Corporate life to vanwife: Our journey from corporate grind to open roads

Vanlife

From corporate grind to open roads: we left our jobs, home, and routine behind to chase freedom, adventure, and a life untethered.

How we left the 9-to-5 to chase the open road

Wind back the clock to November 2023, and our life looked entirely different.

I was slugging it out at work as a young Brand Executive for a major South Australian organisation, after flying through the ranks unintentionally during a major restructure.

With a new CEO at the helm and industry pressures demanding intense output, expectations were high, resources scrutinised, ego thrived and, at times, it felt like an eat or get eaten fight for survival.

Arriving home in darkness, I would climb out of my sparkling work car and see colours glowing through the leadlight windows of our 1917 red brick bungalow home, and the rich aroma of dinner would greet me in the air.

“Hello darling,” my wife Jane would call out from behind the screen door, and I would breathe out all the pressures of the day in a deep sigh of relief.

While I was punching out long hours managing a growing team and navigating my role as an emerging executive leader, my wife was fighting her own work battle.

After 15 years of unwavering service for the beast that is Federal Government in a role exposed to the deepest traumas of life on a daily basis, she had hung up her boots.

Her emotional cup was full with the sad stories of families struggling to make their way through life. And, she was waiting.

Together, we had brought the great Australian dream to life – a beautiful home on a tree-lined street, a loving marriage, a wonderful adult son, a vibrant social life, great careers and a healthy income. Everything but the white picket fence.

Despite it all, we yearned for something different. Something wilder. Less scripted.

Since returning from an incredible 6-month lap of Australia in 2019, we had our hearts set on heading back out to explore the far reaches of our sprawling country, without the haunting sound of a clock counting down.

We had spent the past four years preparing fastidiously to pack up our lives and set out on the adventure of a lifetime, with no end date. We had carefully balanced funds, stashed money away, bought a secondhand rig, painstakingly renovated our home, sold off surplus assets, and found a property manager to rent out our home.

We were well prepared and waiting eagerly for ‘D-Day’ – departure day – to arrive.

After being tapped on the shoulder unexpectedly by my CEO in late 2022, I had committed mentally to 12 months in the executive role – a commitment that had pushed D-Day out by six months or so. But at the age of 33, it felt like an invitation too good to refuse.

For Jane, it meant being caught in a weird limbo for several months, having already resigned in readiness for the next chapter of our lives. She spent this time healing, renovating, packing boxes and supporting me.

But now I had delivered on my commitment. It had pushed my body and mind to its absolute limits. And I was ready to roll, we both were.

And on Monday, 20 November 2023 we did. Our home disappeared in the “rearview mirror of our 2010 Hilux, and soon, so too did our home state of South Australia.

As our tyres swallowed the warm bitumen, I wound down the window, pushed my arm through the blasting air and dipped my hand up and down through the gusts like a surfer riding waves. We turned to one another at exactly the same moment and smiled with our eyes, mouths, and every corner of our faces.

We were free. And it felt right.