Once upon a time the Australian Government gave all of its citizens $900. They didn’t want it back, it was tax-free, they didn’t want us to save it, and they wanted it spent. The government was so keen to give away our hard earned taxes they gave it to dead people and expats who had lived overseas for decades.
This money was to be spent in the community to boost the economy and stave off the effects of the Global Financial Crisis in Australia and if there is one thing I can do it is spend money so I was keen to do my bit.
My husband bought tools with his money but I am a community minded person and after much soul searching I decided the best way to spend it would be on a holiday. Northern Australia is beautiful. An area I felt I could save from financial ruin, so I contacted my sister in law who was on the loose and all alone in a beautiful mobile home. I convinced her that she needed my company for a couple of weeks, left my husband at home minding the dog and flew to Townsville to join her in her mobile home.
We covered a couple of thousand kilometres over two weeks and I was hooked.
I fell in love with the Grey Nomad lifestyle when I left the plane and discovered my sister in law in the airport lounge surrounded by people. She had attracted a large crowd of new friends and she was able to stay as long as she liked and talk to them. I had just come from a life of back-to-back meetings, never able to stop and make friends and if I did, not able to spend time talking to them. I didn’t have time to spend talking to my own husband!
This situation at the airport made me realise that I wanted nothing more than to become a Grey Nomad and commune at night under far flung gum trees with new found free spirits, a glass of red in one hand, barbequing a chop and not knowing where I would go tomorrow.
If you thought for even a moment about what it would take to realise the dream of completely breaking free, you wouldn’t do it. But I am more of a feeler than a thinker so I didn’t think and in the end here we are…on the road full time, gum trees, red wine, chop, lots of new friends and all the trimmings and I’m enjoying spending time chatting to my husband.
People who want to be nomads and don’t make it happen would be “The Planners”…their frenetic minds throwing up all the reasons why NOT…If that is you, then who is really in charge in there, you or your mind? And unless you take charge and close it down, you’ll never actually overcome all the hurdles your mind is creating to actually achieve it.
Still, with over 350,000 recreational vehicles wafting up and down the continent in tides that follow the seasons, there are lots of over 50’s who are fit and cashed up and happy to go with the flow and defy the urge to plan in too much detail. The main plan, where one exists at all, is just to dodge cyclones, crocodiles, stingers and “the wet” and to hell with the rest of it. They see sights others only dream of and their only worry is finding the best free camp to spend the next night, or, if it’s in a desirable location, nights plural. Their essential self is in charge, their minds banished to the background where they belong.
And many people don’t just go to see the sights. They go to live a day-by-day existence in motion, meeting people and “doing” and not just “being”. They are part of a rolling community that we have found is caring, close in a distant sort of way and friendly. Full of good will.
I have seen a car towing a caravan broken down between Tennant Creek and Darwin and eight other rigs pulled up with them. The men are all heads down under the bonnet and the ladies are producing a superb spread with home made cakes and plunger coffee, served under umbrellas beside the red dusty road. If your car broke down in the city no one would stop except a policeman who would probably book you for obstruction and move on after calling a tow truck.
It is true that if you decided to sell up and run away to this life of freedom and you thought about it for even 2 minutes you would sink under a towering mountain of things that had to be done first. And if you shovelled for a hundred years you would never dig yourself out to actually make it happen. Those people who really wanted to be grey nomads but aren’t, are the ones who stopped for a moment to think about it. I mean, where would you start?
Next week I’ll explain how we divested… Got rid of nearly everything…. It was such a liberating thing to do.
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