Less than a month after arriving in Tasmania, Australia we had finally found the car for us. Insert “Frank”: Our 1997 Subaru Forester, with 320,000km on it -still young by Australian standards. When we first started looking, we were absolutely shocked at how high the mileage was on the cars we were looking at in our price range, but then we quickly learned that the cars physically last a lot longer in Australia as a result of there not being a harsh winter, where the salt eats up the under belly of the cars like we’re used to in Canada.

Shortly after purchasing Frank, and after not having much luck finding a job, we decided that we would soon be leaving Tasmania (little did we know what would really happen), so we’d better see a bit of it before we go, and so we decided to go on an inaugural road trip down the East coast of Tasmania to the Bay of Fires. Did we have a mattress? No. Did we have any supplies? No. But that wouldn’t stop us for long!

After being on the road for almost 2 weeks, and mentally preparing to soon embark on the ferry from Tasmania to Melbourne, we got a call that there was an opportunity for us in a small town outside of Devonport working at a Salmon processing facility. We had just been travelling for 4 months, so we were pretty keen to stop for a bit and make some spending money. 

After a few weeks working there and living out of our car, we were actually forced to find a place with a roof over our head as a result of the pandemic and the government closing down all of the free campsites we had been staying at. At this point, nobody knew how long this would last, so we figured that we would take the time to give the setup a little upgrade.. Little did we know that we’d end up staying there for almost a year! Our little Subie took us to work every day without fail, and we made sure to make use of our time off by going on every mini road trip possible that was within a few hours’ drive.

As the months went by we kept thinking that we were for sure leaving Tassie by the following month, but *spoiler alert*, a Pandemic happened. Come spring, we decided to spruce Frank up and some friends allowed us to use their garage and tools to finally cut out the frame for the bed near the wheel well so that our faces weren’t 5” from the rooftop while sleeping 😅 (Thank you Angelisa and Tim!) 

Alas, 13 months after arriving in Tasmania, Melbourne was still under lockdown. We however were ready to continue our great Australian adventure. So, we had to regroup . Somehow within the span of a few days, we made the tough decision to leave Frank behind, fly to Brisbane (In the State of Queensland - which was not under lockdown) and find a new car there. Want to know what happened next? Check it out here.