubland, visibility limited to metres rather than horizons. Then, cutting through the birdsong and wind-rustled leaves, came a sound utterly out of place: metal striking metal, an intermittent clang that echoed through the landscape with industrial insistence.
Anth paused, orienting himself toward the source. The sound carried no rhythm, no pattern that suggested human activity, yet it persisted with mechanical regularity. The mystery deepened with each step until a bend in the track revealed its source. An old windmill stood among encroaching trees, rusted to the colour of dried blood, its mechanisms seized by decades of neglect. Yet the wind still found purchase on its broken blades, spinning the remnants just enough to produce that haunting percussion. Nature reclaiming machinery, using it as instrument in her own composition.
Through the afternoon, the campground's solitude gradually eroded. Vehicles arrived in ones and twos, their occupants claiming sites with the particular care of those who'd driven the distance. Yet even at its busiest, Orroral remained manageable, nothing like the overwhelming crowds at The Cotter the previous week. The benefits of driving further made themselves apparent in the space between camps, the quiet that persisted despite increased numbers.
Late afternoon brought restlessness. The kind that settles into muscles too long unused, demanding release. Anth consulted his digital map, tracing a walking track that promised to emerge onto open flats. Perfect terrain for a run. He set off as the sun began its descent, legs finding rhythm on the narrow trail.
Twenty minutes of steady effort, lungs working, sweat beginning to bead, and then the trees parted. The open flat stretched before him, golden in the late light, and grazing upon it were eastern grey kangaroos. A few at first, heads lifting from their feast to regard this sweating intruder. Then more, and more still, the numbers multiplying as Anth's eyes adjusted to the scale of the scene. Hundreds of them, mobs merging into mobs, stretching toward the distant tree line in an unbroken sea of grey fur and watching eyes.
He ran among them, maintaining enough distance to avoid startling them into flight. The kangaroos tracked his progress with alert curiosity, only bounding away when he veered too close. The urge to continue, to run until the mobs ended and some boundary revealed itself, pulled strongly. But the sun had begun its final descent, painting everything amber, and the prospect of navigating back through unfamiliar bush in darkness held no appeal.
The return journey proved trickier than anticipated. The turnoff back into the trees looked different from this direction, and Anth overshot it entirely, adding frustrating minutes to his backtrack before the correct path revealed itself. Eventually the bus emerged through the foliage, a welcome beacon of home amid the Ghost Gums.
He arrived back covered in sweat but thrumming with the particular exhilaration that only physical exertion in wild places provides. More vehicles had gathered during his absence, but none had encroached too close to his chosen spot. A quick rinse stripped away the salt and dust, simple food satisfied the hunger that running had awakened, and sleep came easily that night. The kind of deep, dreamless rest earned through honest exhaustion, surrounded by Ghost Gums and the memory of hundreds of kangaroos watching him run through their evening grazing grounds.Meer informatie
Ghost Gums and Moon Landings
4–5 dec. 2025, Australië ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C
The urban edges of Canberra fell away as Anth navigated deeper into Namadgi National Park, the road narrowing as civilisation loosened its grip. His first destination carried a name that belied its significance: Honeysuckle Campground, nestled in bushland that had once housed one of humanity's most remarkable listening posts.
The Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station had stood here during the Apollo program, its massive dish antenna pointed toward the heavens during those breathless days of the space race. This was the station that had transmitted the first footage of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the lunar surface, beaming those grainy, world-changing images to a planet holding its collective breath. Now only concrete foundations remained, rectangular ghosts scattered among the regrowth, marking where buildings had hummed with the voices of distant astronauts.
Anth walked among the remnants with the particular reverence that abandoned places demand. Here, a slab where technicians had monitored signals travelling a quarter million miles. There, anchor points where the dish had rotated to track the moon's path across the southern sky. The bush had begun its slow reclamation, grasses pushing through cracks, saplings establishing themselves in what had once been pristine scientific facility. Yet the foundations persisted, concrete memories refusing to surrender entirely to time.
The campground itself sat among Ghost Gums, their pale trunks luminous in the afternoon light. These trees seemed appropriate guardians for such a place, their smooth white bark almost spectral against the darker bush. Anth set up camp with the efficiency of routine, positioning the bus to catch both the last warmth of the day and the first light of morning.
