'It’s definitely not glamorous': When #VanLife doesn't quite work out

Most people would welcome a bit more unbridled freedom in their lives, so it’s no wonder #VanLife has become a mainstay of social media.

But even this relaxed lifestyle can go awry at times, as British vanlifers Jamie Paddock and partner Emma Cullum discovered this year on an attempted lap of Australia.

The pair, both 29, saw some of Australia’s finest sights from their Mazda E2000, nicknamed Maximilian, as they ambled from Melbourne up to the Daintree and out to Uluru – they even got engaged in the Blue Mountains, sharing it all on Instagram.

Then one morning north of Alice Springs, they heard a sound nobody wants to hear on an outback road.

“I’m not sure where we were, definitely in the middle of nowhere, when all of a sudden there was a loud pop,” Paddock remembers. Noticing the temperature gauge rising, they sought help from some passers-by, but shortly afterwards came another pop as every warning light on the dash came on.

This time, even help from passing mechanics couldn’t encourage the van to restart.

“After a tow to the roadhouse, and a journey back four hours to Tennant Creek on the back of a recovery truck, we learnt that the van would never start again without a new engine,” Paddock says.

The decision was made to leave the van, carry everything they could, and hitch to Alice Springs to fly to Emma’s cousin’s place in Perth.

While that marked the end of round one of van life, Paddock is keen to finish the lap and also plans to convert a van in England to see his own backyard.

“I loved how simple life was. We didn’t have anywhere to be, and could explore as much as we wanted,” he says.

He notes that living in such a cramped space for six months had its challenges.

“We didn’t have a lot of stuff but, every night, our van was a mess. If you needed to get something out of a cupboard, everything had to be moved; it was a lot like playing Tetris.”

The pair also experienced driving through a bushfire, and woke up terrified one night when someone was apparently trying to rip the van’s door off (thankfully it was just someone at the wrong van after a midnight trip to the loo).

Overnight locations weren’t always social media worthy, either.

“We spent more nights next to a busy highway or outside a petrol station – it’s definitely not glamorous.”

Glamour wasn’t likely to be part of the deal when Zimarra Goldsmith, 25, and tattoo artist husband Trent, 30, started van life with their two-month-old baby along for the ride.

“We were still super fresh to the baby thing and we weren’t in a routine,” says Goldsmith.

“We were still trying to figure out what the hell we were doing, so it was good to just get out there.”

Their VW Transporter had a kitchenette, double bed and little sleeping hammock for their son, and life was sweet.

So sweet that they upgraded to “an old school beast”, a 60 Series Landcruiser and a 73 Viscount caravan, creating a mobile tattoo studio so they could work right around Australia.

They could see it would be a success when a short stopover in Cooktown turned into six weeks of solid bookings, and they recorded plenty of beautiful moments on their Instagram.

“Nine times out of 10 we were camping right on the water. You’d wake up to the waves crashing and step out and be on the beach in the morning. Trent would be making brekkie, I’d be feeding the baby… It was bloody awesome,” she says.

But when they reached the NSW border things got murky. The licence they had to operate the mobile business in QLD didn’t yet have a NSW equivalent and, after four hours on the phone, they realised their dream of working their way around Australia wasn’t possible.

They considered skipping NSW to try their luck in other states but, with family and friends based on the central coast, they’ve decided to pull the plug on the dream for now.

“We were bummed, super bummed. It was a horrible feeling,” she says.

Currently in Long Jetty, where they’ve opened a bricks and mortar store, they still take the mobile studio to festivals, and Goldsmith hopes that sometime in the future they’ll be back on the road.

“It was an adventure every day – I just loved that challenge. It bums me out when I talk about it because I wish we were still doing it.”