The Trip I Never Planned

How a campervan dream became 13,344 kilometres across Australia

It started with a camping expo

It was February 2023.

I’d decided I was going to travel around Australia.

Not for a holiday. Not for a few weeks. I wanted to buy a campervan, make it my permanent home and spend however long I felt like exploring this extraordinary country.

No itinerary. No deadlines. No particular destination.

Just me, the dog, a little house on wheels and the open road.

I’d been thinking about it for ages, so when I heard there was a camping and caravan expo at the Newcastle Showground, I thought, right, let’s go and have a look.

I booked myself accommodation in Newcastle for the weekend.

Or so I thought.

I’d booked a hotel.

Except when I arrived, I discovered it wasn’t quite the sort of hotel I’d imagined.

It was a pub.

Now, technically, a pub is a hotel. I understand that.

But there’s a difference between booking a hotel room and discovering you’re staying above a pub.

And here’s the funny part.

I wasn’t drinking at the time.

I’d given up alcohol, and the friend I’d travelled with was someone who had her own complicated relationship with drinking.

So there we were.

Two women with a history involving alcohol, staying in a pub for the weekend.

Of all the places I could have booked.

Anyway, that’s another story.

A little house on wheels

The next day we headed off to the camping expo.

I love an expo.

I can spend hours wandering around looking at things, collecting brochures, asking questions and imagining possibilities.

And this one was right up my alley.

Campervans. Motorhomes. Clever little inventions. Storage solutions. All the bits and pieces people had dreamed up to make living on the road easier.

I was in heaven.

I wasn’t ready to buy a campervan yet, but I was certainly ready to start preparing for one.

And that’s exactly what I did.

Over the following months, I started accumulating things.

Not tents and sleeping bags. I wasn’t planning to sleep on the ground.

I was planning to live in a campervan.

So I started thinking about all the little things I’d need.

My electric toothbrush, for example. How was I going to charge that without being plugged into mains power?

USB.

Everything needed to be rechargeable through USB or capable of running from the vehicle’s power supply.

And that’s when I discovered an entire world of rechargeable appliances.

Who knew you could buy rechargeable hair straighteners and even a clothes iron?

Not me.

But apparently, you can travel around Australia without looking like you’ve been dragged backwards through a bush.

So I bought them.

I bought a 12-volt electric blanket, a drone, a Starlink Mini, camping lights, headlamps, charging accessories and all sorts of little gadgets.

I even bought these clever steel steps that hooked into the metal door catches of a vehicle, allowing you to climb up and reach the roof.

And flyscreen nets that fitted over the car windows so I could have them open at night without every mosquito in Australia moving in with me.

There were countless things.

Some practical. Some clever. Some probably completely unnecessary.

But I wasn’t preparing for a weekend camping trip.

I was preparing to make a vehicle my permanent home.

And I wanted to be comfortable.

I wanted to be independent. To have power, communication, lighting and all the little conveniences that make everyday life easier.

I was also thinking about how I would document my travels.

I’d bought a drone because I wanted to make beautiful travel videos.

Not just point my phone at something and say, “Oh, look at that.”

I wanted to take my time.

Find interesting places. Explore them properly. Get the drone out. Capture the landscape from above. Make lovely cinematic videos and write about the places I visited.

Maybe a travel blog. Maybe something else.

I hadn’t really worked that part out.

And I didn’t particularly care.

The whole point was to have the freedom to discover things as I went.

For once, I wasn’t planning the destination. I was planning the freedom.

A chance encounter in Yamba

Around this time, I was travelling regularly to Yamba on the NSW North Coast.

Dad had moved into a nursing home, and I was dealing with the enormous job of sorting out his house and belongings and getting the property sold.

Anyone who’s ever had to do that knows it isn’t a five-minute job.

It seemed to go on forever.

So I was up in Yamba quite a bit.

One day, I was walking past a beautiful little women’s clothing shop when I spotted someone familiar standing outside.

