Brad and Rochelle met at Franklins (yes, a 'No Frills' romance) at Westfield Shopping Centre, Hornsby, NSW. After Brad spent everyday buying a packet of chewing gum (he hates the stuff)just to go through my register and chat me up, and one first date, it was the end of life as we knew it and hello to a lifetime partnership.
As we planned our wedding we deceided to get away from Sydney and travel and work our way around Australia. For wedding gifts we got Jerry Cans (thanks Wendy) and camping gear (thanks John & Barb). We sold Brad's broken-down-bucket-of-bolts, beige Ford Laser and bought a sleek, sexy, silver Mitsibishi Pagero. Now that's a promotion...until one day after we get back from our honeymoon and the car simply dies in the middle of the road. When we say we are novices we mean it- we'd run it out of water and seized the engine. We had no money to fix the car (spent it on a fantastic wedding & honeymoon), no home (given a weeks notice at our flat), no income (both quit our jobs to travel), no transport, (put the 4WD on a car transporter and sent it to Rochelle's dad in Briz. who is a real McGyver. He can manufacture anything out of nothing. He is currently in the process of totally building his own home. He used to live in a garden shed only big enough for a double bed, we had to stoop to go in. When we stayed with Dad he gave us his bed and he slept in his car). We scrounged a bedroom with Brad's sister, her hubby and two energetic toddlers, on the Sunshine Coast, QLD.
We couldn't get a job for quite a while, thus couldn't fix our car, thus couldn't get a job due to no transport, thus had no money to fix our car... Finally we scraped together the money for Dad to fix our car (thanks so much Dad), moved out into our own place (a mouse infested Caravan Park) and got domesticated. We started looking at blocks of land and display homes, and the nesting bug bit hard. Within 4 years we had jobs, a mortgage, were studying, had vegie gardens, two cats and two kids!!! The travel dream rested on its laurels and gathered dust.
We were blissful when our 3rd child arrived, we were living and studying in Cooranbong, NSW, and life was full...of busyness. Finally a job offer in Sydney and after 4 years on the treadmill of the forty hour work week sucking at our souls like a famished leech, we began dusting off our travel dream.