Time to Roam Magazine Issue 7 - February/March 2014 | Página 21

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upfront feature
According to Liz, the idea for the holiday
came during a short road trip to Brisbane.
‘’By April that year we were gone…I’ve always been a bit
like the little red engine with the philosophy, ‘I think I can,
I know I can and I didn’t let the ‘what ifs’ hold us back.”
While embarking on an extended road trip may
seem a fly-to-the-moon notion for those who
find enough grief in a weekly supermarket trip
with kids, now more than a decade on the family
sees it as a major milestone in their lives.
‘’We needed a project to give us a fresh start
(after a marriage break-up) and I saw it as just
the adventure we needed,’’ says Liz Keenan, who
was lucky enough to have a father who insisted
she learn to change a tyre and understand a car
engine before she got her driver’s licence.
Daughter Maddy was 14 at the time and
sons Owen and Callum were 11 and 7.
The three-month trip took them up the east
Coast of Australia to Rockhampton, then through
Outback Queensland over to the Northern Territory
and down through the Red Centre and eventually
home to Wollongong via South Australia.
They remember the 6,000km journey as being packed
with fun and discovery, from reciting poetry with renowned
bush poet Milton Taylor at a caravan park in Winton
QLD to barramundi fishing on the Alligator River in NT.
At one stage they had the unnerving experience
of driving through the same area where four
days later UK tourist Peter Falconio was
abducted and murdered in a remote location
on the Stuart Highway in Northern Territory.
‘’The outback is a big place and I think this tragedy
proved just how easily things can go wrong…I always
kept that in mind but in a balanced sort of way,’’ Liz says.
The demand generated by older single women
wanting more travel options is growing but back

RV Parts & Accessory Specialist

then Liz says she and the family stuck out like
a beacon among an army of grey nomads.
‘’Yes, we attracted a lot of attention at the caravan
parks but it was good attention and we soon befriended a band of grandparent figures who kept
an eye out for us if we were going their way.
‘’I was quite independent though