It’s approaching a year since Kerry and I moved to Australia, which is plenty of time to consider achievement and what that means.

Because how do we really judge success as a society? If you believe advertising and influencers, success is money, fame, Rolex watches, a big house packed full of possessions and expensive cars parked in the drive way. 

For me achievement has always come in some form of freedom, whether that be the independence that can come with life on the road life or the ability to wade through the propaganda and advertising that batter our brains daily.  Managing hateful algorithms, thinking critically and keeping a level head IS success, in this day and age.

And so is spending time with family and your nearest and dearest.  Sometimes, success is simply driving your dad four days north through the Aussie outback so he can visit the home of Qantas airlines in Longreach.

It wasn’t on my bucket list but it was certainly on his, and while I feel no need to return to the final destination anytime in the future, it really was the journey that mattered.

And what a journey it was… that is if you like days and days nondescript, flat, scrubby scenery that changed very little over our eight days driving.  There was no mobile reception and few signs of civilisation barring the odd town every two hundred kilometres or so.   The last time I had to drive over twenty-four hours to get to a destination, Kerry and I were in Romania, and we took a month or so to get back to England.  And we passed over the Alps and took detours through some of Europe’s most beautiful cities along the way.

I’d asked the guys at work if I was taking on too much with the four and a half thousand kilometre return journey, but everyone told me it’s a great drive and we would love it.

That was bullshit.  The drive was dull as dogshit.  But the journey was filled with plenty of laughs, magical moments, some truly dodgy motels and beautiful little outback towns.

My dad travels like a Hobbit, given that he likes breakfast, second breakfast, followed by elevenses, brunch, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, supper and then a midnight snack.

That meant we were constantly full but we had some memorable meals, whether that’s in outback pubs, regional bowling clubs, family gatherings or tiny little outback cafés.

We had a near miss with a kangaroo and were nearly ran off the road by Road Trains and some seriously wide loads.  We’ve seen a ton of feral goats and a countless Emu’s.

In an old-fashioned milk bar in Broken Hill, I got my highest score on the retro video game Galaga, while my dad struggled to get past level two.

We visited relatives we hadn’t seen in years as we passed through Mildura, a place that holds quite a bit of history for the Wishart family.  

I’m not gonna lie, it was eight days of long driving for Kerry and myself and all the way, from Victoria to Queensland, were memorials to Major Mitchell, an early Australian explorer who must have spent years wandering and surveying the same stretch non-descript stretch of outback that we whizzed through at one hundred and ten kilometres an hour.

All in all, we successfully achieved the dream, made it home in one piece and had a lot of fun along the way.

Kerry has made three of her fabulous Instagram reels of this trip and they can be found here, here and here.