In 2019 we packed up our Sydney house and spent a year doing the Big Lap of Australia in a caravan with our two kids, Nicolas (then aged 10?) and Natasha (aged 8?). After the adrenaline and stress of Sydney life dissipated (after a couple of months!), the transition to primary school Distance Education was commenced and the adjustment to four people living in a very small space was undertaken we spent the rest of the year travelling in a slower style. We didn’t plan weeks ahead and if we liked a place we stayed longer and if we wanted to move on early we did. We discovered so many unexpected places and things by travelling slower which I’ve since discovered is slow travel. We did miss things but enjoyed the journey more.
Our original plan had been to travel clockwise and head to Western Australia but the weather wasn’t looking great so we took a right and travelled through the Flinders Ranges and Central Australia before taking another right to Mt Isa and heading for the Daintree and the Great Barrier Reef and travelling to the Tip, Cape York. After spending time in this area we continued our journey west and eventually made it back to Sydney just in time for COVID!
After settling back into Sydney, lockdown style, we started to wonder if there was something more that we wanted from our life and started throwing ideas around. Buying a caravan park seemed to tick at least some of our boxes so we started to look at what was available and checking out some options. In June 2021 we made a quick trip to the Daintree to take a look at what was then known as Lync Haven.
We sold our Sydney home and finished up our jobs before becoming homeless for a period due to border closures and not being able to cross from NSW to Queensland. Eventually, after a couple of weeks in hotel quarantine and a drive from Brisbane north we made it to Lync Haven in the last week of November – the hottest and most humid time of the year in Tropical North Queensland!
