About

On the first of July, six months after leaving Belgium, I flew to Melbourne to live and work in Australia for a year. Six months of work and six months of travel! Or, at least, that was the plan. Living and working in Melbourne for a couple of months changed all previously made plans again. I lived in a hostel for about five months and was constantly surrounded by other travellers. On top of that, staying longer in one place allowed me to see Melbourne and Victoria thoroughly. Suddenly, I felt at home abroad while still being a traveller. The objective of staying a year in Australia changed to staying on the road longer. My travel adventure wasn’t longer an extended holiday but became a lifestyle I wanted to pursue. 

Now, making travelling a lifestyle isn’t that easy. Firstly, there are various limitations to how long you can stay in certain countries. Secondly, after six months of travelling, my bank account wasn’t really in for a lifestyle as a traveller. On the contrary, my first job as a Barista in Melbourne paid me just enough to live a good life in a comfortable backpacker hostel. Indeed I have seen the insides of most Melbourne pubs and bars, but that wasn’t helping me in the long run. To extend my visa in Australia and to be able to save up for future travels, I had to do the famous 88 days of rural work. The rules are simple, you work in a remote place for three months, and the government grants you another year in Australia. The rules are simple, but finding the right job isn’t. 

My quest to find a rural job in Australia wasn’t easy. There are many stories of exploited backpackers, and I was not going to be one of them. The amount of research and job applications I did was ridiculous. I did more background research on them than they ever did on me. Through hard work and determination, I changed locations from Melbourne to King Island in November 2019. Making cheese for King Island Dairy for four months on a remote but picturesque island sounded like the perfect opportunity to learn new skills as a traveller and get up close with locals in Australia. King Island didn’t disappoint, although, by the time I finished my four months, Covid-19 had changed the world. 

King Island was the best place to get stuck in the world during Covid-19. With its tiny population of about a thousand people and limited flights to and from the island, we escaped most lockdowns. My travel journey would have likely ended without King Island and its need for workers. Instead, I had local friends on the island, a group of backpackers that stayed around, a full-time job and the chance to experience remote living to the fullest. Moreover, King Island’s remote character and the presence of a music studio opened my travels up to a different experience. Not knowing when Covid-19 would end, I decided to stay until the first of July, the start of my second working holiday visa.

When we got to the first of July, Covid-19 hadn’t changed. Instead, there was the realisation that this pandemic would be around longer than anticipated. However, over those months, things in my travels changed. Spending 7 months on King Island, the total duration I thought my entire trip would have been, I felt at home for the second time abroad. I learned how to ride horses, helped on dairy farms, hunted wildlife in the paddocks, explored the far corners of the island and started my local music project, Yentl As Anything. Besides, not much later, I also started a relationship. I decided to stay around for seven more months to complete the six months I needed to obtain my third year in Australia and get some extra savings. 

Luckily, by the start of 2021, things began to look better in Australia. It wasn’t possible to fly to the mainland yet, so I decided to continue my travels in Tasmania. I went camping all around the state and could do multiday hikes in Australia for the first time since my hike on the Great Ocean Walk during my time in Melbourne. Next to hiking in Freycinet National Park, Cradle Mountain National Park, and the Three Capes Track in Port Arthur, I walked the South Coast Track. The SCT was a unique and remote experience that started my hunger for more and longer hikes. Although, the South Coast Track was also the first time I realised I needed a better long-term plan. Staying on the road longer than anticipated had been great, but it wouldn’t make my life easier in the long run. 

With a little stop-over on King Island to play a few concerts, I flew to Melbourne, where this adventure started. I met with friends and continued my experience in South Australia and the Northern Territory. I had finally travelled to every state in Australia! I hiked the Larapinta Trail in Alice Springs, a 260 km trail through the desert, and it gave me an even bigger hunger for hiking long-distance. Although the Larapinta Trail also strengthened the feeling of needing a long-term plan. I needed a project I could use on the road if I wanted to keep travelling, and that’s where I felt that this website could have more potential than I was using it. 

To focus a little more on creating this platform, I took a volunteering role on K’gari Fraser Island in Queensland. It had always been one of my dream destinations in Australia, inspiring me to form the basis for the website it is today. Although, some things were missing, and I was not saving money for further travel. In the end, I returned to King Island for six months. Here, I could work daily on the website, critiquing the SEO and re-write all the posts already on the website. Overmore, I was surrounded by friends, had a stable job and could play music. It was the combination I needed and where I needed to be at that point. 

Although King Island was only a short solution, the urge to continue my travels was still very present. Avalon and I had big plans. We would make a road trip from Tasmania to Darwin in the Northern Territory, revisiting most stops along the East Coast of Australia. We started on Flinders Island, took a road trip through Victoria, and my brother joined us in New South Wales for a few weeks. In Queensland, we went island hopping, attempting to find every hidden gem, always with the website in mind. Eventually, we flew to Darwin, where we met up with my mum and Gert, who joined us for a road trip through the top-ends national parks.

The initial plan was to travel from Darwin to Exmouth towards Perth and explore Western Australia again. However, during the months we were travelling, I was granted another extension to stay longer in Australia, giving me more options to make to best out of these years. So, Instead, I started a Dive Master Internship on Moreton Island, off the coast of Brisbane. Since my first dive at the start of this adventure, doing a Divemaster became part of my bucket list. After my internship, I was offered a job. Not only as a tour, diving and snorkel guide but also in the dolphin care team. Who would have known more than four years ago that my life would go this way? These opportunities allow me to save more and write out all the information we gathered in our six-month adventure.