After 12 months roughing it on the road, Joe and his family have returned to the comforts of home. But their time away gave them a new perspective on Australia and its people. By Lisa Upton

“If you’re not living in Sydney, you’re camping out,” Paul Keating once declared, much to the amusement of residents in the sparkling city. My partner, Greg, was recalling the former prime minister’s cheeky one-liner while we were setting up our tent in the Bungle Bungles in Western Australia.

We had just come from the national park’s spectacular beehive domes – formations of exquisite and unusual beauty. The sun was setting and there was a bottle of crisp WA chardonnay on ice. I looked at Greg, tent peg in hand, and said, “PK just didn’t understand the value of camping out.”

Greg and I, along with our little boy Joe, have spent the past year on the road. We’ve driven 50,000km on a trip that’s taken us from Tasmania to the Torres Strait, Cairns to Kununurra and from Broome to Broken Hill, via the Nullabor. We’ve done most of it in a caravan, although occasionally, we’ve pitched a tent. Paul Keating called our tribe “sandal-wearing, muesli-eating types”, but we’re not that flash: it’s been a year of cheap thongs and vegemite on toast. We’ve been to places where muesli is yet to be discovered.

One of the first people we met on our trip was the poet Les Murray. Greg, who’s writing a book, wanted to talk to the big man of poetry about the things that have shaped his view of Australia. Personally, I was keen to meet a bloke who’d written a poem celebrating a humble pair of shorts – “an angelic nudity, spirituality with pockets”!

Murray writes beautiful poetry, and is good company, but he has a gloomy view of the world around him. “Australia itself is the great consolation for dealing with Australians,” he told us over some hearty soup. In other words: when you grow weary of the people you can at least take comfort in the magnificence of the land.

For us, it was the opposite. The land is undoubtedly spectacular and at times we would disappear for days in a national park to wallow in its magnificence. But it was the people who sustained us. The people we met became the consolation for living (with a toddler) in a space that was six paces long and two paces wide.

We hung out with hippies in hot springs, artists in Broome, Aborigines in the Tanami Desert and grey nomads just about everywhere. On Thursday Island we met a police officer who had survived a croc attack and had the scars to prove it. In a remote and blustery part of Tasmania we spent time with a former neurosurgeon who was translating ancient Chinese poetry and philosophy from the eighth century. And in Queensland we became ‘carnies’ for a fortnight, travelling from town to town with the show people. We became part of the show family and Joe spent his days enjoying free rides and poking plastic balls into the mouths of clowns.

Now, a year on, the wandering is over. We are back to a world where the garbage bins are put out every Tuesday. Not that I’m complaining. There’s a lot to be said for having a separate bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. Weeks after arriving home, I still feel my spirits rise when I open the wardrobe and find more than three crusty shirts to choose from. And when Joe wakes howling in the middle of the night, it’s comforting to know there aren’t dozens of other campers being forced to share the misery.

But there’s a lot about the past year I’ll miss. There’s nothing quite like waking up in the morning and jumping straight into the river you’re camped beside. Life is always better without peak-hour traffic and floors to vacuum.

A friend asked me recently whether we’ve changed in any way. Certainly, both Greg and I feel a stronger connection to our own country. Now, when I hear that a cyclone is threatening Broome, I take notice, and wonder how my new mates are faring. Interestingly, there’s a place in my heart for a little fellow called Bronsky. He’s being raised by a couple in Deloraine after his mum died of Devil facial tumour disease. The scientific battle we’d read about to save the species now has a face.

The trip has also made us think about our priorities in life. More hours at a desk and a bigger house in a better suburb were not the conclusions we came to.
Another friend asked me whether I’d become the Bush Tucker Woman. After this trip, did I have the skills to survive alone in the desert with just a compass and a few litres of water? You’ve got to be kidding, I told him. I don’t know how to use a compass. I still don’t even know how to reverse park the caravan.

What I do know, however, is that it’s possible for two adults and a little boy to share a 16-foot space for a year and stay sane – most of the time.

Joe thrived on the trip, defying the predictions of a handful of people who thought we were mad taking a one-year-old on the road. “You three will be doing well not to kill each other,” one friend said on the eve of our departure. It almost came to that, particularly when it was time to park the caravan. But, in the end, our little family survived the trip around the continent and, happily, I can report we all still love each other.

Lisa Upton spent a year travelling around Australia with her partner Greg Bearup and their son, Joe. Greg is writing a book about their experiences called Adventures in Caravanastan. Volvo and Jayco Caravans sponsored their trip.

Open Road March/April 2009.