The behind-the-scenes not so glamorous side of travelling🧖🏼‍♀️

Good morning you beautifully clean and rested souls ✨

First of all, let's go through some life updates! This has been a big week ya'll!

Last week, I spent a couple of days at Carnarvon Gorge, hiked the full 25km trail, and obsessed over every single view. It was stunning and I highly recommend it! I had no hiking experience and I wasn't even sure I could make the distance, but I'm proud for pushing myself out of my comfort zone and for not giving up. There are a bunch of other smaller trails that you can also check out if you don't feel up to going all the way! Happy to report that my blisters have subsided and the thought of strapping my hiking boots on again isn't horrifying 😅

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On Friday morning, I had the pleasure of graduating from the Quantum Coaching Academy after almost 6 months of study and experience. It was a massive leap for me for enrol in a new study program and spend that money, but ultimately I knew that my passion was moving away from teaching students, and into the self-development space. It has been such a learning curve, and an amazing experience that I am truly grateful for. I have over 8 different coaching certifications to my name now, and truly feel like my coaching is helping to change lives. Not only can I lead a powerful conversations to reframe your beliefs, but I can also work to dissolve your fears and anxieties on an energetic level. I've always believed in the power of language, deep conversations, and transformation, and now I get to live that dream every day by helping others 🤍

Long-term travel truly is one of those instances in life where you have to keep reminding yourself daily how cool it is that you're seeing amazing things and living the dream... and I don't mean that to sound ungrateful in any way, but the reality is that it's often long days without some of the finer things in life. Like a hot shower. Fresh sheets. Clean clothes. A nice level space to do my pilates.

Over the weekend I spent some time at Nuga Nuga National Park which is completely off-grid on the edge of Lake Nuga Nuga in central Queensland. I had heard great things about it on WikiCamps- it has an amazing population of birds, in fact the most birds I've ever seen in one place, it's very remote, and supposedly unpopulated by campers, and the sunrises are beautiful to watch coming up over the water. All of that was true, with the exception of it being unpopulated.

I arrived on Thursday about midday, and felt the sense of isolation immediately. No other camper in sight. Perfect, I thought. I'll be able to get into my morning routine again with this privacy- pilates on the shoreline, followed by a warm shower at the back of the van. The issue is that there is no screen at the back of the van as yet... and so if I want to shower it has to be when there's no one else around 🫣 As a side note, I did buy a shower curtain to hang with some magnets, but it is unfortunately 2cm too short so I'll have to find a wider one from somewhere and try again. 

About 4pm I heard loud music, followed by the creaking and banging of a heavily loaded ute, followed by incessant barking from dogs. As the vehicle drove into view, I was in the middle of some business work and I really hoped that they'd keep driving, turn around and go back the other way. I was camped quite near the end of the National Park, with the intention being that anyone else would, naturally, decide to find another camp site back towards the start. No such luck. Old mate gets out of his ute, footy shorts, no shirt, no shoes, and comes lurching towards my campsite and yelling out incoherently. Great, I thought. I am 150kms from the nearest town, on my own, and now I've got some drunk yobo who knows I'm here on my own.

I walked out, he asked me what was beyond my campsite and wanted to know if he could turn around up there etc. The dogs continued to bark. He continued to sway. I replied that yes I was camped here, and the boundary fence was just up the road, I didn't know if he could turn around in a trailer. He was having trouble putting together what I'd said, so I ended up saying good bye and walking away. He proceeded to set up camp about 60 meters from me, where his dogs chased the kangaroos, the ducks, and everything else that move, barked all night, and he screamed at them over the top of his music which was blaring 🤦🏻‍♀️

I've had a quite a few people on the road ask me if I ever feel scared travelling alone, and the answer is not yet. The truth is I didn't feel scared, and my intuition told me that given his current state he wasn't a threat, but I also didn't want to be camped near him or his dogs either. It was not quite the serenity I had been envisioning, and nor did I feel comfortable doing my pilates and shower morning routine 🙅🏻‍♀️

I stayed there the night and then the next morning after my graduation call, I went for a walk around the shoreline and found another beautiful campsite around the headland which was away from the main track in and on a dead end. And for that day, it was fantastic. I did my pilates in the dust and bindies and watched the swans on the lake. I had a warm shower and felt fresh again. I cooked up a good stirfry and soaked in the warmth of the sunshine. I revelled in the privacy. I was totally alone and it was great.

