A Day in the Life of a Camper Van Co-Pilot  

I discovered that traveling agrees with me. I am now in the co-pilot seat in our Aussie Toyota campervan traveling from Sydney to Brisbane (1100 miles) listening to Rod Stewart and Bruce Springsteen’s best hits. It may be humorous to visualize that I am seated with our computer on my lap typing articles and resizing photos to add to our website while Mike is driving. My multi tasking job duties now include map reading, looking at the scenery, editing photos, looking at the scenery, writing articles for our website, selecting and playing our favorite songs from ITunes, looking at the scenery, and reminding Mike to stay left! Overall, Mike has adjusted well to driving on the opposite side of the road in both New Zealand and Australia.

How is life on the road? Actually, it’s quite pleasant living in our campervan with all the necessary conveniences of a kitchen, entertainment room (laptop) and bedroom all in one room. We actually got used to sweeping and cleaning our kitchen, dining room, living room and bedroom floor 3 to 4 times a day which takes all of 30 seconds. At the end of a typical day, we will sit around our dining room table and have the dexterity to grab a cold beer or glass of wine from our compact refrigerator without having to get up or move from our table. Do you get the picture of how small our house is yet? Our campervan is actually spacious enough as long as we don’t stand up together at the same time.

When we awake in the morning, the first thing we do is check our watches for what day it is. Do we think about what time it is? What is THAT? We measure date and time by judging when we have to depart one country for the next . Currently, we have another week in Australia and that’s all we need to know. We look outside to check on the weather and if the sun is not yet shining, we may decide to linger over another cup of coffee.

Hold on now “Mate”. We are stopping for lunch at Corindi Beach which is a lovely and very scenic coastal beach. It’s just one of many beaches along the eastern coast of New South Wales we see while heading north to Queensland. The sun is now shining brightly and it feels like it may be a very warm day which may suggest a swim later in the day. Is it really 32 degrees and snowing in Bellevue? Today it is supposed to be 28 degrees…., oh, that’s Celsius, which is 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

After driving all day, we look forward to a new town to explore and new campground neighbors to meet. Our evening conversations (with a fine glass of Australian wine) focus of where we have been or where we are going.

The campgrounds we visit vary greatly and have their own unique characteristics. We have even experienced unisex bathrooms (interesting!) and hot and cold running kids.

I think our sons will be quite proud of us since we‘ve learned how to use all of our electronic toys. We are utilizing our computer as our communication and entertainment center. Overall we are glad we are lugging our 4 pound laptop, 2 IPODs, Sny speakers, 10 adapters, hairdryer, and 2 cameras … until we have to carry them for more than 5 minutes to a train station.

Yea…a…h! (Aussies use this word often and have their own distinctive dialect when emphasizing the “a” sound.) I am adjusting to traveling quite naturally especially with my own chauffeur!

Where's Pat and Mike?