Outlier TV Full Interview with Jackie Norman Gareth Scurr My Van My Castle

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Andrew McCombe:

Hi there. I’m Andrew. McCombe, welcome to Outlier. In this week’s episode, I’m in beautiful Taylors Mistake Christchurch,

New Zealand, where I’ll be speaking to Jackie Norman and Gareth Scurr from ‘My Van, My Castle’ and the revered ‘Riches Have Wheels’ Facebook page.

Okay guys, I’m excited. Let’s go and meet them.

Jackie Norman, Garrett Scurr. Welcome to Outlier. (Thank you very much) Guys, Just as a little preface, ‘My Van, My Castle,’ Jackie is the author, and Gareth is one of the main characters. It’s essentially a tale of their first year of so far, three and a half years in this van behind us where they’ve been traveling around New Zealand.

Guys, most Kiwis, Australians, et cetera, mortgage, 2.2 kids, two cars, and a picket fence is the dream. It wasn’t your dream. Was it?

Jackie Norman:

No, it became very, very far from the dream. It was the last thing I wanted in the end as it turned out.

Andrew McCombe:

So what was going on for you before you decided to jump in the van and just pack it all in?

Jackie Norman:

I guess like a lot of people these days we try and be everything to everybody, and that was what I was trying to do. So my first marriage has ended, and I was raising two teenage boys by myself. One of them was going through university, and the other was almost ready to leave school, and I was living in the seaside town of Whangamata in Coromandel, and it’s one of the holiday hotspots. Where a lot of people would perhaps rent to take the pressure off. I didn’t want to do that because I wanted to prove myself that I can do everything. Being a seaside town, I could see so many of my friends all the time that were in rentals that were being given their notice all the time. They were being kicked out to make room for the higher paying holidaymakers, just because of the essence of the town that we were in.

And I saw it going on all around me, and the heartbreak that it caused. And I thought, “well, I don’t want that to happen to me.” I want security for myself and my boys. That was why I was trying to have it all and bring it all together. And I was working up to four jobs to bring that all together. It was pretty hard. And I realized that there’s a difference between living and existing and I literally existed there. I wasn’t living at all.

Andrew McCombe:

Yeah. And so your main occupation is a writer?

Jackie Norman:

Yes. Yeah. I’ve been doing that for 20 years. That was always what paid the mortgage. And then just with the way things are these days with a lot of people going to the internet more than magazines and things like that. The company that I’d been working for nine years, that was the real clincher, they made all the freelancers redundant, and I was one of them. I knew it wasn’t going to last forever, but nine years was a long time for a magazine to be going. I got pretty complacent.

Andrew McCombe:

So during this period before you’ve even thought about this, were you thinking about traveling around or how did it all come about?

Jackie Norman:

No, it was a dream that I had in the future far off, so I sort of thought, “well, I need to be at home for my boys.” even once they’ve left home, I wanted to provide that home for them to come back to. I had this pipe dream that one day when I paid off the mortgage, which I think I’d worked out, I was going to be 75 or something, something like that. It would just be me and the dog at that stage. I hadn’t met Gareth. I thought that it would be nice to have a motor home to poodle around in. But, I thought that was a long way off, and I thought it was something that only retired people did. So it was a very distant tree.

Andrew McCombe:

Yeah. But it became a reality quite quickly, didn’t it?

Jackie Norman:

I mean, we had all sorts of things going on. Gareth became ill after I met him. That was all happening. Everything was sort of going from bad to worse, wasn’t it? I don’t want anybody to think that it, although it happened quickly, it definitely wasn’t on a whim. I tried everything I possibly could to keep things together as long as I could. It was literally at a stage where at one point, I had a job working for someone that I can’t think of the words, sorry. It was someone who supplies flower markets with foliage and things like that. So there were days that I spent sitting for eight hours in the mud, stripping Magnolia leaves from branches.

There were other days where people would give me a call and say, “Hey, can you come and clean my holiday home?”, Or, “my bathroom really, really needs cleaning.” For another $20 to put food on the table. So I was fitting in, like I said, up to four different jobs at any time. I was working in a bar. So I really, really tried everything to hold it together. It was going on for a long time. And so when it actually happened, we just realized we didn’t know where we wanted to be. That was the main thing we knew something had to change, and we had to make a big change. And I knew that I didn’t want to rent because of what I said, of the insecurity of where we were, but we just didn’t know where wanted to be.

Andrew McCombe:

So it’s interesting too. You mentioned. So for the viewers, your writing before what you write about now, was a lot to do with saving, wasn’t it?

Jackie Norman:

It was a lot to do with money-saving, and that was another thing. I’d already learned to live frugally. And I remember when I first got my mortgage, the mortgage broker knew my work and he said, “I know you’re going to be under pressure, but if anybody can do this, it’s you.” And so I did use a lot of my skills to get me through, as long as I did. So I was really proud of that. And sometimes the hardest times are the best times because every little triumph that you have, that you do to help yourself, it’s really good. But it had just gone on too long. I mean, I weighed 45 kilos by the time. And I was just sort of on autopilot, really. It was a bit of a shell of myself, and I knew that it really wasn’t healthy to keep going.

Andrew McCombe:

So obviously with the saving and that’s really helped with the traveling, as well?

Jackie Norman:

Absolutely. When I met Gareth, I was already pretty minimalist. I mean, my house was three bedrooms, but I sold everything that I didn’t need really, just to make money to put food on the table to get the bills paid. So I remember, when I met Gareth and the first time he came round, I was quite embarrassed because I own so little already and I was worried about what he would think. But as it turned out, he didn’t own very much either. And if he did notice, he didn’t say anything. So it worked out quite well. Compared to a lot of people, I did live frugally already, and I was already pretty minimalist.

Andrew McCombe:

So the cover of the book talks about signposts, one part of the signpost is the mortgage, suburbia stress, and the rat race, and the other is tranquility, freedom, road, trip, and adventure. So they’re kind of juxtaposition of the opposites, right?

Jackie Norman:

Polar opposites.

Andrew McCombe:

Before you could have that freedom, that tranquility, that travel, that adventure, something happened at Bunnings one day.

Jackie Norman:

Yes, it did. I mean, going back to the whole money-saving thing. I wasn’t eating very well. Like any mum, I was a good cook. I knew how to make something out of nothing. And so the boys always ate really well, but it got to the stage that there wasn’t always enough for me. And I remember at one stage, I had the Marmite and Camembert sandwiches, because my mom gave me some Camembert that was leftover from Christmas, you know. So I would have that, or one of my meals was like rice with cheese on it, or two-minute noodles. So I wasn’t looking after myself very well. And I realized, “well, Jackie, if you can’t afford proper food, you know, you’re going to have to start growing your own.”