As dusk descended, the bush came alive with movement. Kangaroos emerged from the tree line, materialising like shadows given form. They grazed with unhurried purpose, their presence a reminder that this land had stories far older than space stations and moon landings. The Ghost Gums caught the fading light, glowing briefly gold before surrendering to darkness, and the kangaroos continued their evening ritual as if no human watched at all.
The night passed in profound quiet, the kind of silence that settles into bones and slows breathing to match the bush's patient rhythm. Two other campers shared the grounds, their vehicles forming a loose constellation of human presence in the wilderness.
Morning brought the particular clarity that comes from sleeping surrounded by history and eucalyptus. The other campers packed up and departed, leaving Anth in sole possession of this remarkable clearing. He lingered through the morning hours, reluctant to break the spell, but the remaining campgrounds called. Three sites currently open in this section of Namadgi, and exploration demanded he visit them all.
Just before noon, the bus rumbled back to life. Anth pulled away from Honeysuckle Creek with a backward glance at the Ghost Gums standing sentinel over their concrete charges, those foundations that had once connected Earth to the moon. Some places hold their history close, offering fragments to those who take time to look. This had been one of them.Meer informatie
Eight Hours and Eighteen Dollars
30 nov.–4 dec. 2025, Australië ⋅ 🌬 16 °C
The bus station farewell carried familiar weight, though this separation would stretch longer than most. A few weeks at minimum, our paths diverging in ways that had become second nature to navigate. Even with Anth's plans shifting like sand, Sal's girlfriend getaway remained fixed: a coastal escape with Jan and Liz that had been circled on the calendar for months.
Change was often hard. We knew this intimately, remembering the versions of ourselves who had once resisted it with white-knuckled determination, clinging to the familiar rhythms of a life bound to one place. Now change had become our constant companion, and somewhere along the winding roads of this nomadic existence, we had learned not merely to accept it but to flourish within its stories. Each separation was simply another chapter, each reunion a homecoming that felt earned rather than expected.
Anth's journey back to Melbourne unfolded across eight hours of Australian landscape: four on the bus watching the outskirts of Canberra give way to rural New South Wales, another four on the train as the scenery shifted toward Victoria's familiar contours. The eighteen-dollar fare versus four hundred to fly had made the decision effortless, and the hours became their own kind of gift. He read with the particular absorption that long journeys allow, then turned to journaling our travels, words flowing easier when the world scrolled past windows in endless parallax.
The city hotel was cheap and functional, its thin walls and basic amenities exactly what a screening appointment required and nothing more. The medical checks passed without drama, the clinical routine now so familiar it barely registered. Later, when Sal asked how it went, the joke wrote itself: "How did the job interview go?" We laughed at how clinical trials had become our unconventional employment, bodies offered to science in exchange for the freedom to keep moving.
Meanwhile, the South Coast wrapped Sal in its particular magic. Tuross Head, with its sleepy coastal charm, provided the perfect backdrop for a belated fiftieth celebration. Three months had passed since her actual birthday, but Sal had long held the belief that birthdays were a season rather than a single day, deserving of multiple celebrations stretched across time. Jan and Liz understood this philosophy implicitly.
The days at the holiday house settled into gentle rhythm. Morning walks along beaches where the sand held overnight coolness beneath their feet. Coffee at local cafés where conversation meandered without destination. Card games that stretched into hours, punctuated by laughter that echoed off rental walls. This was friendship distilled to its essence: presence without agenda, connection without complication.
After four nights of coastal restoration, plans shifted again. Sal would spend the weekend at Liz's place, where eventually our paths would converge once more.
Anth, meanwhile, had reversed his marathon journey, another day consumed by train and bus as he traced his route back to Canberra. Jess collected him from the station, that familiar face in the arrivals crowd providing anchor in the constant motion. One more night followed, this time in the bus parked on a suburban street, the particular quiet of sleeping in your own space even when that space sits on public road.
