Van life has begun! This story was told on the lands of the Gubbi Gubbi people (you might know the region as the Sunshine Coast), and they say ‘wunya’ to say welcome. So, hello and wunya! I’d like to pay my respect to Elders past and present whilst also recognising any First Nations people who might be reading this story.
Today is Wednesday and this is going to be our third night in our van full-time. So we set off on Monday just after lunch and we only traveled about 45 minutes to our destination. It’s been a trying couple of weeks preparing and getting ready for being in our van full-time. Our to-do list, even though we were crossing things off it every day, kept getting longer and longer!
On the day that we actually set off (which ended up being 3 days later than we’d planned), we still had quite a lot to do. It was a very busy morning.
We are at a place called Stretch Family Farmstay. When we arrived, there were ominous grey clouds in the sky. Within moments of us arriving the rain had started and we were greeted with a thunderstorm. Eeeek. So we pulled up, we left Max (our dog) in the front of the van on the seat, and worked as quickly as we could to get our awning up.
I’m not particularly practiced but my husband Mat knows it very well, he knows his van inside and out and so I helped as much as I possibly could whilst also asking a whole bunch of questions about how things worked and how to do things lol. Once we set up the awning, we got ourselves some protection from the rain and setup the bare minimum – the Starlink which is our internet, and our outdoor dining area – our two camping chairs and table.
What do we eat?
We had brought some food with us from my mum and dad’s house. So Mat had some leftover fried rice and pork belly that he had made. I don’t eat pork, I’m a pescatarian, so I cooked myself a different dinner. All he had to do was warm his up and it was nice and easy. And I cooked myself a dahl, a coconut milk based curry, in the thermomix.
Breakfast the next morning was organic baked beans, sourdough/GF toast, boiled eggs and Worcestershire sauce. For those of you in Australia, Beerenberg Worcestershire sauce is very tasty. I often put that on my baked beans. For a snack, we had some cheese and some semi-dried tomatoes. Then dinner was Mexican – spices, tinned tomato, fresh corn, capsicum, onion etc and we had the wet mix ready to go. Warm up a pouch of organic brown rice and quinoa, warm up the mexi mix, slice up some jalapenos to go on top.
Then for brekky we pre-make this really yummy sauce to go with eggs, we discovered it at a cafe a few years back and Mat (he’s a chef) helped me to deconstruct it to work out how to make it ourselves.. For those who eat cheese – it’s got parmesan, basil, rocket, lemon, garlic and olive oil. Blitz it up and have it on your toast, or with poached/scrambled eggs. Another snack is crackers with hot smoked salmon, and I add semi-dried tomatoes or something pickled pickled.
Next stop…
Tomorrow we head off and are staying at Montville. We are staying at Montville because I want to go to the International Women’s Day brunch that Tash Corbin is hosting. And because we don’t really have an easy mode of transport because I can’t yet ride the moped (I need a little bit of training), transport was going to make it a little bit tricky for us to stay in one place and for me to get to the brunch. I asked Tash if we could stay with them and she of course said yes because she’s incredibly generous. So we are pulling up tomorrow at their house for two nights.
And then on Saturday, we’ll be heading up north to a place called Woodgate. And we’ll be setting up camp there at a caravan park for three weeks, just to give ourselves an opportunity to really settle in and give ourselves a chance to find our rhythm. We’re not fully unpacked because we’re only here for three nights and it’s sort of a temporary stop along the way, and therefore not worth setting EVERYTHING up.
For now, that’s a little update as to how van Life is treating us. The first couple of nights have been great. We’re adapting and adjusting to, obviously, sleeping in a different bed. We’re doing our best. Max, the dog, is doing very well. And hopefully tomorrow we’ll be able to do a shop for some lovely fresh produce. 🍓🍊🥑
If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading.
And if you’ve got questions, or you want to hear more of my story, here are two things you can do:
Tune into my podcast – The Chenae Show
Read the next instalment of the story here.
Here is to your entrepreneurial freedom, whatever that looks like for you.
See you byyyye!