Because that will be the best way that I can feed myself better. But I didn’t have too much in the bank. So I thought, “well, I’ll go to Bunnings.” And maybe I can get some herbs. It’s not a lot, but I can jazz up my two-minute noodles with some parsley or something. And I went along to Bunnings one Sunday, and this blonde hairy guy stopped me and asked if I needed any help with anything. And that was Gareth.

Andrew McCombe:

Tell me about that. Something Instantly struck, you didn’t it? What was it?

Jackie Norman:

It did. It was, it literally was a boom kind of moment. (Gareth: I think it was the Bunnings penny). I was walking out to the garden section. He was walking in and just said, “can help you with anything?” I actually already knew where the parsley was, but I said, “yeah, you can tell me where the parsley is.”

Gareth Scurr:

And I had no idea where it was either. I worked in the timber department, and it was a small-format store. So you could walk around it in about five minutes, and there was nothing to do. So I thought, “Oh, I’ll go for a wander and see if there’s anything I can do.”

Jackie Norman:

You showed me where the parsley was. And I got my parsley, some other herbs and I went home. And he had the loveliest smile I’d ever seen. It was just so warm and genuine. I knew his name because, small town, everybody knows each other. And I got home, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I was wondering if I should add him on Facebook. he seemed really nice, and I thought, “well, you can’t do that.” I mean, he was just doing his job. it’s not like I go and get my radio down in the post office. I don’t add the guy on Facebook. And so I was kind of having a bit of a talk to myself, “behave yourself, you’re being ridiculous. There’s no way he’d be interested in you.”

So I planted my herbs, and I thought, “well, that’s the end of it.” I’m not going to do it. But anyway, the next day, I got a friend request on Facebook, and that was scary.

Andrew McCombe:

So you initiated the connection?

Gareth Scurr:

Yeah. You know, there was someone I really wanted to chase after I thought, “why hold myself back?” You know, I think if there’s something special, go for it.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah. He really did.

Andrew McCombe:

And you really felt the connection both of you at the time.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah, it’s funny. And if he hadn’t added me, that wouldn’t have happened because I would have never got the courage, and once we started talking, we just didn’t stop. And he was very different. I really liked that because we talked, I was working evenings, and I wasn’t looking for a relationship. I was very, very scared of it. He kind of said straight out what he wanted. He was looking for something real, and I was thinking, “Oh God,” I was at a stage where, you know how people say, “you can’t be happy with another person until you’re happy with yourself.” And despite the stress that I was under, I was completely comfortable with myself.

I just figured, “this is my life, waiting for the kids to come home, watching cars on the street or, you know, my kitchen rules and that kind of thing.” So I thought that was funny. I literally thought I was going to be alone for the rest of my life. Just paying off the mortgage. I wasn’t looking for anything, and I was quite scared. But even with the technology, we had quite an old fashioned sort of courtship because we were talking every night for about six hours. Just on Facebook or messenger, we sort of bonded through travel. Gareth had been to Canada, and I wanted to travel, but I figured that that would take years. And so we connected through that, and it was a couple of months before I agreed to a date, cause I was quite shy about it. But once we did have that date, we only ever had one day, didn’t we? And then he kid of just moved in.

Gareth Scurr:

Yeah. Well, we’ve been talking that long, you know, and then the date we had is going to be a, I don’t know, maybe a two, three-hour walk. It took us seven hours. Cause we just started maturing, and we’re just talking for hours and hours, and I don’t think we stopped talking at all.

Andrew McCombe:

What a fantastic story. So obviously, with the connection there, the stress you’re under, did you ever question at any point and go, “I can’t do this anymore?” Or what was the impetus between now taking the step for both of you to buying a van and off you go?

Jackie Norman:

I felt quite bad. I mean, I don’t know why he didn’t run away screaming because everything went wrong. Every job that I got, everything just turned to custard. It wasn’t long after Gareth moved in; he became ill for quite some time. I sold everything that I could and just couldn’t go on anymore. By the time we sold the house, Gareth had actually got another job, and things were starting to pick up, but it was too late, you know, and we’d already made the decision, something had to change. So we were thinking about doing something different. We were sort of looking into tiny houses, maybe getting some land and building. But again, we didn’t know where we wanted to be.

And so one day, it was set to “Life” magazine, magazine in New Zealand and Australia. I actually wrote the Pennywise money code. I was Pennywise. For nine years. It was the last copy of that “life” that was on the table. Gareth though, was at work, and I was really quite despondent, and I was flicking through the magazine, and it was the last issue that I wrote for, and there was an article about a woman who sounded just like me, and she sold up everything. She was sick of the debt, stress, and everything. And she didn’t know anything about, you know, living in a battle or anything, but she bought the scraping bus. 18 months on, she was just loving it. Loving every minute. She had no problems getting work.

She was a little older than me. She was also in New Zealand. And this light bulb just went on. I just thought I could do this. I was still freelancing. I was still working. And I thought, “well, yeah, I can actually do this.” I can just move my laptop in the van, and I can still keep working. And Gareth was quite happy to just keep doing anything really, you know, whatever we needed to do to support ourselves. And as it turned out pretty much, it was only a few days that we were out of the van that I got offered more writing work to make things even better.

Andrew McCombe:

So once you’d started in the van, it started happening.

Jackie Norman:

It did. Doors just started opening. As soon as Gareth came home from work, I showed him the magazine article and said, “we can do this.” We absolutely can. You know, you don’t have to be retired to live this way.

Andrew McCombe:

And so just for the viewers’ sake, back in hindsight, it’s always interesting when you’re going through challenges that at the time, it just feels like hard work and nothing’s working for you. But in hindsight, would you say that it was actually a sign that it’s just not what you’re meant to be doing? There’s another part of you that’s trying to come through and live this freedom life that you’ve been living for three and a half years.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah, I think so. We talked about the dream, and I’d spoken to Gareth, and he was like, “yeah, yeah, I’d be more than happy to do that.” once we realized that we could work and actually support ourselves, that we didn’t have to wait until retirement. We just kind of thought, “This is what we’re meant to be doing.”

Andrew McCombe:

Did it unfold, Gareth, quite quickly from that point, once she showed you that “life” article?

Gareth Scurr:

Yeah. We straight away started sort of planning out. And I’m making that pipe dream even bigger then, and I’m trying to imagine what it could be like living on the road. It’s still a surprise every day, you know?

Andrew McCombe:

Would you say, what’s unfolded was like you were planning, cause we always have a vision, right? When we’re trying to start anything, or was that more just an initiation and then everything just unfolds or has it worked out perfectly to what you’d planned out?

Gareth Scurr:

I’d say that we initiated it more. And then the thing with living on the road is everything changes every day. And so you can roughly plan, but it’s always going to be slightly different. It was good to initially plan, and it started off how we thought, but now it’s got even better, you know? Cause you couldn’t have imagined how good it’ll be.

