Sunrise and brekkie with a view! On the road with Phoebe MacDonald

What inspired you to hit the road and travel around Australia in your camper van?

My parents have always been my biggest inspiration when it comes to travelling. They both have been to so many amazing places around the world, whether together or solo they’ve always come back with the most incredible stories. Their love of travelling is actually how they met each other. They both were doing some short term work in Coen, Cape York; my dad was the principal at the local school and my mum started working for the council. They were next door neighbours and bonded very quickly over their love of travelling and doing good by others. Since then they’ve explored all over Australia countless times and around the world. They’ve given my older sister and I so many amazing experiences from travelling and so it only made sense for me to have them travel along with me for my 3 month long adventure of the Northern Territory & Northern QLD.

Can you share one of the most memorable places you’ve visited?

There’s so many to choose from!! But if I had to choose it would definitely be when we went 4WD in our camper van on the Old Telegraph Track in Cape York, Northern QLD. I have never seen such beautiful waterfalls like the ones we saw at Fruit Bat Falls & Elliot Falls. It made tipping the van on its side all worth it!! 😂 Yeah we definitely pushed little Matilda (the van) to her limits! The damage was only mild to the van and all 3 of us weren’t hurt, until my dad thwacked me on the head with the back door (unknowingly ofc) and gave me a concussion… We were both trying to climb out of the van at the same time, I was climbing out of the passenger side door and dad was climbing out of the back door. Luckily some nearby people heard me cursing at my dad and came to help us winch the van back up!

What’s a typical day like for you on the road?

Typically our days would start at around 5am, sometimes earlier depending on when the sun was supposed to rise, so that we could start hiking to a nice lookout to watch the sunrise and eat brekkie with a view. Then we would either go on another hike somewhere else, drive to our next destination or explore whatever the location had to offer. Then for dinner we would either reheat one of mums many curries that she made in bulk (I got sooo sick of them) or we would cook up a bbq; always with some kind of nice view of the sunset.

If you could describe your travel journey in three words, what would they be?

Insightful, Eventful & Unreal

How did you decide to personalize your van with art, and what drew you to Sophie Fletcher Designs? Do you have a favorite sticker? Why does it resonate with you?

Mum and I were brainstorming some rough ideas as to what sorts of sticker designs we would like on the van. We both decided on an ocean theme since we both adore the ocean and sea life. Mum was originally looking on a camper van sticker website since we wanted the blue stripes down the side of the van, and there was a few very basic sea life designs but nothing that really stood out to us. Since I’m a little bit of an artist myself mum was trying to convince me to try and create something for the van but it was way too overwhelming for me and we were already on a bit of a time crunch. Then I was scrolling on instagram and a post of SFD being put on a van came up on my feed! I showed mum and we both fell in love with the designs (I had gotten some small designs in the past but had completely slipped my mind!), so we went on the website and genuinely the hardest part was trying not to buy everything! We settled on 2 large turtles for each of the car doors, a mini turtle for the back window, a big manta ray for the front, a mini ray for the back window, a big whale for the front, a big whale shark for the front and big hibiscus flower for the back of the van. We absolutely loved the detail in the art, the bright colours and the way in which the animals looked as if they’re swimming on our van. My personal favourite is the Manta Ray because it reminds me of when I went swimming with them at Ningaloo Reef in WA, they’re such gentle giants. Mum’s favourite is the whale because it’s one of her favourite animals. And Dad’s favourites are the turtles because he says it reminds him of all the times he’s been snorkelling with turtles. It’s been a pleasure having Sophie’s art displayed on our van and everywhere we go we get so many compliments from all sorts of people on her designs, even had some lovely Aboriginal people tell us about how some of the animals were their totems; was very interesting! 💙