Daph and Ern’s Adventures Finding Yourself on the Road: A Beginner’s Journey of Self-Discovery… and Other Funny Stories.

By Zoe Farrell and Chloe Jane Warwick

Travelling Australia in a vintage Volkswagen Kombi van with a cranky old couple changes your life (and could change the world) for the better. This is a hybrid book of standalone funny stories of life on the road in a campervan, interlaced with a journey of self-reflection and discovery. The journey leads to eight simple steps of self-change that can have dramatic positive effects on your life: and the world! It concludes with an experiment to prove that individual happiness can have collective consequences. This book aims to entice the unsuspecting spiritual rookie, under the guise of a light-hearted read, shrewdly planting the seed for personal growth along the way. Read, laugh, learn, and grow. Let’s change the world for the better, one person at a time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Dec 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781982296179

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Copyright © 2022 Zoe Farrell.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-9616-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-9617-9 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date:  11/29/2022

For Azz, without whom I would never have started this journey.

And Ern, who has made my heart so big I can heal the world.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1 Courage

Chapter 2 Challenge

Chapter 3 Discovery

Chapter 4 Gratitude

Chapter 5 Growth

Chapter 6 Awakening

Chapter 7 Realisation

Chapter 8 Enlightenment

Epilogue

Experiment

With Heartfelt THANKS...

Influences and Recommended Reading / Viewing

INTRODUCTION

Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.

- Erol Ozan.

Have you ever thought I need to get away? Have you had those days, those moments, when everything seems mundane and pointless?

I have.

Do you immerse yourself in social media and reality TV to escape the drudgery, but in the process, get caught up in the envy of not having the life everyone else seems to be living? Do you hate your job, a job you once loved? Is your life boring, but you avoid going out and doing something interesting because you can’t be bothered? The housework is never ending; the kids don’t pull their weight…

That was me.

I was at the pinnacle of my prime (according to the rules of society). I was happily married to the man of my dreams, I lived in a lovely house, and I had a great career. My children were all grown up and doing well for themselves. Everything was peachy. Why then did I have an overwhelming feeling that something was missing?

Is this all there is? What more is there to achieve? Do I now spend the next half of my life just plodding along with the rat race until I die? What’s the point?

What is the point?

My husband and I would wake up in the mornings and immediately delve into deep and meaningful conversations about what’s wrong with the world today, how the good old days were much simpler, how the youth of today are lost, etc. You know the kind of conversation. We’ve all had them. Just whinging about the general state of affairs, and how we could do a better job if we ran the world. It comes from a place of well-meaning. But moaning about what’s wrong with the world doesn’t fix it, even if it does include a great solution, such as putting me in charge. I’d make a freaking awesome Prime Minister, President, or Badass Queen. Dancing would be compulsory. Besides the point. I now know that complaining about something just charges the battery of negativity, which is not the best way to start your day. Getting out of bed on the wrong side never ends well. You’re bound to step on a foot-crippling piece of Lego.

One morning, following our synopsis of Wrong Town we discussed how we’d love to run away. How cool would it be to have a campervan and go off-grid to get away from it all? I don’t recall how we got onto the subject. The Universe probably downloaded the idea to disrupt the stream of negativity…

Hey, you two! Stop whinging. Word up, there’s some awesome shit in this world, too. How about Volkswagen Kombis for a start? Cute as bloody buttons. Get yourself one!

Just for fun, we thought we’d look online to check out the going rate for a campervan. There happened to be a cute 1976 Volkswagen Kombi for sale not far from where we lived. It looked perfect for us. We love all things retro. And who doesn’t love a Kombi? Before you knew it, we were going to take a look, falling in love with it, and buying it before the week was through. It was a little burst of excitement in an otherwise routine life, a flash of hope, a lift of spirits. Retail therapy on a grander scale.

Who knew it was going to lead to a journey of self-discovery and a whole new understanding of life?

***

Let me briefly introduce myself… Hi! I’m Zoe. I’m a middle-aged midwife, mother, grandmother, and many more labels. I’m married to Azz, my toy-boy kinesiologist (only by six years, which doesn’t seem much in your fifties, but which would’ve been frowned upon in my teens). Azz is my second husband, and I am his second wife. We both have colourful backstories filled with turmoil, heartache, and enough setbacks to send anyone into a pit of mental despair. But that’s not who we really are. Nor are we Daph and Ern (we’ll get to that a bit later).

I always believed that we are who we are because of what we’ve been through. I’d be a totally different person today if I had a less eventful backstory. I have created the person I am today based on my life experiences up to now. I could have perceived any one of those tumultuous setbacks with anger and fear, or laughter and hope. My perception could have been influenced by the negative perceptions of others in my life. But I’ve never been a woe is me kind of person.

I could have chosen to believe I was a good-for-nothing high school drop-out and teenage mother with no prospects, as others perceived the situation back in my youth. Or I could learn from my mistakes, go through a shit tonne of learning curves, and come out the other side a fabulous human being to prove them all wrong. I chose the latter.

Fast track forward... and I was in a similar situation. Those negative perceptions were closing in on me. I could get stuck in the hamster wheel of life with everyone else, believing that this was all there was, or I could get off my backside and spice things up a bit.