Andrew McCombe:

Just incredible. Things started happening too. Like obviously you guys with ‘riches have wheels’ with the book coming out, have you noticed traction starting to grow? And the attraction with people are coming to you? Like, obviously, we’re talking. Cause I read the book for Christmas. I got as a secret sender president; I was so inspired. I went, “I’ve got to interview these guys.” So like that’s kind of synergistic in itself, isn’t it? And I was saying the other day, I saw your book on the bookshelf randomly in the middle of nowhere, in a bookstore that was packed with people. And I just grabbed, that’s me, I’m going to grab that book. You know? So, but you can’t forecast that, right? Back in hindsight, that’s how we’ve come to meet; it was a book on a shelf in a bookstore, you know?

Jackie Norman:

Absolutely. I remember joking about it because everything happens so fast. We put the house on the market, and it sold in nine hours. We had a queue of people wanting to come through it. You know, location really helped. From then on, we had five weeks to empty the house. I had a big garden. By that time, I’d been to Bunnings a lot. So I had a big veggie garden. It was looking pretty good. We had five weeks to find a home on wheels, and initially, my plan had always been to have a respectable, decent-sized motor home. But funny enough, some mutual friends that sort of, I hadn’t met them sort of together, but they were both mutual friends that came over from England and were traveling around in a van. and I was quite envious of that, and I’m like, “yeah, I’d really love to do that.” And so rather than the big motor home, there were things that, A) we didn’t really plan to be on the road that long, we just thought, “well, we’ll travel around for a while and try and find a base somewhere that we can eventually build on.”

Andrew McCombe:

Yeah. You were going to find a base for a tiny house.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah, that’s right. And B) Gareth didn’t drive at the time. I was the only driver, and I was driving a mess. I didn’t have a lot of confidence to drive a big motor home or a bus like the lady that I’d read about. So I thought, “well, yeah, I’ll start in a van.” That’s my limitation. That’s what I’m comfortable with. And we’ll go from there. If we can upsize after, that’s fine. But you know, we haven’t.

Gareth Scurr:

We planned to be on the road for three months, not three years.

Andrew McCombe:

Wow. So three months became three and a half years so far. Isn’t that incredible. Tell us about the first day.

Jackie Norman:

The first day Gareth got up pretty lightly.

Because he went to work. He still had to finish his work contract for the first 10 days. So we were on the road. We were staying in a motor camp in Whangamata, and we had Minnie, the dog, with us as well. And she is a Cocker Spaniel, but she wants the small Cocker Spaniel. She was very obese. She had some health problems. And at the time, I thought, “Oh, what am I doing? Taking an old, sick dog on the road.” But there she had to come with us, and we would never ever have left her. The first night that we were out of the house, it was lovely. We were sitting in the sunshine; we were eating pizza, drinking wine. They were out; this is brilliant.

We’re going to be spending every day, every night, like this, just sitting relaxing in the sunshine. It rained for the first 19 days that we were on the road relentlessly. And we were in the van. So Gareth was at work. And during the day, there wasn’t much that Minnie and I could do. On the one hand, It was nice because the rain would be pelting down, but I was still in my hometown, but I couldn’t go home anymore. I was just sort of at a bit of a loss, just driving around aimlessly, wondering what to do, Minnie kept trying to throw us out of the van. Every time we stopped somewhere because she thought she was going home and it wasn’t what I expected. You know?

Andrew McCombe:

So for the first few weeks, you stayed in Whangamata, you finished your contract and then what did you start? Did you hit South, North? What happened?

Gareth Scurr:

Heading North first. I figured I’d stay on. Cause my contract for my job, I had had 10 days left on it, so I figured, “Oh, well, we’ll just stay another 10 days, get that finished.” And then I can wrap things up nicely. But it was quite a hard time for Jackie because she was quite bored a lot of the day and stuff like that and didn’t know what to do with self in the hometown and I’d come home to her.

Jackie Norman:

Complaining, “It’s been a horrible day!” You know, because I couldn’t get out of the van. I couldn’t go through and walk.

Gareth Scurr:

Especially with the rain. And we had the barbecue, so I’d get home, and I’d have to start rigging up tarps in the rain and then sitting underneath the tarp, trying to cook dinner, and it made things quite interesting. We started to head North. As soon as the job was over, it was like, “let’s get out of here, let’s get on the move and start living properly.”

Andrew McCombe:

And from a psychological perspective, that first few days you’ve made this big decision and then it’s all of a sudden not what you thought. The first day is great. And then it rains, and you’re going, “what have I done?”

Jackie Norman:

It was that whole thing of not being able to go home anymore. And I really did feel homeless for a few days. It was kind of a limbo time. Gareth had to keep working, and everything got wet in the van because as soon as you open the door, I’ve got a wet dog. The bedding got wet, everything was just constantly wet. I remember one day, I spent $18 at the laundromat just trying to get bedding and towels wet. And I thought, “Oh, this isn’t really; it’s not what I thought it was.” But there were other times where, I’d pack up at the Harbor, and the rain would be pelting down, and Minnie would be asleep next to me, and I’d be reading, doing crosswords. And that was nice because I’d never been relaxed enough to do that before.

I’d never had the time to do that. That was quite idyllic. And I didn’t have to worry about money anymore. That was brilliant. I mean, I remember the night before the house sold, before everything went through, I got declined for $17 fish and chips. Now I could go and have whatever I wanted, but I was also very aware. I still had that frugal instinct in me. And I remember, my friends asked me what it felt like to be debt-free. It felt amazing, but there were so many people that I knew were still struggling, and I just felt so lucky. So incredibly lucky. So even though I felt in limbo and I was in this tiny van and I didn’t know what the future held, I was debt-free, and I wasn’t like them anymore. You know, I had some control.

Andrew McCombe:

Plus, you had some job offers starting to roll in as well at this point.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah. Yeah. We’d only been on the road a few days, and it turned out that the editor of ‘motor homes, caravans and destinations’ magazine had been following my blog for quite some time. as soon as she heard that we were on the road, she got in touch, “I’m the editor of this magazine, would you like to be a writer for us?” So we thought it was brilliant. And it’s so funny how things have turned out with writing ‘my van, my castle,’ you know, because obviously I’ve been a writer for many years. And when we started making preparations to go on the road, people would say, “Oh, well, you’ll be able to write a book about your travels.” And we were like, “That would never happen.” And so it happens, and yeah, we still have very many more adventures.

Andrew McCombe:

Speaking of adventure, you then head North, for the viewers’ sake, I guess, give them a little bit of an itinerary of say between that first year, especially in the book, you know, I’ve read the book, and there’s so many places that you’ve been. So just give us a little overview of that and then tell us which ones have been some of your favorite so far.

Gareth Scurr:

Well, I suppose, we started heading up towards Cape Reinga, the most Northern point. And so we went through the Bay islands and places like Russell and stuff like that. And we went through quite a few of the touristy areas. And then we found that we didn’t like the touristy area. Then we tried to go more off the beaten track. We had to come back to Whangamata for Christmas, catch up with my mum and stuff.

