Living outdoors in a tent for 6 months during 2020, while your beloved Victoria (& the World) is ravaged by Covid, is an adventure enough to change anyone.
And thats what happened...
Hi I’m Bec 👋 & on the last weekend in June 2020 my adventurous family & I packed the car with all our climbing & camping gear, enough for our usual 10 day Winter escape ~ and headed to our traditional climbing destination, Nowra NSW.
Only a few short days later, our home, Victoria, Australia, began to come undone, covid numbers rose dramatically & we suddenly found ourselves in the seemingly fortunate & envious position, of being on the other side of the border.
We had packed for 10 days. We came home 6 months later. 🏕
Thats right. 10 days turned into 6 magnificent months and by the time we came home to Melbourne we had driven our humble little camp all the way up to the Daintree Rainforest, the Great Barrier Reef & to Cook Town. We spent 6 weeks camped beside the Shoalhaven River NSW, 3 months camped beside Noosa River QLD & the rest of the time exploring everything in our path. We surfed, we climbed, we homeschooled, we ate simple meals & we totally & utterly shifted gears from the way our lives had been. We came home to our most authentic selves.
In the early days of July, everything felt surreal & we worried for our families and friends. Every night around the campfire we would talk with our campground buddies about rising numbers, political positioning, the cases in Victoria & around the world. In hindsight, I have found the 2021 lockdowns to be quite lovely & very easy… But this was the first BIG one for Australia & it was difficult to imagine from our vantage point, how things back home really were.
We took it day by day til eventually it became clear, we would stay out until the whole thing blew over. Benj applied for early release of his long service leave at half pay & I taught meditation classes from my old iPhone 6 & the headphones that came with it. We all adapted. The children homeschooled on the rickety ‘kitchen bench’ beside the Shoalhaven river in the warm Winter sun. We all lived out of one small bag each, slept in a nylon 6 man tent, immersed ourselves in nature & climbed every day.
We Loved It.
We came home changed… & we would do it all again tomorrow.