Bob Montgomery.

“Hey, Bob! What are you doing here?”

He turned around, and then I saw Jenny inside the shop trying on clothes.

It was a great shop. I’d bought clothes there myself only a few weeks earlier.

Bob and Jenny were up in Yamba on holiday, and there we were, bumping into each other hundreds of kilometres from home.

We had a lovely catch-up.

Probably half an hour or so, standing around chatting about life and what we’d all been doing.

Then we said goodbye.

They went off to enjoy their holiday, and I went back to whatever I was doing with Dad’s house.

Nothing particularly remarkable about it.

Just one of those lovely, unexpected encounters with people you’re always happy to see.

At least, that’s what I thought.

The phone call

A few weeks later, Bob rang me.

“Hey, great seeing you in Yamba.”

“Yeah, so good seeing you guys.”

We chatted for a bit.

Then he said, “Guess what?”

“What?”

“I need my website back up and running.”

Bob has a website, bobmontgomery.com.au, which I’d built for him years earlier to document his extraordinary cycling adventures.

I’d worked on his previous rides, so I already knew quite a bit about Bob and his habit of deciding to ride enormous distances across Australia.

And when I say enormous, I mean enormous.

This wasn’t a bloke who went out for a leisurely twenty kilometres on a Sunday morning.

Bob had already ridden from Katoomba to Port Douglas, Perth to Sydney, Darwin to Perth, Darwin to Port Douglas and Sydney to Melbourne.

And now, apparently, he had another idea.

“I’m going to cycle from Broome to Bowral.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Yeah. I’ve been told that before.”

Of course he had.

“All right, dude. Send me the stuff.”

And that was that.

I organised the hosting, got the website running again and started building the pages for the new ride.

Hang on a cotton-pickin’ second

As I worked on the website, I was revisiting Bob’s previous adventures.

There had always been people involved.

Friends who joined him along the way. People helping with logistics, vehicles, accommodation and all the other things that go into supporting someone cycling thousands of kilometres.

Names I knew from the earlier rides.

Bill Pixton. Michael Small. Sally, to name a few.

And Jenny, of course.

Jenny was the veteran.

She’d been there through all of Bob’s cycling adventures, supporting him, organising things and keeping everything running.

Bob might have been the one turning the pedals, but Jenny knew exactly what went into making these journeys happen.

But this time, things were a little different.

Bob was 82. Jenny was nearly 80. And Tom, their grandson, was just 18.

Two generations, two bicycles and an enormous stretch of Australia ahead of them.

What they needed was someone in the middle.

Someone who could help with the driving, the logistics, the unexpected problems and all the little things that come with travelling thousands of kilometres across the country.

Someone who could look after all three of them.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realised…

Hang on a cotton-pickin’ second.

I could help them.

Why couldn’t I?

I’d driven trucks. I still held my heavy rigid licence.

I’d worked as a tour guide out of Alice Springs, taking people through the desert.

I knew what it was like travelling through remote Australia.

I loved the outback.

I loved driving.

I wasn’t frightened of long distances or uncertainty.

Quite the opposite.

Give me an open road, an adventure and absolutely no idea what’s around the next corner, and I’m a happy woman.

And I was already planning to travel around Australia anyway.

So why not?

The proposal

Now, I didn’t just ring Bob and say, “Hey, I’ll come.”

Oh no.

I wrote a proper proposal.

An email explaining why I thought I’d be a useful addition to the team.

I outlined my experience.

Former tour guide in Alice Springs.

Heavy rigid truck licence.

Experience driving long distances and travelling through remote areas.

Practical, capable, happy to help and not particularly bothered by uncertainty.

In fact, uncertainty was one of the things I loved most.

I wasn’t looking for a perfectly organised holiday.

I was looking for an adventure.

There was, however, one small condition.

I came with a dog.

Lucky.

So if they wanted me, they were getting Lucky too.

A package deal.

Me and the dog.

