How many peacocks can you fit into a 4WD?

Our friends Jo and Steve Peacock took their 4 kids on an adventure around Australia for twelve months. We asked Jo to write something for the excess exchange. Thanks so much Jo! You guys are an inspiration.
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When our family of 6 took off on a year-long trip around Australia, we had an uncomfortably small space in which to cram our ‘stuff’. We each had a little underbed drawer in which to keep our clothes. For the whole year. This included jackets and warm stuff. Our 15-year-old daughter was a little disconcerted at the concept but managed to jam her small box with the clothes she needed. I downsized my kitchen requirements to an assortment of 4 pans, a colander and a grater. We simply could not fit anything else in. We also had a pantry not much bigger than an archive box. I found it alarming. How would I feed my big family? How would we survive?

It took 3 years for this ‘idea’ to become something that we confidently stepped out and actually did. 3 years of saving, planning, preparing and gathering the guts to walk away from life as we know it, if only for a year. We rented out our home, packed all of our ‘stuff’ into boxes and storage bags, and took only what we needed, only what would fit into our little camper trailer and our car.

We expected to see Australia, we expected to spend ALOT of time together, we expected our family to knit together like never before. What we didn’t expect was to discover the freedom that came from a life lived simply. We had so little, by choice, and yet in that bareness, that simplicity, we gained so much. It seemed as though all the ‘stuff’ in our lives had become noise, demanding a piece of our attention, creating mess and clutter, complicating family-life. When we drove away from that stuff with only the bare essentials, life as a family became so much simpler. We suddenly had the precious commodity of time. Time together. We started playing dorky card games, painting pictures together, going for random walks, collecting interesting artefacts from nature. We experienced peace among our children that hadn’t existed before. There really wasn’t anything to fight over.

Interestingly, there were no whines of “I’m bored” from our four kids, rather a hunger to create their own fun. They found rocks in a river bed to grind into different ochre colours to create paint, they found feathers on the ground and identified birds, they sat around with binoculars to watch the whales breaching, they assembled out the front of the tent to watch the sun set, they got up early to watch the sun rise. The created world became their playground and books became their downtime. We found a genuine contentment as the culture of ‘city life’ fell away. There was no pressure to have the right things, or to look a certain way. Contentment was easy.

Arriving back in civilisation hasn’t been what we expected. We have changed. We don’t fit like we used to. The thing that has become increasingly difficult the longer we have been back is to be ok with that. Are we prepared to continue to not quite fit? Our big home feels ridiculous and the boxes and boxes of ‘stuff’ are embarrassing. Were we so caught up in our ‘stuff’ that we didn’t even see the drain that it was on the fabric of our family? It was easy to create a new culture when we didn’t live in another, but can we maintain that now? I have already caught myself saying “what am i going to wear?” standing in front of a huge row of clothes in my wardrobe. My kids have gleefully unpacked their collection of a gazillion toys and have begun the process of arguing over their ‘stuff’. What a rare opportunity we have had to step back and see the possibilities of a life lived more simply, of a life focussed on relationships and discovery, rather than on acquisition and entertainment. I want the wide open spaces of time for meditation and long conversations. Time will tell. In the meantime I’m working on not quite fitting in.