Although we settled into the wilderness, Greg still had to go to work and so he commuted daily into Darwin on his motorbike – the distance wasn’t great, roughly 100 kilometers each way, which is about 62 miles – starting off with ten kilometers (6.2 miles) of very rough and hilly dirt road until he reached the highway.

He left every morning very early before the sun rose and did not get home until after dark. That left me alone to deal with the basics – collecting water, storing power (when we had batteries), dealing with the wildlife – or dodging it – and digging toilets. The hardest job was washing the laundry because it was done by hand.

While the caravan gave us a kitchen and a gas stove (plus an office each, one at each end), we did not have anything else. We had no fridge and no freezer. We had no washing machine. We started off with a small generator that powered our computers and TV, although we could only watch videos – there was zero reception.

[Continue reading…]