What does 500 Days of Flexible Working Look like?

Working full-time and fully flexibly - 500 days travelling in a caravan! Australia’s most flexible role.

As we approached 500 days ‘on the road’ travelling around Australia on our ‘Family Gap Year’, it naturally evoked some reflection. It seems like just yesterday that we packed up our belongings, stored what we wanted to keep, and jammed everything else we needed into our new home on wheels. 

I still remember vividly the day I resigned from my job and my boss said “why quit, we don’t need you in the office, why not consider working on the road while you travel?” 

It was a dream come true! 

I love to work! I am a better wife, parent and person when I’m contributing in the workforce and it’s something I’m completely at peace with.  

It’s funny though, as we travel the country and meet other families along the way, people are often in disbelief. They ask a lot of questions, and we get quite a few raised eyebrows. Let me explain…

My husband Leigh does all the driving (62,000+km’s so far) and he also cooks, cleans, does all the laundry (often in public laundromats no less), shops for groceries and most importantly, he home-schools our two girls (age 9 and 10).

We agreed many years ago that we would always have one parent focus primarily on raising our girls, and in our family, it just happens to be the ‘Dad’. It’s not right or wrong, it’s what we call ‘our normal’. A 'Dadventure'!

I do find it funny though to hear the conversations Leigh has with other travellers during setup. You see, setup takes anywhere from 20-40 mins, and it’s something Leigh does with our girls. Leigh has always encouraged me to use this time productively for work, so I do emails or make phone calls while they all setup. 

Setup is also the time that other travellers watch on and scope out the newbies. Leigh often gets caught up chatting with fellow travellers and it’s here where travel stories are exchanged. Before too long, it comes up in conversation that I’m working full-time and fully flexible while we travel. 

Some of the questions and comments are interesting, so I’ve shared them below….

• "You mean to tell me your wife works full-time while you travel?"
• "Oh mate, you’ve got it made!"
• "She’s a keeper!"
• "Who does she work for?"
• "What does she do?"
• "How many hours does she work?"
• "So do you work mate?"

It’s hard to explain in words just how it all works, because it's all very agile and that's just the way we like it. So, instead of giving you another few paragraphs of text summarising ‘our normal’; this time around I thought I would share some of our most favourite images.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Through our lens, this is an insight to what working full-time and fully flexibly for 524 days (and counting) looks like.

This is work-life integration!