Tomorrow promised Namadgi National Park, its wilderness calling with the voice that always stirred something restless in Anth's chest. A few days of exploration before returning once more to the orbit of friends and obligations. The separations continued, the reunions approached, and somewhere in between, we kept learning that distance measured in kilometres meant nothing compared to the connection that stretched effortlessly across it.Meer informatie
A Brief Pause at The Cotter
28–30 nov. 2025, Australië ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C
The blue light of the Wikicamps app illuminated Anth’s face as he weighed the logistics. With only forty-eight hours to spare, distance was the enemy; he needed a pause, not an expedition. Cotter Campground emerged as the logical compromise. Close enough to Canberra to be practical, yet skirting the wild hem of Namadgi National Park.
When he mentioned the destination, Sal’s expression softened, the name sparking a sudden warmth.
'The Cotter! That's one of the places I used to camp when I was little.'
Her voice carried the echo of childhood summers, a nostalgic blessing on a journey he would be taking alone.
The drive was brief, a mere thirty minutes before the suburban sprawl dissolved into the scrub. Upon arrival, the campground held a heavy, welcome silence; only two other sites were occupied, leaving the rest of the grounds in a state of dormant anticipation. It wasn't the rugged isolation he usually sought. Here, order prevailed: designated bays, a brick amenities block, and the promise of hot showers . It was a far cry from the wild, dusty tracks of the interior, but it beat the claustrophobia of the suburbs.
As the week bled into the weekend, however, the solitude fractured. Tyres crunched over gravel in a steady rhythm as the city emptied itself into the reserve. Tents bloomed like nylon mushrooms and the air filled with the slam of car doors and the murmur of neighbours . By Saturday, the empty bays were a memory, the campground swelling to capacity.
Anth waited out the surge. On Sunday, as the weekend warriors packed down their eskies and collapsed their awnings, the quiet began to seep back in. He took the opportunity to wander down to the Cotter River, watching the clear water thread its way through the landscape, indifferent to the temporary invasion . The walk offered a moment of stillness, a brief communion with the land that the crowds had obscured.
Two nights away from suburbia had taken the edge off the restlessness, though the hunger for the road remained. With his wanderlust only slightly appeased, Anth turned the wheel back toward Canberra, trading the river’s flow for the rigid schedule of the V-Coach and train that would carry him south to Melbourne.Meer informatie
Canberra's Borrowed Comfort
21–28 nov. 2025, Australië ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C
The rhythm of our nomadic life had become a dance of divergence and reunion, paths splitting only to weave back together in ways we could never quite predict.
Sal pressed northward from Gundagai, the bus swallowing kilometres through undulating countryside where the hills rolled like golden waves frozen mid-swell. The town of Yass appeared and receded in her mirrors, a brief punctuation of civilisation before the road curved south toward Canberra's northern reaches. Somewhere ahead, Jan waited. Best friend. Safe harbour. The kind of person whose door opens before you've even knocked.
Meanwhile, Anth sat in a sterile waiting room, fluorescent lights humming their institutional song as he completed yet another screening appointment. A plane to catch, eight hours to kill, and the peculiar limbo of airport lounges stretched before him. His Virgin lounge access would transform what might have been tedious waiting into something almost comfortable, though comfort felt relative when your heart was already in Canberra.
Sal arrived at Jan's just before lunch, the bus settling into its temporary home with a grateful sigh of air brakes. Almost simultaneously, though separated by hundreds of kilometres, Anth was navigating Melbourne Airport's familiar corridors. The hours crawled past in that strange airport way, where time seems to move through treacle.
Jan and her daughter Jess welcomed Sal with the easy warmth of long friendship, conversations picking up mid-sentence as if no time had passed at all. Later, the three of them piled into a car and headed for Canberra Airport, headlights cutting through the darkness as midnight approached.
The flight was delayed. Of course it was. Anth finally emerged into the arrivals hall just before midnight, travel-worn but grinning. Our separation, that looming thirty-day stretch we'd steeled ourselves for, had collapsed into a single night. The universe, it seemed, had other plans.
Under Jan's roof, we rediscovered the strange luxury of traditional walls and ceilings, of rooms that didn't rock in the wind, of showers that didn't require strategic water conservation. Yet even as we settled into this borrowed domesticity, the phone rang with news that would test our hard-won flexibility.
