Children's author and illustrator Alison Lester has a lot to answer for. How many of us read her award-winning Are We There Yet? to our young children as they nestled in our laps and imagined the adventures our families could have?
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Jodi Wilson remembers the night the story changed her family's life.
"Our son's Year 4 class was doing a performance of the story, they were dressed in a hodgepodge of costumes pulled from the back of wardrobes, but together they told a unified story," she says.
"One by one they recited lines from the book, the true story of her family's three-month road trip around Australia in a camper trailer.
"The story on the stage took us from the coast to the desert .. they sat around campfires .. gazed out the window on long driving days ... and spent every waking and dreaming moment together, in all sorts of places all over Australia."
Her partner Daniel leaned over the heads of their two middle children, Jodi nursing their three-month-old baby on her lap.
"We could do that," he said. "We could go on a road trip around Australia."
Eight months later, in mid 2018, the family of six was on the road, their entire life in a seven-metre caravan. They didn't have much of a plan, a few places they wanted to see on a rough map, a list of essentials, Lester's book.
Fast forward three years and they've not returned to the Central Coast, they arrived in Tasmania mid 2020 and decided to stay.
"I feel an undeniable sense of belonging here, I think we've found home," she says.
Her new book Practising Simplicity: Small steps and brave choices for a life less distracted is more than an account of their journey; it's about what the years on the road taught them, how they found clarity and purpose, how they discovered more about each other and more about what brought them together, what brought them joy.
"My family road trip was a steep, joyous, messy, life-changing experience," she says.
"It also proved to me, time and time again, that the greatest adventures are the ones we embark on personally: to dig deep, confront our fears and move forward.
"For us that meant letting go of everything that was comfortable and predictable in our lives and embracing spontaneity and the unknown."
If there's anything the pandemic has shown us, says Jodi, is that sometimes people struggle to let go of the things which they think ground them, such as routine and structure.
In her career as a freelance journalist, photographer and yoga teacher, she's always been drawn to the idea of simple living.
She lived in an ashram for a while, listening to the swamis talk about how important it was to honour our intrinsic needs, to let go of distractions, tune in and pay attention, and then act.
As the children came along, as responsibilities changed, she began to wonder if it was impossible to combine the two worlds, the minimalism of the ashram, in every sense, and the "reality of messy family life that was inevitably cluttered with crumbs and laughter and miscellany".
She started to read stories from those who championed simple living: gardeners, frugal homemakers, nomads, monks.
"The crux of their experience was that simplicity is mostly about our focus and intentions ... there aren't any rules or expectations, but if you are willing to listen, ask questions, make mistakes and stay aware, you'll discover a meaningful way forward by ultimately relishing the present moment."
Not for one moment does Jodi suggest the journey was all rainbows and lollipops.
There were fights, there were mechanical troubles, there were days where she felt anxious, days where the sheer overwhelm of four young children threatened to drown her.
"Among the postcard captures of family adventure were all the mishaps, arguments and tantrums you would expect from six people living in a caravan on the road," she says.
"But the highlights carried us along, rejuvenating our desire to explore and experience."
Her children, Che, Poet, Percy and Marigold, thrived on the journey, she says.
At dinner the family would talk about their favourite part of the day and the children were grateful for the smallest things: puddles, iceblocks, making new friends at the park, ginger beer in Bundaberg, marshmallows over a fire in outback South Australia.
"One of the reasons we really wanted to do this trip was just to spend time with the children," she says.
"But also teach them they can have all these amazing experiences that weren't reliant on consumerism.
"They're growing up in a world where they can buy anything and we really wanted to shift that perspective for them."
There's a lot in the book about living with less - packing your life into a caravan will force you to think about what you actually need.
"About the idea of frugal abundance which is all about working less to live simply instead of working to buy things we don't need.
"I was continually fascinated by the fact that we were so content in a tiny home with only the essentials, times six, of course.
"We had packed our necessities: clothes, shoes, wet-weather gear, towels, toiletries, a medicine kit, kitchen basics, a beach umbrella, a few toys, stationery supplies and a rotating collection of books we would swap at street libraries and caravan park libraries.
"It was everything and enough, and perhaps most pertinent of all: we didn't want for anything else."
What she's learned from it all, she says, is that it's not so much where we live, but how we live.
"Every day is an opportunity for choice and change.
"We just have to be brave enough to start the journey."
- Practising Simplicity: Small steps and brave choices for a life less distracted, by Jodi Wilson. Murdoch Books. $32.99.