Andrew McCombe:

Just on that, you’re not from New Zealand. And neither are you?

Gareth Scurr:

No, originally I’m from Wales. I’ve been out here for about 10 years now, and I am great today. Well, you’ve been out here far longer than me.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been out here almost 30 years now. So I’m from England, came a long way out to meet a Welshman.

Andrew McCombe:

So you went off the beaten track, and I know you mentioned in the book, you got a tip, and this is obviously how it works on the road. It’s a community of travelers who give you information, and what did they say? They said to go to this place. And you’re like, “why are we going to that place?” You went there, and it was one of the best places you’ve ever been to, but you don’t share it with anyone because you had an agreement.

Jackie Norman:

Ah, yes. It was wonderful. We still refer to it as the village. And it was a wonderful experience in so many ways. It’s ridiculous. For somebody that wanted to lower her expenses and save a fortune on accommodation. And I wanted desperately to go freedom camping because, you know, freedom, that sounds wonderful. I thought that nobody else was doing what we were doing. I thought it was incredibly different and daring and that we’d be really isolated. And I thought to live the way that we were in a van, you had to be a bit of a down and out, down on your lap kind of thing. So I expected that freedom camps would be full of weirdos, drug addicts, undesirables. And so it took a while for me to get the confidence to go freedom camping. And it was quite expensive. Wasn’t it? The first few weeks.

Andrew McCombe:

So it’s not a hundred percent free freedom camping.

Gareth Scurr:

Well, for the first few weeks, we were staying in commercial camps because Jackie hadn’t plucked up the courage to say that she wants to go to the freedom camp, but all the freedom camps are generally, they are fully free. It’s just, there’s occasionally low-cost campgrounds, which may be like under $10. But we spent a lot of time on commercial campgrounds.

Jackie Norman:

If you do that, It’s expensive. I mean, there aren’t any full-timers that do that or could afford to do that. It’s just not feasible, but I mean, it was great. It was a great way to find our feet into, grow confidence, and get used just camping in general. But, we were actually staying at a commercial campground, and it was the groundsman at this place that said, “this is my fishing spot.” Don’t tell anybody, but you go here, and it’s free. And he was really genuine. We spent quite a lot of time with him. He was a real character. He was lovely. So we thought, “well, if he thinks it’s okay, it should be okay.” And yeah, it was wonderful there. We met some dear friends.

And it was really funny actually, because one thing I didn’t write in the book, like I said, I thought everyone was going to be a weirdo, drug addict or whatever. We’ve got to this place, and it was surrounded by, there were oyster fishermen. And we hadn’t long been there. And Gareth had this ‘iron maiden’ shirt that he was wearing. Cause he was a bit of a metalhead, and instantly there’s this sort of long straggly haired fella comes up to us from the fishing boats, and he’s drunk as anything, staggering around, offers us marijuana. And I thought, “Oh God, freedom camping is everything I thought it was going to be! Oh, get me out of here!” Kind of thing. But anyway, we had a chat, he was obsessed with Gareth’s iron maiden shirt and had a bit of a yarn about that.

And then he went off to sleep it off in his car. That was not the best impression for me. But then there were these other two vehicles that were there, one was a bus, and one was a Bedford house, and they turned out to be full-timers on the road. They were all Kiwis, and they became like family, and they still are. It really was like that. Like a family. And I just love them to bits. We’re still in touch with them. And they taught us so much, you know, and up until then living in commercial campgrounds or staying in commercial campgrounds, you didn’t see too many Kiwis there. it was a great way for us to meet overseas people. And we had some great conversations and met some great friends that way. But yeah, actually meeting the Kiwis that were living full time on the road, that’s a completely different killer.

Andrew McCombe:

So you went, you went up North, you came back to Whangamata for Christmas and then it was time to come South.

Gareth Scurr:

Yeah. We headed down to Taranaki district, which we absolutely love. So many beautiful walks to do down there. And for us, we were near Waitomo caves and stuff. And it’s a very big money scheme at the moment. So you can pay big bucks to go and see the caves, but we wanted to go see something free. And so we found a place called the Natural Bridge, and it’s something out of a fantasy tale. It’s just so amazingly beautiful. And it’s free. It’s just a bit further down the road. Then we started getting off the beaten track, even more, trying to find these little hidden gems, which usually you’d go and talk to the locals, and they’d all have a little tidbit for you, but we had to dive through Taranaki, and then it was off to, I think, Wellington before heading south.

Andrew McCombe:

And then you had some whales to rescue and in Golden Bay there. (Jackie: Yeah. Yeah. That was the plan. That was the plan.)

Gareth Scurr:

Jackie was dead set on trying to get over there for it. But there were just so many vans and cars and people heading that way. And then by the time we were getting close, we had to head back, and the roads were just clogged. We had to go over Takaka hill, and Jackie’s not a fan of heights. So it was quite interesting.

Up North, I like a lot of quite heavy stuff, and there was a death metal band. They have quite a lights of scream during it, and I played over the Hills, and she almost killed me for it. So let’s start playing it safe. We’ll put something; she likes a Bublé or Robbie Williams or something. We got down the Hill, but we still haven’t been back over yet because she’s dead set. I’m not doing it, but I’ll drag her up.

Jackie Norman:

It’s good, though, because you get over so many fears. You hear these things, you know, like about the freedom camping. And once I got over that one night and realized there were so many wonderful real people living out the way we were, that was completely dispelled. And the thing about roads as well. And with me being the only driver. (Andrew: You’re still the only driver?) No, he’s got his license, he’s got his license.

Gareth Scurr:

Oh, best part what? Two years?

Jackie Norman:

Two and a half. So now he’s the main driver, but at the time, it was just me. I did have that kind of pressure on my shoulders, that was my responsibility to get us and our house on wheels from A to B safely. But most of the roads, everyone goes on about how terrible the roads are. They’re not, I am the biggest wuss when it comes to roads. And you know, they’re really not, apart from Takaka Hill. It wasn’t the roads that were bad. They cut these bloomin’ fences, you know, they’ve got these sheer drops, and I’m looking over the edge, thinking, “Oh my God, just like, can you just put some barriers up or something? Don’t make him so high. And so narrow.” But it makes you a better driver. I think.

Gareth Scurr:

Last night it almost gave her a heart attack because it’s quite a high up road up in the Hills above us. And yeah, we had to pass a car along this very narrow road, and I’m glad I was the one driving.

Jackie Norman:

He’s like, “Oh, this is awesome. This is great. Look at the view.”

