Stories of the road…
End of the road for the mobile tribe?
FIRST PUBLISHED: 2019.
DRIVE THE HIGHWAYS and you pass them. Stop at van parks and you encounter them. Grey nomads. The long distance voyagers of the motorways.
These are the retired folk, a mobile tribe traversing the land in motorhomes large and small. Breaking free of a fixed abode, some sell their home and invest the money in a motorhomes or a powerful 4WD with the grunt to pull their caravan. Others are temporary grey nomads who eventually return to their fixed abode home after months or years on the road.
The assumption is that grey nomads are a permanent presence on our highways. But, are they? Or are they a temporary presence destined to fade?
That is the question that bothers author and traveller, Monte Dwyer. He wrote a book about them — The Nomads at Large.
Destined to fade?
I spoke with Monte at the Laurieton markets where I encountered him selling his books.
“Grey nomad numbers have maybe doubled since I published the book in 2013”, he said.
“They are a product of the generation which grew up during the economic boom of the 1960s and 1970s, a time of near-full employment and rising incomes. They had the money to invest in housing, which was then affordable. Changed economic conditions makes these things less-achievable to millenials”, he said.
Monte was getting at how the growth of casual work, freelancing and short term contracting makes incomes less secure for many people. Exacerbating this is the claim that the real value of incomes has not risen for decades. With job security precarious for many, they watch what they spend their incomes on. Investing in a motorhome or a powerful vehicle to pull their caravan is less an option.
Does this mean that people travel less today?
“Younger people travel and camp, however they do it for shorter periods rather than the grand tour such as the around-Australia journey”, Monte explained.
“This alarms the caravan industry because they go for more up-market holidays rather than buy a motorhome or caravan for long-term travel”.
Travellers
How long do people live on the road? That’s what Monte asked as we talked about the mobile life that morning in Laurieton. He answered his own question .
“I’ve encountered only a small number living the life full time”, he said. “Most grey nomads make long term roadtrips but few become fulltimers.”
That clashes with the popular stereotype of the grey nomad living a fully mobile life. On our recent road trip my partner and I met a couple of fulltime travellers. One we encountered when she walked over to talk with us in the van park on the waterfront in Penguin, on Tasmania’s Bass Strait coast. A middle aged woman, she once owned a large house in Victoria, I think she said it was. That’s gone. Now she tows her small 1970s caravan south to Tasmania’s cooler climate in summer and north to the Queensland’s subtropics for the winter. Is she happy? I didn’t ask her directly, however from the way she spoke she seem to be. She has no plans to live any other way.
The other fulltimers we met were staying at a van park in south-east Tasmania, close to the beach about 20 minutes from Hobart. They live out of a camper trailer pulled by a Mitsubishi 4WD. The woman, she is French by birth, explained that they have been in the van park longer than intended as her Australian husband has temporary work close by. They were replenishing their finances and would set off with their three year old when the work ended. They loved their life on the road, the woman said, and were planning a return to mainland Australia to continue it, no end in sight.
An Australian tradition
Long distance motoring and camping in a caravan, or with a large marquis tent, started with the generation immediately before the boomers. I recall when working for the postal service in the late 1960s how, when their four weeks annual leave came around, some who worked there would tow their caravan northwards along the Pacific Highway, following the coast. These were mostly people then in early middle age.
The around-Australia journey became popular in the early 1970s, a time when road conditions made it more of an adventure than it is today. It really took off over the following two decades.
Surfers took to the highways in the late-sixties. They made journeys along the east and south coasts in search of the swells coming out of the Pacific or Southern Ocean. Many still make the journey. The West Coast figured less prominently, gaining prominence in later decades. The hippies of the late-sixties and seventies also travelled long distances, often in search of a place to live in the country. Come the nineties and beyond, the numbers doing the continental full circuit and making other long distance journeys boomed.
Destined to disappear?
Will grey nomadism disappear with the boomer generation?
According to Monte Dwyer, whether long distance journeys in motorhomes and caravans will be possible for younger generations is questionable, thanks to the social and economic impact of a changing economy. What of journeys of shorter duration? That seems to be the emerging pattern, going by what I picked up during our conversation that morning.
If these changes in travel patterns eventuate, if the number grey nomads and long distance, long duration travellers declines, it will affect the caravan and motorhome industry and, possibly, commercial van park businesses. I would expect more of what we see happening with van parks as they install rental cabins to adapt to a changing travel market.
A product of past decades of economic, salary and wages growth and cheap oil, grey nomadism might turn out to be a phenomenon of those fortunate to have been born into those decades when life on the road was a real retirement option.
Journalism…
Fiction…
