We finally came to the last night of our trip. A night that had been long anticipated, planned for and at times of homesickness, sometimes wished nearer. Once imminent however, it seemed too soon, too precipitous. We felt like clawing back one or two more days, prolonging the adventure for just a little longer. There was an awareness of real life back home and its ability to suck you under like a riptide into the vortex of school, work, and responsibilities, leaving this life of nomadic experience as a half remembered dream. The allure and beauty of such a lifestyle is that it will always be fleeting and temporary, and that is, i suppose, what makes it so special.

Our last week of travel has taken us from the Eyre Peninsula, across the top of the Spencer Gulf and up to Broken Hill. Here, we spent a magical evening at the infamous Silverton Hotel watching the desert soften and fade to rose as the sun dipped beyond the horizon. The hotel has featured in many film sets- most notably Mad Max- and a fitting scene was set for us by Bob, a local resident, who rode up on his horse at dusk and hitched him at the front of the pub, while he shared some yarns and ales with us tourists. From Broken Hill, we tracked south to the Riverlands, free camping along the Mighty Murray and then the Murrambidgee. The road names started to sound like a Banjo Patterson poem. As we sat around the campfire by the Murrambidgee, under a silvery full moon, the air felt alive with the memories of drovers and their herds that had been using this route for years, tracking from the pasturelands in the Riverina to market in Victoria. Who would not envy us this pure moment in time under the sweeping stars?

On the road to Hay the next day, we came across a herd of Black Angus being driven up the long paddock ( the name given to the lush roadside verges) by cowboys on horseback and their kelpies. I had not looked to experience this and felt very lucky to have witnessed such an iconic scene as our journey drew to a close. In Cootamundra, we paused awhile with friends that the boys and I had made in Kalbarri, Gav, Kerrie, Ryan and Brianna Hefrin. We reminisced about our respective trips and enjoyed the last days in good company. Cootamundra had a wonderful springboard in their public pool which was a notable feature of several other small outback NSW towns that we passed through. It provided a delightful couple of hours of unfettered family fun, featuring swan dives, backflips and somersaults. I will remember Coota with fondness because of our friends and this diving board.

The last few hours of our journey home took us through the familiar territory of the Hume highway, over the Great Dividing Range at Braidwood and a steep, ear popping descent to the East coast at Batemans Bay. We decided to spend our last night at Racecourse beach in Bawley Point which provided a nice symmetry with our first night away on this trip- another South Coast campsite in Autumn almost exactly 2 years to the day. We were blessed with offshore winds and small, clean surf the next day, leading to Ned catching his first unbroken wave. A nice note on which to end his adventure.

It's 4 weeks since that notable day. The kids are back at school, the caravan is unpacked and cleansed of 12 months accumulated travel grime and we have moved back in to our house. We move around the seemingly massive spaces of our old/new home reacquainting ourselves with running hot water, showers that don't require a 200m fresh air excursion coupled with the ability to juggle soap, towels and shampoo bottles, and beds that allow starfish postures from both of us. The garden is a jungle and we have an instantly massive "to-do" list related to the house but it's so good to be home.

I have never regretted our decision to take two years out. We were fortunate- we rented our house and were blessed with good tenants; we both had fairly mobile professions in which we found work when it was required and we had few issues with our car or caravan. I was worried that by returning to the same place we left two years ago, I would somehow feel that we had never gone, that the last two years of our lives just never happened. It's not like that though. Yes, many things in our community are the same- the friendliness, the beautiful scenery, the pub, but we are different. I know that I have been altered by my experiences and hidden deep inside each of us, is an unassailable knowledge that it can be done. We can live a different life to the commonplace, we are free to move and live wherever and however we choose, and there is a wide brown land out there, waiting to welcome us back, someday.