Andrew McCombe:

So that’s an interesting part because obviously before you went, you had preconceived ideas, you had all these fears. And I know a lot of the viewers who are probably thinking about doing the same thing, they don’t know what they don’t know. Right. So over time. And I think you even mentioned it in the book. Took about six months for you to realize that you’re a traveler, and this is my life now, but you are now comfortable with that. You’re not afraid of things anymore. And tell us about that.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah. We weren’t homeless anymore. This was our home. (Andrew: You were also looking for the tiny home, and then you realized, we’re in it for the last six months or whatever.) Yeah, exactly. We did a lot of traveling around. We went from the top to the bottom of New Zealand. We liked Taranaki a lot; we liked Nelson Lakes a lot, apart from the sand flies. And we loved the Catlins down South as well. That was somewhere that we looked quite seriously at getting a piece of land. But we knew that there was still so much more to see. So we didn’t decide to settle what that state.

Gareth Scurr:

I suppose we fell so much more in love with the traveling aspect because we find some of these beautiful places and always what’s the next one, what’s going to be around this Bay. What’s going to be around that Cove. And we couldn’t quite settle properly in an area. So we realized that our point is to just keep going around and find the next one, trying to up her every time. And yeah, last night was one of the most beautiful campgrounds we’ve been in a while, in three years, you know, and it comes out of the blue. So you just gotta keep moving. So you find that.

Jackie Norman:

and the more people you meet, the more amazing places that they tell you about. That first freedom camping in the villages we call it. Um, Margaret and Larry they’d been living there.

So for 43 years at that stage, you know, they’d raised a family and everything, and they just said, “you never ever stop learning, and there’s always new places to go.” And that was one of the funny things, that people say, “Oh, New Zealand’s such a small country, what the hell are you you’re living on the road for you you’ll be done in two years.” That’s not the case at all.

Andrew McCombe:

Do you choose where to go next?

Gareth Scurr:

Generally, we look to the area and see what sort of attractors are there. Jackie loves her hikes. We have a look around, and she’ll normally find something. And then we’ll point ourselves in that direction and go where it leads us to. It’s slightly planned, but then it’s also left a bit to chance. We will go to the general region. And then as we get closer, we’ll start picking out where we want to be more.

Jackie Norman:

We have a huge wishlist. I mean, when we started, before we hit the road, we had a mystery list as we called it. as soon as people heard that we were traveling, they would say, “Oh, you’ve got to go to this place.” So we had a dozen places to check out that we’ve never heard of before. So that was really appreciated. But now we’ve added so much more to our own wishlist because everywhere we go, we meet other travelers or read about or hear about things and think, “Oh, we’ve got to go there.” the great thing is that you’ve got all the time in the world. So at the moment, this area that we’re in now is beautiful. We’re only here for 10 days, but it doesn’t matter. We still got all these other places that we’ll check out next time we come back.

Andrew McCombe:

Do you have like a spreadsheet that says where you’ve been in that? So you do come back to the mystery list and that like, it’s all structured or?

Jackie Norman:

I am a real list maker. So I don’t forget anywhere, particularly a good hike.

Gareth Scurr:

Generally, there are scrolls of paper somewhere, and we’ve got them all stacked up together, but yeah, we keep meaning to go to an op shop or a charity shop and go get ourselves a big map and a big marker and draw it all out.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah. That’s the thing.

Andrew McCombe:

So planning, obviously beforehand life, you know, people who are living a normal life after plan, they’ve got to get up nine to five, they got to be ready and organized daily. Like that’s gone out the window for you guys, hasn’t it?

Jackie Norman:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it certainly makes it easier if you do plan a little, just at the start, when we were on the road, we didn’t really have a plan, and it made it quite stressful, finding places to stay and that kind of thing. And also, when we first hit the road, we were under the impression that you had to be constantly on the move. We live on the road now, so we have to go somewhere different every day. And that can be quite stressful because you’ve got the whole packing, unpacking, setting up. You don’t take the time to look around and appreciate things so much.

Andrew McCombe:

It’s like the Instagram life, isn’t it? Just to get the photo rather than the real connection to the place.

Jackie Norman:

Exactly. And it wasn’t until we met more Kiwis, and we realized that they were staying in places for two or three weeks at a time. Then we realized, “Oh, we can actually stop.” We felt like we weren’t doing it properly if we stayed still. But life was actually a lot more cruisy.

Andrew McCombe:

And so one of your main first basis, I guess was way down South, wasn’t? Where some magic happened. In twofold, I guess. So Gore was that place, became a real affinity with you guys, and we’ll get to that in a sec. But then when I said the magic happened, something happened at Tunnel beach too, didn’t it?

Jackie Norman:

Yes. Yeah, it did.

Andrew McCombe:

So tell us about Tunnel beach, Gareth.

Gareth Scurr:

Well, to be honest, I hate the walk down the Hill, but Jackie really wanted to go check out that walk. So we’d say, “we’ll take the trip out there.” And I had something special in plan, and the beach was formed by a man. He wants to make a private beach for his wife. So he dug a tunnel all the way through these cliffs and made this private little Bay. And now it’s open to the public. I thought that’s quite a romantic story, there’s a man digging this big old hole, so we thought, “it might be a nice romantic spot.” We went down there, and unfortunately, there’s a busload of children down there. They’re all running around squabbling and yelling. And I had a ring in my pocket to give to Jackie. At the time, I was thinking, “I’m going to strangle you little bastards.” we went up there, and I proposed to Jackie. Cause when we live in such a tiny space, I know she’s going to be the one for me because we haven’t killed each other. You know, if you can live this closely, 24/seven, you gotta be with the right person. And I truly have found the right person for me.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah, it’s not too bad. You know, I always swore I’d never get married again. And he said at the start that he didn’t believe in marriage. So..

Andrew McCombe:

And you’re older than Jackie too, aren’t you? He’s a sugar baby, is he?

Jackie Norman:

Yeah, exactly. And you know, that was another reason why, at the start, I was pushing him away. I was scared of relationships, full stop. But the fact that I was a couple of years older. I was worried about it, you know? But he’s an old soul. I think you just click and it’s that old cliche age is just the number.

Andrew McCombe:

Which is quite special, right? Cause most people are gonna think, well, how the hell do you, three and a half years in a small space, get on. So, well, at some point, you got to get to a destination and want to go your own way, or is that not the case?

Gareth Scurr:

When you live in such a small space, if you have a disagreement, you can’t hold onto that and let it faster. So we’re always quite open and honest about everything that we do and when we’re talking to each other. We spend so much time together that we know each other very well. We’re just very in tune. we don’t hide from each other, (Andrew: so the van is actually a really good counselor?)

Jackie Norman:

Yeah. I mean, it sounds soppy or daft to say, but most of the couples that we meet on the road, they are like us, you know, they are more openly happy. I think they’re just really content. They’re really affectionate. They just love being together. I guess it’s because if you’re going to live this life, you’ve got to have a strong relationship in the first place. And so by the time Gareth and I decided to hit the road, we’d already been through a lot. We’ve been through illness, we’ve been through a lot of stress and that kind of thing. And we’d come through all of that. You’ve got to have that strong relationship in the first place, but you know, living the way you do, it just strengthens everything. You just grow, and by the time Gareth proposed, we’d grown so much together that it just felt right.

