Breakfast with Lisa & Josh #43

Welcome Back to Breakfast with Lisa & Josh!

It’s been really, really hard to pick up the camera this past week. Not just because we’ve been constantly on the move, trading out one campervan for another, fixing battery problems (that’s next on my to-do list - the battery in our new van won’t hold a charge), driving over a literal mountain range just to make it around the heavily flooded east coast of Australia between Sydney and Brisbane, having to figure out how we’re going to continue living in a van as these intense rains keep coming and going over the next few weeks, and all the while, seeing how absolutely devastating these floods have been for so many communities across New South Wales and Queensland.

No, picking up a camera has been hard for an entirely different reason - and that’s because of just how uncomfortably comfortable we’ve gotten outside of our van and in our friend’s place in Noosa.

We finally made it all the way around the floods, and after the past week, we needed a break from the van and just a place to shelter. Honestly, with our history of how van life has gone for us, both when we built our own van and now with this one… I think we might just be cursed when it comes to van life. It might just not be for us (see photo below from September 2020, when our campervan died on the side of the highway.)

Since we’ve gotten here, we’ve been wet nonstop, had our home-on-wheels have just about every conceivable problem that is possible for a van to have, all while somehow spending $200 per day due to the absurdly high petrol costs and food prices, and, well.. it’s safe to say that the experience that we’ve been having in Australia so far is very distant from the one that we hoped to have… we even thought about giving it up and heading somewhere else after being evacuated from our campsite and spending the rest of the night being rained on *inside* our campervan.

In the last week, we have felt a complete range of emotions. But today, we feel nothing but gratitude. Thousands have been devastated by these floods and we feel extremely fortunate to even be able to do all of this still, to be safe, and to have a place to shelter.

The things that keep us going? All of you - the outpouring of support, kind words, offers to help - it is actually the only reason that we haven’t just quit this part of our trip entirely.

So, today is the closing of the previous chapter of our Australia experience - saying goodbye to the bad vibes that have dominated our experience so far. It’s all sunny skies, fun campgrounds, and beautiful views from here on out.

Well, except maybe today - it’s super overcast and looks like rain right now.

Here’s a photo of a koala to help us all feel a bit better. This was a serious email. Sorry about that.

Videos This Week

This is our story of being evacuated out of the floods here in Australia in our campervan.

We went to a Koala hospital. It was as adorable and heartbreaking as you would expect.

The most important addition we made to our van was a really, wonderfully dumb idea.

Also! Jen’s place is available on Airbnb, should you find yourself wanting a relaxing, beachy, holiday stay on the Sunshine Coast - it was truly our safe haven. Link here

So, that’s it for this week. More videos coming soon!

See you next Sunday…ish :)

- josh (and lisa)

Oh, and if you want to learn how we afford to take all these trips after quitting our jobs last year, you’ll likely be interested in our Skillshare course on Travel Hacking and Frequent Flier Miles. It’s been really taking off lately, but we still have a few uses of this link left for those of you who want to see the class for free. It comes with a free month of Skillshare, which is more than enough to watch our class and any of the other great courses on there!

Check it out here: https://skl.sh/lisaandjosh02221

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