I sent the email.

And almost immediately, the phone rang.

It was Bob and Jenny.

“Are you serious? Are you really putting your hand up for this?”

“Yeah! Let’s go!”

And just like that, I was part of the team.

From campervan dreams to car camping

There was one small logistical problem.

I didn’t actually own a campervan.

I’d been planning to buy one, but planning to buy a campervan and owning a campervan are two very different things.

Never mind.

I had an SUV.

I’d sleep in the car.

I didn’t care.

I’d car camp my way across Australia.

Bob had another suggestion.

“Take our SUV.”

Their SUV was slightly bigger than mine.

Not enormously bigger. Maybe a few inches.

But when you’re planning to sleep in the back of a car for weeks, a few inches can make an enormous difference.

Particularly when you’re trying to lie flat instead of spending every night curled up like a question mark.

And with a 25-kilo dog sleeping next to you.

Because Lucky wasn’t about to give up his share of the bed just because we were travelling around Australia.

“Cool bananas.”

So that became the plan.

I’d take Bob and Jenny’s SUV, fit it out for sleeping and travel across Australia supporting the boys.

And my shopping changed direction.

All those things I’d been buying for my future campervan?

Well, now I needed to think about car camping.

I bought a brilliant three-fold bamboo camping mattress.

Proper memory foam.

None of those inflatable things that slowly lose air overnight until you wake up with your backside on the floor.

This thing was solid.

It folded away neatly, and I could lie flat on it.

Perfect.

I started collecting more bits and pieces to make living in the back of a car practical.

Storage. Bedding. Little conveniences.

All the things you think you’ll need when you’re about to spend weeks living out of a vehicle.

I’d gone from planning my dream campervan to preparing to sleep in someone else’s SUV.

And I was perfectly happy about it.

Because the adventure was happening.

Meet me in Penrith

Then came another phone call.

Bob.

“Meet me in Penrith. Catch the train.”

Righto.

Off to Penrith I went.

And that’s when Bob took me to a motorhome dealership.

Suddenly, the plan changed again.

I wasn’t going to be sleeping in the back of his SUV after all.

We were looking at campervans.

An actual campervan.

With a bed.

A kitchen.

A bathroom.

A little house on wheels.

The very thing I’d been dreaming about for months.

Except this wasn’t the slow, meandering journey around Australia I’d imagined.

There wouldn’t be endless days to explore little towns, set up drone shots or sit around wondering where to go next.

We had a starting point.

Broome.

We had a destination.

Bowral.

And we had two blokes who intended to pedal the 5,290 kilometres between them.

I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into.

And I couldn’t wait.

The long way to Broome

And that’s how my carefully imagined life on the road took a completely different turn.

Instead of wandering around Australia at my own pace, I now had somewhere to be.

Broome.

Bob, Jenny and Tom would fly there.

Lucky and I would drive.

And naturally, I wasn’t going to take the most direct route.

We headed west across the Nullarbor, down to Esperance, inland to Wave Rock, across to Perth, then north through Exmouth and eventually on to Broome.

Just me, Lucky and our little house on wheels.

Thousands of kilometres of Australian roads, extraordinary landscapes, roadhouses, wonderful encounters and the freedom of travelling with Lucky beside me.

I’d prepared for this journey for months. Everything we needed was packed, organised and ready to go.

And it worked.

There were a few unexpected moments along the way, of course.

But that’s part of travelling.

And sometimes those unexpected moments turn into the best stories.

And yes, I did get to see some of the Australia I’d been dreaming about.

Just rather more quickly than I’d originally intended.

By the time we reached Broome, I’d already had an adventure of my own.

But the real reason for being there was about to begin.

Bob, Jenny and Tom were flying in, and together we were about to embark on something none of us could have fully imagined.

Broome to Bowral. 5,290 kilometres. Two blokes on bicycles.

And me, Jenny, Lucky and a couple of support vehicles trying to keep up.

But that’s another story.