Gareth Scurr:

Well, I’ve grown to the point where I actually wanted to marry. whereas before I was like, “no, that’s never going to be on the cards.” But I wanted to take her off the market.

Jackie Norman:

And I knew I wanted to marry him years ago, but I thought it would never happen because he was always so staunchly against it. So that was a bit of a surprise. It was good, and when we got married, that was very different as well. We were true to ourselves, I suppose. Weren’t we?

Gareth Scurr:

Yeah. We just got married in the campground in Gore, and we had just travelers around. We didn’t have any family or anyone down because we sort of figured for them to get all the way down to us, it’s going to be a huge expense, and we’re not planning anything big.

Andrew McCombe:

That was really good part of the book there. You went through the planning of getting everyone together, and the dress was $3,000 dress, and there was an epiphany, right? You just went, “this doesn’t fit with us.”

Jackie Norman:

No, we would much rather save all that money for traveling and for living. Don’t regret it at all. We don’t regret, you know, getting married the way we did. It was wonderful. I mean, some of the guests at our wedding, we’d only known them for a few days, but that’s how we were back then. You get talking to someone, you click with someone, it’s like, “Hey, we’re getting married in a couple of days, you ought to come.” and they made it really special. It was neat.

Gareth Scurr:

The only regret I had was we got all this music radio and the playlist to play at the wedding. But we ended up catering our own thing as well and doing everything. So then I didn’t end up pressing play on it. So we didn’t have music. That was the only thing.

Andrew McCombe:

And so you decided to stay on in Gore for a while?

Gareth Scurr:

Yeah. We took over as assistant caretakers there, the showground where we were staying, cleaning, and looking after some of the campers doing things like that. It was mainly cause of our dog, Minnie, was sick at that time. So we were going back and forth to the vet. So we had to stay a long time and then kind of got a bit settled there.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah. It was a brilliant summer, though. It was a very social summer, and it was brilliant for us looking after the campus as well. Because we made so many amazing friends, learned so much about freedom, camping, a lot about what’s good about it, what’s bad. We just learned so much about nomadic life, and we live thinking that you have all these goals that you’re supposed to achieve. We realized that there are so many people out there that were like us, and it’s actually fine to live life differently. There are no rules to say that you have to live a certain way. So it was a great time. Just, I felt like really blooming, I suppose, just growing in confidence.

Andrew McCombe:

You mentioned it so many times in the book, how lucky you felt, how appreciative you were that this is my life.

Jackie Norman:

Yep. Very much so. It was nice, you know, the campground and Gore. It was like a community, you know? It just had such a warm and welcoming feel, and particularly in Gore, it’s a lot of people, a lot of Kiwis. It’s one of those places that people often drive through; they’re on their way to Dunedin or Queenstown or the Catlins. And as Garreth said, if he hadn’t gotten sick, we wouldn’t have stopped there in the first place. We would have just been there for a couple of nights like most people. But there’s so much more there; it’s this beautiful, warm community. Southland has some wonderful people, very down to earth. It’s awesome. And so we just felt really comfortable there.

Andrew McCombe:

Have you got a special shout out for someone in Gore that maybe you guys are ribbing each other, especially you, Gareth? Anything you want to say?

Gareth Scurr:

Bevin is just absolutely top-notch. If he hasn’t given me a bit of jet that day, you haven’t seen him really. He’s just so good to us and um just very glad to have him in our life.

Andrew McCombe:

And so you guys, so obviously the book’s all about the first year. Gore was kind of where the book ended, but it’s been two and a half years since the book, so Minnie, where’s she now?

Jackie Norman:

Minnie mouse. We lost her about 12 months ago. As I said earlier, when we first hit the road, I thought, what am I doing? Bringing this old sick dog with us. And, but she was another one that blossomed during her time on the road. She got to see and do so much, made so many friends wherever she went, and went to quite a few places that she probably shouldn’t have gone to as well. She had a wonderful life. She had spent her life from a young age with autoimmune problems. Her main problem, in the end, was thyroid. She was hyperthyroid, and that was how he came to be in Gore. And we managed to stabilize her, for a lot of the time, but last Christmas she got really ill, went downhill very fast.

Jackie Norman:

We had to say goodbye to her, and that was very sad. It was really sad. It’s always hard being without your animals, in any situation. They’re family, but in the case of Minnie, I think it was much harder than any other pet that I’ve ever lost because she was with us 24/seven. It was a huge gap, a huge loss. The last two and a half years of her life traveling were definitely the best. And we learned as well how little we did with her when she was in the house. Pets spend so much of their day waiting for you to come home. And she was with us all the time. It was wonderful. It’s a wonderful life for pets on the road.

Andrew McCombe:

So another interesting story in the book was one time you pulled into the caravan park. I don’t remember where it was, but there’s a bit of a thing between the freedom campus or the van campus and the motor home campus and as a sustainability certificate or something you’ve got to have, and the guy who was hassling you, tell us about that one.

Gareth Scurr:

The New Zealand motor home caravan association and we’re members, but we are in the small van, and most of the members are in a lot of the bigger sort of flasher motor homes. And we’d got there, and we hadn’t got our new stickers for the van yet. We had all our cards and all the official details, and we’d signed into this logbook, but every day we arrived there, we sat in there for five days, we’d get this crowd of people come over and hassle us just to make sure that we’re official members. And we’re like, “okay, yeah, fair enough.

We do look like the overseas tourists, but we’re not.” we had all sorted out, but on the last day, the fifth day, a chap came in, and he’d just driven in by half an hour earlier. And we’d been there, you know, for the last four days. And he decided to come round and start knocking on the windows, and we’d been sort of rough net for the last few days. So we’re in the birdbath of that 10-liter bucket, you know, in the front there. And at his time of descent on us, we’ve got blinds and stuff like that. So it’s not like you can see right through. We’re a little bit sheltered.

Jackie Norman:

He was actually liked this, in the window, “I want to see your card. Where’s your card?” Oh, it was horrible. (Andrew: Incredible. So it’s like a level of snobbery through the ranks.)

Gareth Scurr:

Most of the time, it’s wonderful, but this guy was just a different kettle of fish, and I’m quite ashamed of myself. I didn’t have that Braveheart moment. I should have just lamped him, but probably better that I didn’t.

Andrew McCombe:

but you went out and found him though, didn’t you?

Jackie Norman:

I did. Once I sort of composed myself and got dressed. Because I thought, that’s not on; it’s really not on. I went up to his caravan, and I knocked on the door and I actually, by that time I got used to being quick, because we’ve been hassled so much. And so I got used to carrying around an issue of motor homes, caravans and destinations magazine and showing people the article. This is me; I have just as much right to be here as you. I went on, knocked on the door. He didn’t want to open the door. He just opened this tiny crack; I said, hello, sorry we couldn’t come out before.” And I said, “this is me. You know, I’m a writer. I’m a member of the NZMTA. And I’ve got just as much right to be here like you!” He didn’t say anything, not a word. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t say hello. He was literally silent. But he just sort of nodded and shut the door again. And we were going to report him.