What I didn't realise at the time though, was that the aspect of the headland I was camped on meant that I was going to feel the brunt of the wind when it picked up early Saturday morning. I layed in bed and got a gorgeous sunrise view, but not long after that, demonic winds picked up and hurled a national park worth of dust straight through my van... the old girl Sandy is a bit like a wind tunnel it turns out. I thought to myself, Thank God I had my bed made and it's just going to be on the doona, I can shake that off easily.

Incorrect. As I got into bed that night, feeling a little stuffy and warm in the van with everything safely shut against the dust-devils, I felt grit in between my sheets and when I lifted the doona to pull it up towards me, a puff of dust released. I actually got the dust pan and brush and tried to sweep it off it was that bad, but to no avail. I've been sleeping in the sheets and for about 3 nights now, sneezing and coughing, as I've made my way back to the coastline of Queensland and towards civilisation, with jopes of finding a caravan park to recuperate and wash up at.

The hot shower last night was heavenly, but I got in too late to wash anything at the laundromat, so unfortunately I feel just as gritty and gross this morning after sleeping in my dusty bed again. On the agenda today: laundry. Piles of it. And at $10 a load ($5 for the washing machine and another $5 for the dryer), it's not cheap.

Like most big experiences in life, there's always going to be the good and the bad. Looking for a silver lining in this case is quite easy- I get to spend the afternoon lazing at the beach soaking up the sun as a reward. But it does bring the mind the importance of duality.

Duaity is the ability to see both sides in any given context, and to understand that we've got to have the bad, so we can truly appreciate the good.

So many people miss this lesson in life and get bogged down in the bad aspects of it. Uplevelling your life isn't about deleting all of the bad things, rather it's about the resilience to be able to withstand them, learn the lessons from them, and then use them to deepen your appreciation for the moments in life when everything is going right. My experience at Nuga Nuga National Park made me appreciate the little things like a hot shower and fresh sheets so much more. I know that tonight I will fall asleep with a big cheesy grin on my face knowing that all I can feel is freshly laundered cotton... and not a tonne of dirt and grit.

It seems silly and innocuous, but where have you been sleeping on the simple daily pleasures that you get to enjoy? Have you been taking a hot shower for granted? If you're a mother, you probably know the price of a peaceful shower without littlies running in and out of the bathroom, or a decent night sleep. Maybe, for you it's about appreciating having a hot meal cooked for you by somebody you love, or spending some time in the sun today.

I'm going to enjoy doing some of the mundane chores in the van today, cleaning it up and getting it back to feeling fresh, so that tomorrow I can head out and do the more glamourous touristy stuff. One day, when I move back into a house and set up my laundry again, I'm going to really bloody appeciate having a washing machine to myself that I can use any old time I want without paying for it in bulk coins. But until that day comes, I'm going to appreciate having access to the lanudromat today and the fresh sheets that I get to luxuriate in tonight. I'm going to soak up the hot showers, and look forward to the moment that I can escape the crowds at the caravan park and head somewhere remote again... it's all about balance, or duality.

I hope you can take a moment to really appreciate three seemingly mundane things today... it might be eating a nice lunch with friends of colleagues, sitting in the sunshine, doing the laundry for free, or even the hot shower that you can use without a 5 minute caravan park timer on it 😉

Simple moments of gratitide throughout your day will build an energy of appreciation for your life. It's the little things that count after all ✨

Haley 🤍