Yup. Let’s do it.

When we first bought the Kombi, it was with short camping trips in mind, just for a quick break away from the hamster wheel now and again. However, we did entertain the thought of taking off for longer stints when life got on top of us and we just wanted to run away forever. I was itching for a change. There had to be more to life than this. Work was getting us down. Life was boring. We needed to liven this story up.

We brainstormed wild and wonderful ideas about what else we could do to earn a crust. We dreamed of opening an organic café-come-boarding house. We would call it The Brown Cardigan and Comfy Slippers, a visual nod to Ern, the cranky old sixty-something we will meet shortly. It would have rooms that Azz could work out of offering kinesiology sessions to the like-minded clientele that came in for a soy latte and a slice of vegan, gluten-free carrot cake. Do you dream like this? Do you let yourself be taken away by your imagination? Why does it have to stay a dream? What’s needed to make your dreams a reality? Well… you start with a little enthusiastic action towards it. The seed was planted for doing the lap of Australia to look for the perfect place to open such a venture.

This was really going to mix things up. There’s no mundane in quitting your job to travel the countryside in a beat-up vintage vehicle. It was scary and exciting all at the same time. Originally, I thought of it as a temporary escape that would liven things up a bit, a sort of mid-life crisis, before we settled back down again. I thought a change in career and lifestyle would be the answer I was looking for, to give more meaning to my life. In hindsight, I would have ended up in exactly the same mind space, same shit, different life… if it wasn’t for my awakening. And it was all thanks to Daph and Ern.

So, who are Daph and Ern? They’re our alter egos. A cranky old couple that we would morph into to experience the world through the eyes of judgement and frustration, with a humorous twist. I started a blog on social media called Daph and Ern’s Adventures. It was originally designed to entertain friends and family with our tales of hardship on the road, hoping to add a little laughter to their boredom whilst scrolling through. Daph and Ern cooped up in a campervan were sure to be hilarious. But it also ended up being a massive period of growth. We learned so much and wanted to share our experiences to encourage others to do the same. We created a small following and hopefully inspired a few others to follow in our footsteps; to quit their day job and chase their dreams. As a by-product, we also realised that Daph and Ern were great tools for self-reflection and personal growth. There were big lessons to be learned by observing our own behaviour from the perspective of a third party. I wanted to share them to help everyone to live their best life.

So, we come to why I wrote this book. Firstly, because a few of our followers suggested it... I love reading your blogs, they brighten my day. You should put all your stories into a little book. Why not, hey? I love making people laugh. It makes me happy by default. Secondly, every blog had a message to tell. And when I put them all together, they covered a lot of life’s ups and downs. Situations that could have sent us off the rails into a rage-quit at the time, seemed so trivial when looked at in hindsight with a pinch of humour. It got me thinking, how many people let the little things get them down and live the life of a shit-magnet? Once you realise the magic-wielding powers of feeling good, you stop attracting shit. It’s a marvellous secret that needs to be shared.

This book is a collection of Daph and Ern’s Adventures, with a dissection of our blog into life lessons to learn. Add a dash of quantum physics and a sprinkling of spirituality to bind it all together, and Voila! Our journey leads to eight small changes you can make in your life that can make big changes in the world. It’s an easy experiment on how individual happiness can have collective consequences.

This book is aimed at people like me, at the beginning of my journey. People who should be happy but aren’t. Those who are looking for more in life. I wasn’t a spiritual person at the beginning of my journey. I had no idea how my thoughts and feelings created my world. But I do now. Daph and Ern helped me to discover the true meaning of life. I am surrounded by friends and family who are all in the same place that I was. Plodding along, working in a job that they don’t even like, just to have enough money to pay for a house that they don’t even need, and hopefully save enough money to pay for a two-week holiday to escape it all once a year. That’s not what life is about.

Hopefully, you will come out the other side slightly more enlightened and with a new lust for life. Or, if nothing else, you might just have a few chuckles at our antics. Either way, it’s not a heavy read. Just a happy little something to read on the toilet while passing time.

Before we get started, I should explain how the alter egos of Daph and Ern arose.

I couldn’t do it any better than I did in our first blog...

¹

PROLOGUE

When did this journey begin…When did this fire begin in my heart?

- Avijeet Das

Before we could set off long-term, we needed to test our abilities. We’d never owned a campervan before, let alone a vintage one. My previous experience of camping was spending one night (of five nights booked) in a tent, before I gave up and said, never again! leading to me never camping again. I was a strictly five-star kind of gal. I don’t know why I suddenly thought I’d be good at this. Actually, I do know. It was my fond reminiscence of my grandparents pulling up outside my childhood home in a Kombi van and remembering how cool I thought it was. Still, I am slightly larger now than I was aged eight, so it might not be the exciting cubby house it was back then.

Having never owned a vintage vehicle, and not knowing what she was capable of, we thought we should do a few test-runs to get to know her and iron out some creases. And there were a few creases. Like, if you tumble-dry a pair of jeans and then leave them in the dryer for a few days, all scrunched up. You need a tonne of steam to get the creases out. Then you decide to give up altogether because the creases are too stubborn, and you just put them back in the wash and start again. Like that. Lots of creases.