The trial facility needed Anth back for a re-screen. A common enough occurrence in the clinical trial world, but geography had shifted beneath us. Flying back to Melbourne from Canberra, disrupting the fragile equilibrium we'd just established: the calculation didn't balance. Anth withdrew from the trial with surprisingly little anguish. We had become fluid creatures, adapting to circumstance like water finding its level. What might once have felt like failure now registered simply as redirection.
With unexpected time on our hands and the rare luxury of Bunnings access, Anth finally tackled a project that had been nagging at him for months. Our portable shower, that essential piece of nomadic infrastructure, had been languishing since its pump failed back in Tasmania. The parts had accumulated slowly during our travels, gathered like puzzle pieces waiting for the right moment to assemble.
Now, in Jan's driveway, that moment arrived. Anth worked with quiet concentration, replacing the failed pump with a high-quality, high-flow unit built to last years rather than months. The upgrade didn't stop there. A generous rain shower head replaced the original's miserly trickle. But the real innovation was the recirculating system, transforming our shower from simple convenience to genuine luxury. We tested it with the giddy satisfaction of engineers watching their creation come to life, already anticipating the moment we'd be back on the road with hot water cascading properly for the first time in months.
Evenings found us gathered around Jan's television, drawn into *Deadloch*, a dark comedy set in Tasmania that she'd discovered and insisted we watch. The show's Tasmanian setting stirred something unexpected in our chests. We'd been gone less than a year, yet watching those familiar landscapes flickering across the screen triggered a nostalgia so acute it surprised us. Tasmania had become our spiritual home, its wild coastlines and ancient forests imprinted somewhere deep. Even fictional representations pulled at threads we hadn't realised were so tightly woven.
As our Canberra days settled into comfortable rhythm, Anth's restlessness began to surface. The wanderlust that had driven us onto the road in the first place doesn't simply switch off because you're parked somewhere pleasant. His feet grew itchy, that familiar urge to move prickling beneath his skin.
He first secured a spot in the final cohort of the trial he'd just withdrawn from, a date set for the new year with screening in a few days. But between now and then stretched empty days, and empty days demanded filling. The decision crystallised quickly: he would take the bus a short distance out of Canberra, find a quiet camp, and spend a few days alone with the horizon. Sal would stay with Jan, their friendship deserving more time than our constant movement usually allowed.
It was a small separation, measured in days rather than weeks. But it spoke to something essential about how we'd learned to live: together when together served us, apart when apart made sense, always trusting that the threads connecting us could stretch without breaking.
The road called, and Anth answered. Sal stayed, wrapped in the warmth of old friendship and borrowed walls. And somewhere between them, our story continued to write itself in the language of flexibility and trust, of showers finally fixed and trials withdrawn from, of television shows that made us homesick for places we'd never truly left.Meer informatie
Blood Tests and Broken Plans
20–21 nov. 2025, Australië ⋅ ☁️ 22 °C
The solo drive north toward Gundagai required every ounce of concentration Sal could muster. The bus responded to her increasingly confident touch, she'd come so far from those first nervous kilometres in Tasmania, but Anth's absence felt like missing ballast, throwing off the vehicle's emotional balance even as it tracked true on the highway. Thirty minutes outside Albury, practical necessity intervened. A truck stop provided safe haven for her scheduled group meeting, the online fitness coaching that funded their freedom requiring professional presence despite personal upheaval.
"Good morning, everyone!" Sal projected enthusiasm into her laptop camera, the bus's interior providing familiar backdrop while her clients remained unaware of the emotional storm barely contained beneath professional veneer.
The meeting completed, she continued north through landscapes that blurred past windows suddenly too quiet. No commentary from Anth about geological formations, no shared excitement over wildlife sightings, no comfortable silence that comes from years of partnership. Just the diesel engine's steady rhythm and her own thoughts for company.
The day filled itself with obligations that provided blessed distraction. University lectures streamed through the laptop, assignment deadlines demanding attention, work calls requiring focus. Yet between each task, during every pause, Anth's absence asserted itself with almost physical presence. The passenger seat sat empty, the dinette table showed too much space, even the bed seemed to have expanded in his absence. All that extra room somehow making her feel smaller rather than freer.
