We built a house on Russell Island totally off the grid so no electricity bills and have been living here since 2006, we were told when we bought the land, that there was a bridge to be built to the mainland, but we soon learned that Redland City Council and Queensland Government had other plans, like charging us same rates as the mainland even though we had to have our own waste treatment plants with yearly maintenance, dirt roads with dust covering everything, and with some drivers on the island who like to do the wheelies with their cars, so the dust becomes a real problem.

Our best friends decided to sell up and hit the road we started talking about doing the same, Colleen wasn’t too sure about the idea, she had one condition, and that was we would have to keep the house so we had something to come back to, which meant I would have to keep working for another 5 years to pay for the house. I agreed to do that and we talked about it a few times and Colleen wanted to go to Cairns to visit Natarsha – Mick and little Mia on Natarsha’s birthday, we started to look for accommodation and after looking at the cost I suggested we hire a motor home for 3 weeks instead of Motels etc. and that way we could find out if we would would like living in a motor home.

We hired a C-Class motor home from Apollo, not cheap but the outcome was great. We traveled from Brisbane to Cairns via the M1 and went the inland route back to Brisbane, we had a great time, absolutely loved it.

On returning home to Russell Island we unpacked and Colleen did the laundry, after hanging the first load on the line she came into the house in tears, I asked her “What’s wrong?”

Colleen, who usually keeps a lot inside, let it go that day and told me, “I don’t want to be here anymore, I was a bit taken back by this, she continued and said, “This is the first time in all our holidays that I have not felt like coming back home”, I let her go on and she came out with, “We’re getting older and we can’t keep doing this, the mowing, hedge trimming, painting, general maintenance and the never ending bills, all for what ?

Just so we can say “Yes we own a house”, “I don’t think so”, so the three week trip had made up our minds for us and we started looking at a few motor homes, we purchased a 2008 Avan Ovation M3 motor home.