Cosmetically, she just needed a bit of personalisation. Naturally, both being Star Wars fans, she underwent an initiation into Geekdom. We pimped our ride with Star Wars decals and comic book strips, so she felt like home. She already had a fully fitted kitchen and bedroom, with enough cupboard space to house all the belongings you might need on the road. She was close to perfect, just parked on the side of the road. But we were to find out that, mechanically, she wasn’t cut out for the job of long-term travel.

Our first-ever camping trip was a weekend at a national park close to home and involved breaking down, three times in forty-eight hours. Twenty minutes into the journey, the Kombi stalled and wouldn’t start up again. On the spot, I signed up online on my mobile phone for roadside assistance with the NRMA² (in hindsight, we should’ve arranged that before setting off). I then immediately phoned the emergency breakdown number to request the mechanic to come out to us.

I see you’ve only just signed up, Mrs. Farrell. You need assistance already?

Ummmm. Yes.

Waiving the waiting period, the kind telephone receptionist sent out the mechanic, fuelled by her love for Kombis. It’s a thing. They make people happy.

The mechanic told us our starter motor was f**ked and gave us a hot tip on how to get the old girl started again in the meantime. We were faced with the decision of going home or continuing to the campsite, with a high chance of us breaking down again. We decided to continue. Why not? I’d successfully pushed her down the hill once whilst Azz jump-started her. We’ll just make sure we set up camp near a hill so we could do it again.

We made it to the campsite safely, without further upset. Switching the engine off, we turned to each other with that knowing look in our eyes that she wasn’t going to start up again. But we pushed that thought to the back of our minds because we were determined to enjoy this. We had a lovely night under the stars. We revelled in camp-cooking and snuggling under the blankets to the sounds of the bush. And, as expected, we had to jump-start her again in the morning.

It would’ve made for comical viewing. There’s little old me, trying to push a tonne of steel down the hill, with Azz in the driver’s seat. You’d think it would work better the other way around, but my short legs don’t reach the pedals. It didn’t deter us, but we knew the Kombi wouldn’t cut the mustard on a long-haul trip. She would require a visit to a mechanic to check her out before attempting anything on a larger scale. We decided we would organise that later down the track.

However, The Universe decided to force that decision a bit sooner, by stalling the engine one more time on the way home.

This time we were on the uphill, and after an unsuccessful attempt to jumpstart the old girl in reverse, we rolled into the side street and called the roadside assistance for the second time in our first twenty-four hours of being covered.

You need a tow already, Mrs. Farrell?

Ummmm. Yes.

Instead of towing the Kombi the four hundred metres to our home (yes, we were that close!), we got her towed straight to the mechanic and booked her in for a thorough going over. It wasn’t just the starter motor. She was only firing on two cylinders and needed an engine rebuild. Poor girl. Pimped up but worn out. She needed a complete overhaul. Welcome to Kombi ownership.

They’re great fun, but they’re money pits, the friendly mechanic told us with a smile on his face.

Lucky we already loved her with all of our hearts, or we may have just chosen to euthanize her there and then. A mere $7500, and four weeks later, we had a practically new engine and were ready to try her out again.

Assuming that she was now mechanically sound, we wanted to give the fridge, auxiliary battery, and water tank a try, to see how long we could last off-grid without plug-in power and water. So, we planned a two-week trip, travelling south around the coastline, destination Great Ocean Road in Victoria.

It wasn’t just the logistics of the Kombi that needed testing out; it was also our capabilities as campers. We were complete amateurs, thinking we had everything we needed but learning the hard way that we didn’t. It was okay. That’s what this trip was all about. It was meant to be a learning curve, a test-drive of our ability to do this full-time. We needed to learn from our mistakes.

And, boy, did we make a lot of them.

3

***

***

4

***

⁵

So, the 1976 three-way fridge⁶ wasn’t the best. It was really a one-way fridge. Actually... a half-way fridge. Plugged into a power source, it barely kept the food cold. Using the auxiliary battery, it didn’t work at all. It worked okay when we used the gas to power it, but the gas exhaust pipe butted up against the Kombi door. This meant we had to leave the door open overnight to avoid sleeping in a gas chamber and not waking up in the morning, or worse still, burning the Kombi to the ground. But we couldn’t leave the door open because of Azz’s delectability towards the mosquito population!

So, the fridge was useless. We were using the cooler box to keep our food cold, but the ice only lasted a day in the Australian summer heat. And having to close the doors at night to save Azz’s skin, literally, the 1976 fan (which sounded like a jet aeroplane taking off but had as much wind power as a gnat’s fart!) wasn’t nearly enough to keep us cool on the hot summer nights. Add it to the list of things to fix… a working fridge, a better fan, an industrial cooler box, and fly screens. This money pit was going to suck us dry.

Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.

- Babe Ruth

***

So, we were doing it tough. Still, we were loving the lessons. And we were learning that we were a great team. It still felt good to be away from the rat race, and we loved the challenge of trying to make things work, with a lot of help from octopus straps. We