"Life is good," Sal told herself as afternoon wore toward evening, trying to shift focus toward upcoming positives. Soon she'd see Jan and Liz, her two best friends who'd been supporting this adventure from afar. Then her mother would join for a road trip toward Queensland. Different company, different dynamics, new adventures to overlay this aching absence.
Meanwhile, in Melbourne's clinical facility, Anth had settled into the familiar rhythm of trial participation. The day had passed in typical fashion. Blood draws at prescribed intervals, meals at designated times, the strange camaraderie that develops among people choosing temporary confinement for financial gain. As evening descended, he'd organised his favourite social activity, gathering fellow participants for Blood on the Clocktower, the social deduction game that had become his signature contribution to trial culture.
"I was the Empath," someone declared as the game reached its crescendo near midnight. "And I still don't know who the demon is!"
The game provided perfect distraction from missing Sal, from wondering how her solo drive had progressed, from counting the days until reunion. Players assumed roles of villagers and demons, creating elaborate narratives of deception and deduction that could consume hours without notice. Anth had introduced this game to dozens of trials, watching friendships form across the storytelling table, building community within confinement.
Then, at almost midnight, clinical reality shattered the game's fantasy. A doctor appeared at Anth's shoulder with expression that every trial participant learned to fear. Sympathetic but firm, apologetic but absolute.
"I'm sorry, but you've been excluded from the trial," he delivered the verdict with practiced gentleness. "Your blood work shows levels outside our acceptable parameters."
The blow landed with particular force given the timing. Twelve hours into what should have been a month-long commitment, their financial planning suddenly capsized, Sal already hundreds of kilometres away with the bus. Exclusion was always a risk in clinical trials, the fine print everyone acknowledged but nobody expected to experience. Bodies were unpredictable, biochemistry could betray at any moment, and the strict protocols that ensured scientific validity showed no mercy for personal circumstances.
"Right," Anth said after absorbing the shock, his mind already shifting into problem-solving mode. "What about the next trial? I'm already here, might as well screen for the upcoming one."
The facility, accustomed to such situations, accommodated his request for immediate rescreening. By morning, he'd completed the entrance requirements for another trial, though it wouldn't commence for two weeks. This gap presented logistical puzzle that required creative solution. Sal was already bound for Canberra with established plans, the bus was their only accommodation, and flying to meet her made more sense than any alternative.
The phone call to Sal carried mixed emotions across the digital distance. Disappointment at the lost income battled with unexpected joy at premature reunion, frustration with circumstances competed with relief that separation would be abbreviated. We crafted new plans with the adaptability that had become our hallmark. Sal would continue to Canberra as planned, maintaining her friend visits. Anth would fly there that night, and head out to camp somewhere close by.
Life on the ever-changing road had prepared us for exactly this. Sudden reversals, failed plans transforming into unexpected opportunities, the need to remain fluid when fixed expectations proved brittle. What had seemed like month-long separation would now become brief interlude, though the financial impact would ripple through coming months. Yet even this concern felt manageable compared to the prospect of abbreviated absence.
As Anth booked his flight to Canberra, as Sal continued her solo journey north with lighter heart, we both reflected on how this day had encapsulated our nomadic existence. Plans made and unmade, tears shed and dried, separation begun and already ending. All of it part of the larger adventure we'd chosen. The platform at Wodonga where we had parted that morning already felt like ancient history, though barely twelve hours had passed.
Tomorrow would bring new configuration, but tonight, we each faced our own version of solitude. Sal in the bus that echoed with absence, Anth in the clinical facility preparing for unexpected departure. The month that had loomed so large had shrunk to mere days, proving once again that their journey's only constant was change itself, that adaptation mattered more than anticipation, that even failed trials could yield unexpected gifts.Meer informatie
A Month Begins at the Station
19–20 nov. 2025, Australië ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C
Back on the blacktop, we headed due east in a straight line, the landscape unfolding with the particular flatness of Victoria's northern reaches. Our destination, Albury-Wodonga, felt fitting for what lay ahead, a twin city straddling two states where our own paths would temporarily diverge. The border town's dual identity seemed to mirror our approaching separation, two entities functioning as one yet maintaining distinct existence.
