Before we could roll out of Canberra there were a few things we had to do:

• Sell our house, the family home for the past 19 years
• Sell our existing camper trailer
• Sell our old but trusty Toyota Prado
• Buy a new town house
• Buy a new tow vehicle
• Buy a new caravan
• Quit our current jobs

We started many “jobs to do” lists (Chris is an excel spreadsheet guru). These basically ruled our lives for the remainder of 2016 and early 2017.  Our great family home in Kambah went to auction late spring that year. The decade old jobs around the house that never really got finished had to be completed. Major renovations in a very short time, including the original 1980’s kitchen and ensuite, had to be completely redeveloped.  This large family home of nearly 20 years had storage space that was fully utilised including Jo’s attic of “stuff”. It all had to be sorted, stored or chucked!

Another huge spreadsheet was the two-year road trip financial planning. In fact, there was spreadsheet for everything including; financial planning and budgets; trip itinerary; 4×4 purchase; 4×4 fitout; caravan research and purchasing and on and on. Chris’s obsession with accountable planning and spreadsheets was testing even the limits of a well-versed account manager such as Jo.

Jo insisted we would have to have some sort of home in Canberra to come back to in the future. This meant we also had the task of finding and purchasing a suitable townhouse in Canberra. The townhouse was important as we needed a place for our daughter and our beloved dog “Keli” – the 12-year-old spoodle – to stay while we were away.  Our boys were already living away from home, so they were only considered as temporary visitors if they came home to Canberra.

We then purchased a second-hand shipping container. A deal was struck with our wonderful friends Jenny and Craig who agreed to store the container on their rural property about 130kms from Canberra.  Once we have returned from our trip and removed our belongings the container will be theirs to keep as added farm storage. A win, win for all involved.

We still had a fair amount of shopping and organisation to do for the trip including our D-max fit out.

And so began the unrelenting hard work for months while ensuring the Kambah home looked its best for going to market.  The sorting and boxing became an endless nightmare and continued until the caravan was packed and we were on our way.

The Prado and Jayco Hawk at Cape Palmerston 2015

Our Family home for 20 years