Always One Step Ahead of the Storm: An 8-year-old's Down Under Adventure

With cyclones Wanda and Tracy acting as bookends, the O'Briens swap their comfortable suburban home in Brisbane for a 17.5 foot caravan and the adventures of a lifetime. Travel along with Phoebe, her mum, Stephanie, stepdad, Glen, older sister, Babette, younger siblings, Benny, Becky and Danny, as she takes us along for the ride, travelling across Western New South Wales, into Victoria, through South Australia and across The Nullarbor Plain into Western Australia - and then back home and up the Queensland Coast! Although nearly 45 years have passed since that trip, Phoebe relies on her own memories, flavoured with a little Google research and seasoned with her mother's memories, to describe how it felt to see this vast country of Australia. In her owns words: "When all is said and done, my memory of 1974 is of a fun-filled, educational trip across the bottom half of this great country I still call home, wherever I happen to live." Perhaps her story can inspire you to live your dream, whatever it is, and wherever it will take you.