Wodonga welcomed us first, Victoria's final offering before the Murray marked state boundaries. We paused briefly to orient ourselves, the town's practical layout revealing its border-town functionality. Services clustered for travellers passing between states, infrastructure designed for transit rather than lingering. Then we crossed into New South Wales, leaving Victoria behind as we sought the train station that would serve as tomorrow's departure point.
The station car park initially seemed promising. Convenient, well-lit, close to the platform where morning's farewell would unfold. But signs sprouted everywhere like bureaucratic weeds, their warnings of fines and restrictions making the situation clear: overnight parking was not welcome here. We circled twice, hoping to find some overlooked corner where our presence might pass unnoticed, but the message remained unambiguous.
"Not worth the risk," Anth concluded, already reaching for his phone to consult WikiCamps. "Let's find somewhere proper and come back in the morning."
We left the bus in the station car park temporarily while we ventured into town for dinner, the practical need for food providing excuse to regroup and research alternatives. Over meals eaten with the particular awareness of those facing separation, we scrolled through camping options, seeking something close enough for our early start yet legitimate enough to avoid midnight encounters with parking enforcement.
The solution revealed itself through the generosity of the local RSL, who offered their car park to self-contained vehicles for single-night stays. This arrangement, common enough across Australia but always appreciated, provided exactly what we needed: legitimate sanctuary less than five minutes from the station, close enough for our dawn departure yet removed from the station's prohibitive signage.
We relocated our golden home to the RSL car park as evening settled over Albury-Wodonga, the familiar routine of positioning and levelling carrying different weight knowing this would be our last shared night for a month. The car park's utilitarian surroundings, concrete and line markings, other vehicles coming and going, couldn't diminish the significance of these final hours together.
The alarm pierced through darkness at an hour that felt cruel even by our nomadic standards, though neither of us had truly slept. We'd spent the night in restless tandem. Turning, sighing, occasionally reaching across the space between us as if to store the sensation of proximity before its imminent absence. Our bodies had grown so accustomed to shared sleep that even anticipation of separation disrupted our usual rhythms, creating a wakeful vigil where minutes stretched like elastic toward the dawn we simultaneously craved and dreaded.
We'd prepared the bus for travel the previous evening with mechanical precision that masked emotional turbulence. Every system checked twice, every item secured with excessive care. Sal would be navigating solo for the first time on a journey of this magnitude, and our mutual anxiety manifested in obsessive preparation. The golden home that had sheltered our partnership for eighteen months would continue north with only half its usual crew, while the other half disappeared into Melbourne's medical machinery for an entire month.
"Everything's ready," we'd assured each other repeatedly, though we both knew the preparations that mattered couldn't be packed or secured.
The short drive from the RSL to Albury station unfolded in practiced precision despite the emotional weight pressing against our chests. We'd become experts at early morning departures, our movements choreographed through countless pre-dawn starts, but this morning carried different gravity. Each familiar action, securing the cab, checking mirrors, navigating empty streets, felt heightened, as if our bodies were memorising the last moments of togetherness before enforced separation.
The station car park stood mostly empty in the pre-dawn gloom, sodium lights casting everything in that particular amber that makes reality feel suspended. We parked with careful consideration of Sal's return journey. Easy exit angles, clear sight lines, nothing to complicate her solo departure after delivering Anth to his train. These small considerations had become our language of care, practical gestures carrying emotional weight words couldn't quite reach.
"You'll be fine," Anth assured as we walked toward the platform, though his hand gripping Sal's suggested he was reassuring himself as much as her. "The bus practically drives itself now, and you're more than ready."
The V-Line train arrived with mechanical inevitability, its headlight cutting through morning mist like fate approaching. Other passengers moved with routine purpose. Commuters beginning another ordinary day, travellers continuing ordinary journeys. For us, this train represented fracture in the continuous narrative we'd been writing together, a pause in the shared story that had defined our existence since leaving Brisbane all those months ago.