Gareth Scurr:

But worst yet, he didn’t sign into the official book.

Jackie Norman:

everyone’s supposed to sign in, but he didn’t. So are you going to get a few like that. But now we know differently, we would have just sort of fronted up and said, “Hey, are you the custodian of this place? If no, Bugger off then!” (Andrew: so he was just another random camper.)

Gareth Scurr:

He’s only pulled in like half an hour earlier. And he just took it upon himself to come and try and hassle us.

Andrew McCombe:

So obviously there were some strange characters on the road, be some great characters, funny characters. What are some of your highlights? Other than Bevin, Of course.

Gareth Scurr:

There was hillbilly Harry.

Jackie Norman:

His real name was Jeff. We’re still in touch with him as well.

Gareth Scurr:

Yeah. He’s a really interesting character. He had a dog as well. He invited us for a cup of tea and saying, “I’ve got all these insect screens, so you can sit here and actually have a cup in peace or watch all the tourists run away screaming.” he was a lovely one.

Jackie Norman:

There was Corey. Corey was the groundsman who told us about the secret camping spot. He was lovely. So when it was my birthday, he came out, and he used to play jazz and music sort of early in the mornings, and we’d hear it from the van. I mentioned to him that I liked hearing his music in the morning. When it was my birthday, he came out, brought his stereo out where we were sitting and his entire CD collection, and said, “here you go, you can listen to it for your birthday.” And he ended up staying out with us quite late. And we got quite tipsy.

Gareth Scurr:

We cooked dinner at about 10 o’clock at night. And it was one of those big nights.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, but yeah, so many, so many,

Gareth Scurr:

There’s Hanna from Germany that we met. (Jackie: Ollie and Jenny) Yes, they are the ones that we bought the van from. We still keep in touch with them, and they send us a little; there’s like Kodak disposable sort of cameras. And they sort of had one, and they’ve sent us one. So then we’ll send it back to them, and then they’ll see all the photos that we’ve taken off that. And we invited them to the wedding, and we don’t even know them what, five minutes.

Jackie Norman:

We just meet so many people. I think, in this lifestyle, because you meet so many like-minded people, they really become special to you, and you get to know everyone so quickly on a deeper level too. So you really make more of an effort to keep in touch.

Andrew McCombe:

So the power of community, obviously, freedom campus and campus and travelers, et cetera, have Facebook pages and groups and everything they’re part of. Your Facebook pages are a great resource, but did you follow, like, were you on that as well, looking for recommendations, and how did it work for you guys as far as, not just a physical community, but the online community?

Jackie Norman:

Yeah. The online community was great. I mean, there are several groups, there are groups for all sorts. The big one is called ‘Motor-home friends’. That’s got thousands of members. And there’s another one ‘living on the road in New Zealand’ as well. They’re two of the bigger groups on Facebook, and you don’t have to already be living on the road to join them. It’s a great way to join when you’re thinking about it, and you want to learn more. Everybody’s so helpful. You can ask any questions. It doesn’t matter how silly; people will give you an answer and put your mind at rest. It’s a great place to share tips on where to get different equipment, gadgets at work, help one another mechanically, share really good places. So they’re great resources. And another one for women traveling solo, I think there’s even a dating group for motor-homers traveling. Some people organize their own rallies. They might be bus owners, and they’ll go and get together and then that kind of thing. It’s a real community.

Andrew McCombe:

And do you find that out on the road? You’ll say we’re here at Taylors Mistaken Christchurch, but say three months from now, you’ll meet up with people who’ve been here, and you’ve met up there or just randomly.

Jackie Norman:

We met a couple two years ago. And we were; literally, we were coming down here yesterday, and we were going through Kaikoura, and they were still repairing the road. And so we were at the stop sign, and there was another camper coming through the other way. And we looked, and we’re like, “that’s Pete and Jared!” I was waving madly. And then we sort of got on Facebook. And we get sort of like probably about 50% Kiwi motor homers like us, they’ve sold everything, and they’re roaming all the time. And the other 50% have still got their home bases. And so it’s wonderful, you all keep in touch, and it means wherever you go pretty much in the country, there’s someone that says, yeah, “come and park in the driveway, come and use our shower, you know?”

Andrew McCombe:

So you really, you’re on your own, but you’re not alone.

Jackie Norman:

No, there’s a huge support network. Like I said, when we first started, we thought we were being so daring and so different. We’d be completely isolated from everybody. And that’s not the case at all, you know? So I think the NZMCA alone has got over 80,000 members. So they’re not all full-timers, but a lot of them are.

Andrew McCombe:

Which is interesting. Cause being an outlier is about being different from the norm. Right. But what you’ve found is you’ve found a lot of other outliers out there with you, you aren’t alone. You’re not separate from the whole life.

Jackie Norman:

No, exactly. And it just reaffirms that we’re not all supposed to live life according to the same goals and the same pace at the same time.

Andrew McCombe:

So just on that Gareth, what’s your definition of happiness?

Gareth Scurr:

I guess, freedom, being able to live, I want to live. Happiness comes from the littlest things, seeing something nice, a nice view, even just having a nice little walk. Happiness can be everywhere, and having freedom means that then you can explore it whenever it comes about.

Andrew McCombe:

Do you find you’re happier now than what you were three and a half years ago?

Gareth Scurr:

A lot, a lot happier. I used to have a lot of hobbies. I used to like video games and stuff like that, and although I enjoyed them at the time, it wasn’t fulfilling in any way. And now the happiness that we find on the road is not just mindless joy, it’s fulfilling, and it’s taken us. It’s taken us places literally.

Andrew McCombe:

Do you find you’re a different person or just a more evolved version of the older person of who you used to be?

Gareth Scurr:

I think it’s an evolution. You always build upon yourself. And I would say I’ve changed a lot from who I was before. But I think it’s all the good elements at whichever I’ve evolved and become what I needed to become.

Andrew McCombe:

And so I guess for the viewers’ sake, how are you guys making money on the road now? You still writing?

Jackie Norman:

Yeah. Still writing, being a freelancer, I can write for whoever I like really. So there’s always plenty of work. If anything, we’ve turned down work, we get too many offers. I’ve been offered businesses to run and things like that, which is fantastic. And five years ago, I would have jumped at them, but now, you know, you can physically do so much, and we do work hard. But it’s work that we love. Gareth Is doing more photography, more filmmaking.

Andrew McCombe:

Which you didn’t do beforehand.

