Apparently We Live Here Now: Van Life in Cairns

It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these, mainly because Will and I have both done something deeply inconvenient and got jobs.

After months of travelling around doing whatever we pleased, we’ve suddenly found ourselves with rosters, alarm clocks and places that expect us to turn up at specific times wearing pants. The upside is we’re finally earning money again while downside is that work takes up an alarming amount of the day.

We’ve been in Cairns for about two months now and, apart from working, our main achievements have been drinking too much and complaining about getting fat.

These two things may be related.

I joined a gym near work in an attempt to reverse some of the damage. I’m genuinely the least fit I’ve been in my life, which is quite depressing considering I used to be able to lift reasonably heavy things and occasionally throw people around a judo mat.

Now I get slightly winded just thinking about stairs.

There’s actually a judo club not far from work, which seemed perfect until I discovered some of my shifts finish at exactly the same time training starts. Apparently my employer is unwilling to restructure the entire roster around my desire to strangle strangers in pyjamas twice a week.

So, gym it is.

My next exciting adventure is a trip to Melbourne to empty our storage shed.

When we left Victoria, putting everything into storage seemed like a sensible temporary solution. That was before the slum lords known as National Storage decided to increase the rent by about 40%, accompanied, naturally, by some carefully worded corporate explanation explaining why this was somehow necessary for everyone except me.

At that price, I assume my boxes have been upgraded to a harbour view.

So now I need to fly to Melbourne, hire a trailer, convince a mate to help me, sort through several years of accumulated crap, take half of it to the tip, donate the television, find somewhere for a couple of boxes and organise transport for the two motorbikes back to Cairns.

Simple.

The bikes themselves will cost a couple of thousand dollars to get here, which is annoying, but considerably less annoying than continuing to pay hundreds of dollars every month so some cardboard boxes can enjoy premium accommodation in Melbourne.

National Storage will, of course, receive a lovely one-star review once my belongings are safely outside their gates.

I’m saving that little pleasure for last.

Other than that, life is actually pretty good.

Cairns has turned out to be an easy place to live. We’ve got work, somewhere comfortable to stay and enough things around us to keep life interesting. For the moment, it feels like home.

Where van life goes from here, I’m not entirely sure.

I’m definitely not ready to settle down properly. There’s still far too much of Australia we haven’t seen, and the list outside Australia keeps getting longer. I want to get to Japan, go back to Vietnam and somehow get myself over to Europe without requiring a small personal loan every time I look at an airfare.

So I don’t think van life is finished.

It’s just having a smoko.

For now, Cairns can be home. We’ll work, save some money, try to drink a little less, hopefully lose some of the tropical padding we’ve acquired, and use our weekends to explore more of Far North Queensland.

Then, when the bank account looks healthier and we start getting itchy feet again, we’ll figure out where the road goes next.

Preferably somewhere with fewer storage units.