Standing on the platform, Sal felt the emotional dam she'd carefully maintained begin to crack. Eighteen months of constant companionship, of every decision made together, every challenge faced as a unit, every sunset shared from our golden home, all of it compressed into this moment of necessary parting. The clinical trial that would confine Anth for a month represented essential funding for future adventures, but logic provided cold comfort against the immediate reality of separation.
"It's only a month," Anth whispered, pulling Sal close as the train's doors opened with pneumatic finality. "Christmas Eve, we'll be together again."
But as he stepped aboard, as the doors sealed between them, as the train began its inexorable departure, the tears Sal had been fighting escaped in silent streams down her cheeks. She stood on the empty platform long after the train's lights had vanished into the grey morning, allowing herself this moment of pure feeling before returning to the bus that suddenly seemed enormous in its emptiness.Meer informatie
When Perfect Comes Before Parting
18–19 nov. 2025, Australië ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C
Instead of driving halfway to Wodonga to spread the journey into manageable segments, Anth had discovered something special through his late-night digital exploration. WikiCamps had provided the initial clue, but satellite imagery had revealed what promised to be special, a hidden possibility that justified deviation from the direct route on our final full day together. The countdown that had occupied our thoughts for days now stood at its conclusion, lending weight to every decision about how to spend these precious remaining hours.
"Trust me on this one," Anth said with quiet certainty as we departed our previous riverside sanctuary. "The satellite images show something remarkable and I think the Murray has one more gift for us."
The drive proved deliberately slow, twenty minutes of careful navigation through bush tracks that tested our patience and our vehicle's clearance. These tracks ran rougher than any we'd navigated in recent days, the surface deteriorating with each kilometre deeper into unmarked territory. Red dust rose behind us like farewell smoke, coating our golden home in fine powder that would later require attention but currently seemed unimportant. Clay ruts grabbed at our tyres with possessive insistence, fallen branches demanded careful negotiation, and several times we questioned the wisdom of continuing. Yet something pulled us forward. Perhaps Anth's conviction gleaned from those satellite images, perhaps the universe's promise that final gifts often required effort to receive.
The track twisted through river red gums and black box trees, their canopy creating tunnels of filtered light that grew denser as we progressed. Each turn brought new obstacles: washouts from recent rains, sandy sections that threatened to bog us, overhanging branches that scraped along our roof with fingernail-on-chalkboard persistence. Our speed dropped to walking pace, sometimes slower, as we picked lines through the deteriorating surface with increasing care.
"Are you sure about this?" Sal asked as we navigated a particularly challenging section, though her voice carried curiosity rather than doubt.
When we finally cleared the last stand of trees, revelation stopped our breath simultaneously. Before us stretched something we hadn't known the Murray possessed in all our weeks of following its course, an actual beach of river sand, wide and firm enough to drive along, completely deserted as if reserved specifically for our farewell. The river had crafted this secret paradise through patient centuries, depositing sand in perfect crescents while maintaining deep swimming holes where the current had scoured the opposite bank. This wasn't merely another riverside camp; this was the Murray showing us something previously hidden, saved perhaps for precisely this moment when we most needed perfection.
"Oh my goodness," we breathed in unison, our voices carrying the reverence such discoveries deserved.
We drove slowly along the beach itself, tyres finding firm purchase on sand packed solid by recent water levels. The sensation of driving directly beside the Murray, not above it on embankments, not glimpsing it through trees, but actually travelling along its very edge with windows open to catch spray from small waves, felt like the river had granted us special privilege for our final day. The beach stretched perhaps two hundred metres, curving gently with the river's flow, completely unmarked by other tyre tracks or footprints. We had discovered the Murray's secret sanctuary, and it was ours alone.
This was, without question or competition, our favourite Murray camp from all our weeks following its ancient course. Every previous spot, Masters Landing with its elevated views, Perricoota Forest with its black swans at dusk, that clearing where the Azure Kingfisher had hunted, all paled before this unexpected beach that felt designed specifically for our farewell. The universe, it seemed, had conspired with geography to provide the perfect stage for our final act together.
We positioned ourselves with unusual deliberation, understanding this setup would be our last as a complete unit for an entire month. Every angle was considered, every system checked with particular attention. The panoramic windows that had sold us on this bus now framed perfection, river flowing past one side, sandy beach stretching along the other, and ahead, the curve where water met sand at an angle that would transform sunset into theatre. Each small decision carried weight: the precise positioning of chairs on sand, the angle of solar panels for morning sun we'd experience separately, the careful arrangement of everything that would soon be Sal's sole responsibility.