Gareth Scurr:

No. When we hit the road, since working in Bunnings. I’m happy to do any labor job and just do anything that comes up. I’ve got a range of skills, so I’ll just use them in whatever. But with Jackie’s writing for the magazine, they asked for photos, and I started taking them on my phone of all things. And if you have a decent phone camera, what’s stopping you from being good photos. It’s all dependent on the light. So I started doing that and then photography sort of took off from there. The last two years, three years, it’s become my full-time job now as a photographer. There are all sorts of things now, like working for a charity based in the States, doing videos on animal sanctuaries, also with travel.

Jackie Norman:

that’s awesome work to be doing as well.

Gareth Scurr:

And so these things are just, I never would have thought of doing that in a million years, but living on the road, that door opened, and we decided to go through it.

Andrew McCombe:

So it’s really important for the viewers. And for me. For you to share that, it’s you don’t know what you don’t know until you go there, what’s unfolded for both of you has just been profound, not just personally, but professionally, the just incredible opportunities. They come to you, don’t they?

Jackie Norman:

They really do. And you’ve got the time to focus on yourself to discover your strengths, what you like, what you don’t like. There are so many work opportunities on the road for us; there are a lot of freelancers like us or self-employed people, like graphic designers or computer programmers. There’s a lot of those, but others just sort of work on their strengths, don’t they?

Andrew McCombe:

So working, came to you locally, as well as virtually, on a global scale.

Jackie Norman:

There’s even a website. It’s called ‘seasonal staff’ here in New Zealand. It’s set up by a couple that lives on the road permanently as well. And they saw a need because that’s one of the people’s greatest fears. How am I going to support myself? Where am I going to get work from? And so they’ve got their finger on the button all the time they will post up. It’s a brilliant resource. It helps so many people. And unlike a job when you’re stationary, and you have to go to work, and you don’t, you know, that job is for however long you can go and do work for say six weeks or something. Maybe it’s something as simple as fruit picking if you don’t like it, it doesn’t matter.

Cause you know, it’s only for six weeks; it’s not forever. At the other end of the coin, you may really like it and decide that you want to go through fruit picking all over the country. Then you’ve got the people that are sort of in their vehicles. A friend of ours, he is a professional knife sharpener. And so he goes around the country, he’s got a bus, and he’s got a sign up in his window. It just says, ‘knife sharpening.’ and he’ll sit outside doing it, outside his bus. People are instantly drawn to him at campgrounds. And then there’s this cue. So that covers his campground fees or whatever. Or there are people that are hairdressers, that’ll put a sign in the window. So it really gives you a chance to work on what you’re good at, what you like.

Andrew McCombe:

And so someone who might be stressing about that before making the big jumping and taking off, what advice would you have for them, like based on your, what you’ve observed in relation to it or how am I going to make money?

Jackie Norman:

I think maybe back yourself.

Gareth Scurr:

To me, all I can think is, just get out there and do it because if you put that intention out there in your head, you’re soon going to start attracting those things to you.

Jackie Norman:

Talk to people. Word of mouth is everything. Just as you go, see what’s out there, ask around, talk to other campers as well. I mean the first freedom camp that we went to, Colin and Mara, the other villagers, they gave us a spreadsheet because they’d been living on the road five years at that stage. They gave us this spreadsheet of all the places that they’ve worked at, their context, how long they’ve been there for, you know, whether they were good to work for or not. We’ve never actually needed them, but we’ve given it to several people that have been looking for work. There’s just so much help out there, as travelers, you hear things all the time.

Andrew McCombe:

So getting part of the community and then just ask lots of questions and everyone’s willing to share as best as they can.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah, definitely. And don’t be scared about doing it because I mean, we’re already kind of really friendly people, but you just become more outgoing. I’m a lot more open. We find that when we’re out and about actually, we say hello to everybody because that’s how the traveling community is. When we go somewhere else, like a city or something, you go and say hello to someone, and they just about jump out of their skin because they’re not used to that.

Andrew McCombe:

Yeah. I know you mentioned that in the book after that six month period, you realize you’d become more extroverted, more friendly, more outgoing.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah.

Andrew McCombe:

Would you say that society is conditioning that, with that whole nine to five mortgage life, just to focus on survival, whereas you guys are in thrival mode.

Jackie Norman:

Yeah. Yeah. I think so. You know, I’m busy being, just really go around just every day. You’re just wandering around. I’m just always happy and grateful and appreciating this, the day, the sunshine, where we are, everything. We’re not hell-bent on thinking of what we’ve got to do all the time.

Gareth Scurr:

I think the nine-till-five track, the whole consumerism as well, because then when you get home, you think, “well, I’ve got to have my dang time now, so I’m going to go and do this. I’m going to do that.” And you have to try and force your hobbies and all your passions into this extra time that you have. Whereas for us, we do work some long hours some days, but we try to make sure we’re working on our passions and our hobbies.

Jackie Norman:

I think one thing we should say as well, it’s with working, I mean probably about 50% of people that we know that live on the road work in some capacity, the other 50% would be retired, but you know, a lot of us do work. And people sort of think, “Oh, people on the road, you know, you’re trying to get out of things, you’re trying to get out of bills, paying taxes, and what about the rest of us?” I have to pay rates and all this. It’s like, A) you could do that If you want to, it’s a choice. B) we pay 25% tax being freelancers. So we pay tax more than a lot of people in houses do. And we still have bills; you can’t get out of everything. We still need insurance. We need the internet and phone and things like that.

Andrew McCombe:

So Jackie, the book is about, ‘My van, my castle’ is about the first year on the road of the three and a half so far. Obviously, so many more things have happened since the book. And is there a sequel coming up?

Jackie Norman:

I think it is in the pipeline. We’ve been told to prepare for a sequel, and we’ve certainly got many, many more adventures, so yeah.

Andrew McCombe:

Because obviously a lot’s happened. Two and a half years, they’re not even mentioned in the book.

Jackie Norman:

No, that’s right. And the first year is all about discovery, excitement, change. And the second year has been a real roller coaster. (Gareth: that’s when the wheels fell off a little bit.) Big time, big time. And then the third year we’ve come out of that again. So it’s great. It’s a real tale of overcoming some real trials and adversity.

Andrew McCombe:

So what does the future look like? Gareth, what’s the next step for you guys?

Gareth Scurr:

Keep traveling ahead. So we keep moving until, you know, maybe that patch of land will pop up in the right place for us and we might stop for five minutes, but we’re just going to keep on moving and moving on. Hopefully, more books. Just keep, keep discovering our own story, and then telling it.

Andrew McCombe:

It’s become an identity for you guys. Isn’t it? The Traveling Wilburys.

Jackie Norman:

One day we would like to settle down. Maybe one day, having children, you know, what happens when the grandkids come along and things like that. I was still on the move, and I’ve met so many grandparents that said, “well, it’s wonderful.” even the people that we saw yesterday, that we were waving madly to at the traffic signs, you know, they had their grandkids with them. They’d just taken them around on adventures for two weeks.

Andrew McCombe:

Well, there it is. I hope you’ve enjoyed this inspiring Outlier episode with Jackie Norman and Gareth Scurr

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