The decision to become nomads, if only for a year, didn't come lightly. We had discussed many times together, our desire to travel, to explore and discover new and exciting places. We had already travelled to a lot of places, both together and separately, but this trip was going to be different. This trip meant leaving everything that had become normal in the last 5 years. Leaving our jobs; mine as a travel agent and Jamie's as an electrician, leaving the house we had bought together 3 years previously and leaving all our family and friends. But it seemed it was the right time in our lives for this new adventure, for a really big change. We both felt a little like the nomadic life was calling to us, tempting us with the allure of wide open spaces, no time restrictions and the ultimate feeling of freedom.
And so it was with these ideas floating in our heads that we made that final decision to travel around Australia for a year with nothing more than a 4x4 a trailer (hand built by Jamie) and an American Bulldog named Pumba. The next stage was the planning and there was a lot of it to do. For starters we needed to find someone to rent our house, and having successfully found suitable tenants we then had to move in with Jamie's Grandma while we finished out our jobs and gathered everything we would need for a year away. It was also during this planning process and moving out of our house that I was planning our overseas wedding and honeymoon in the Cook Islands. It was an exciting but overly busy time. When we arrived back from the wedding, after an amazing time with family and friends in the sun, sand and water, it was time to give our notices to our employers about our year away. I was lucky enough to be given 12 months of leave without pay, which certainly made this venture slightly less risky.
I gave 6 weeks of notice and the time both crawled and sped by as we planned and organised everything we thought we would be needing. Jamie all the while was building up the trailer which now consisted of a fully enclosed space, with a water tank plumbed to a sink, 2 kayaks, 2 BMX bikes, a solar panel, space for surfboards and would fit all our worldly possessions (at least the ones we would be taking with us).
The last week of work was a very emotional one for me, saying goodbye to all my friends and colleagues and really starting to think about the enormity of what we were about to do. It was definitely then when I began to really panic about what the hell I was supposed to pack for a year. I began Googling and Pinteresting ideas of how I would cram a years worth of stuff into a very small space. At the end of the day I eventually realised, we could always stop and buy things if we needed, but it was still with some trepidation that i began to pack as lightly as possible.