That evening, we pulled our chairs to the sand and sat in profound silence as the sun began its descent toward the river. Words felt both inadequate and unnecessary. What could language add to this moment that silence didn't already contain? The Murray transformed through its sunset palette, silver to gold to copper to deep purple, while we simply witnessed, our hands occasionally finding each other across the space between chairs. The silence between us wasn't empty but full, carrying eighteen months of shared adventures, mechanical challenges overcome together, countless rivers witnessed side by side, the deep understanding that comes from choosing unconventional life with another soul brave enough to abandon certainty for possibility.
Night passed with the particular quality of last times and we stayed outside longer than comfort suggested, reluctant to surrender any moment to sleep. The Murray's voice seemed different here at beach level, more intimate, each small wave against sand creating rhythms we tried to memorise. Stars emerged in numbers that still surprised us after all these months away from urban light pollution, the Milky Way stretching above like celestial river paralleling the earthly one at our feet. We talked in quiet voices about practicalities: trial procedures for Anth, driving routes for Sal, reunion plans in a month. But beneath logistics ran deeper currents of emotion neither quite voiced.
Morning arrived with cruel beauty, sunshine painting our beach golden while birds conducted dawn chorus from surrounding trees. Sal had several video calls scheduled for work, those professional commitments that funded our freedom requiring attention regardless of personal preference. Yet even obligation took on different quality in this setting. Between calls, we spread a blanket on the beach under the shade of overhanging trees, creating an outdoor office that no corporate building could match.
Lunch became ceremony rather than mere meal. We prepared food together with unusual attention, each mundane action performed with consciousness that tomorrow such simple partnerships would be impossible. Spreading butter on bread, slicing tomatoes, pouring water. All of it rendered significant by the knowledge of imminent separation. We ate slowly on our beach blanket, tasting everything twice, watching the Murray flow past with its ancient patience while time seemed to pause in deference to our need for stillness.
"Time's stopped," Sal observed, and indeed it had, the afternoon stretching and contracting simultaneously, each moment lasting forever while hours vanished with frightening speed.
We found ourselves moving with deliberate slowness, as if reduced pace might convince the universe to extend this gift. Every small action became meditation: packing items with excessive care, securing systems with redundant checking, taking one more walk along our private beach, sitting for just another moment watching the river flow. The Murray continued its patient journey past our beach, indifferent to human dramas of meeting and parting yet somehow complicit in providing this perfect stage for our temporary farewell.
We stretched the day as long as responsibility allowed, finding every possible excuse for delay. One more coffee prepared and consumed while watching water birds fish in the shallows. Another walk along the beach to "check something" that didn't need checking. A final photograph of the spot from multiple angles, though we knew no image could capture what this place had given us. But eventually, inevitably, we could postpone no longer. The drive to Wodonga required daylight navigation, positioning for tomorrow's separation demanded practical action despite emotional resistance.
Packing our chairs for the last time as a complete unit, securing our belongings with extra care knowing Sal would soon manage everything alone, starting the engine that would carry us toward separation. Each action felt weighted with significance. The beach that had hosted our perfect final day together would continue existing after our departure, waves lapping against sand whether witnessed or not, but something of ourselves would remain here. Suspended in this place where time had briefly stopped, where the Murray had revealed its final secret, where silence had said everything words couldn't carry.
As we navigated carefully back through the rough tracks, our golden home now dressed in dust from the journey, neither of us looked back. We didn't need to. This beach beside the Murray, this gift of sand and solitude on our last day together, had already carved itself into memory with the permanence of river carving stone. Tomorrow would bring trains and trials, solo driving and separate adventures, a month of apartness that felt simultaneously brief and eternal. But today, this perfect, painful, precious today, had belonged entirely to us and to the Murray's generous finale.Meer informatie
ReizigerI hadn't read this until tonight and so found out about the office Anth made and you mentioned Sal, on the phone. So good to have an inventive person on the job. The birds sound amazing!