As we continued along on our pre-planned route of circumnavigating the WHOLE of Australia, all 9,000 miles of it, we talked more and more about where we might end up after this wild road trip comes to an end.

Hmmmm…where next?

Our goal was always to physically end our trip here in Australia and settle down like good normal people…it has always been our dream actually. When we set off in 2011 it was all we wanted, to move to Australia and know we could plan a BBQ for 2 weeks next Saturday and know the weather would be awesome. We could see the opportunity in this relatively new country and we could also see the numbers. England has become so over-populated it is hard to breathe, the whole of Australia has seemingly less people than the population of London alone, in a country that is almost as large as ALL of Europe. It is fair to say there is ‘space’ here. But on arriving and considering living here, all we have found is ‘space’ and it just doesn’t float our boat the way we thought it would.

I know, we sound like spoiled little madams and of course, we KNOW how lucky we are to be here and we are enjoying every minute of it but we just don’t feel like this is our future home.

Forests…and a threat of kangaroos!

The more we see, the more we crave Maine.

Honestly, I can’t believe it either. Before this trip if someone had ever told me I would even consider living in the USA I would have laughed my head off, but its the only place we have felt the warmth in our tunnies, the excitement of starting a life there, the consideration that we would stick the damn winters just because the place is so incredibly beautiful. It feels like it has everything we wanted from Australia but it is closer to…well, it is closer to the World pretty much. It has great summers, stunning Autumns and a guaranteed winter, it has great local produce and a community feel and it has potential.

Australia hasn’t YET shown us the ‘community spirit’ we had hoped for, or the produce to be honest…which sounds lame but it is important to us.

We spent 4 weeks in Melbourne, both in the CBD and in the suburbs and as lovely as it was it just wasn’t ‘home’ material. We meandered up along the glorious coast to Adelaide and again found a fantastically green city with a fab food market but still, it’s just not our bag. Travelling for so long and learning about ourselves, what we like, what we need, what we aspire to has made us realise what we want from our ‘home’. We want to be surrounded by inspiring people who are also open to being inspired, we want to settle into a community that we can help grow, we want to be close enough to the rest of the world that we can still talk to people in other countries (the time zone differences here make talking with family and friends pretty much everywhere else in the world a logistical nightmare), and we want to continue to travel. Travelling anywhere from this neck of the woods is an enormous commitment before even considering the expense.

Chasing the dream?

So, after all that babbling on, getting it off my chest, we have decided to scrap our plans to drive the full loop of Australia. We will sadly miss out on meeting my lovely friend in Perth, MaggyBride. Of course, we will miss out on a lot of things but we have made the decision that doing it for doing it’s sake is not a reason to drive 9000 sodding miles! We have made an about turn from Adelaide and cut across the middle of Victoria and are almost in Sydney. We are going to cruise up the east coast soaking up the sunshine, lounging on beaches, hanging with friends and working on the website developments…which we cannot wait to share with everyone!

Everything seems to be falling into place since making that decision and plans are afoot that could never have worked if we had continued on our previous route…so, as I have been known to say every now and then…everything happens for a reason!

So what do you think? Do you think we are crazy? Maine over Australia? Do you think we might find ‘home’ on the Sunshine Coast?