about us
What would you like to know…?
Most of you have known us for years, some of you we might have just met and there might be some of you who landed on this website and we haven’t met (yet).
For those of you we have never met, we are Jon and Jude and at the moment we live in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates where we moved in 2024. For both of us the 6th country where we will be living for at least a few years.
Jon and Jude overlooking Wilpena Pound, South Australia
A bit of our story
Way back in 2003 we moved to Australia, and lived in Perth (5 years), then Adelaide (1 year), back to Perth (for another 2 years), and then Brisbane (also for 2 years). During this time we tried very hard to see as much of Australia as we could, and only occasionally left Oz to explore other places in the world.
In 2013 however, we took a year off and drove our white Land Rover Defender 110 (Lara) from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Europe (via Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, China, Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, France and Belgium to end up in The Netherlands and the UK for christmas dinner with our families).
Jon and Jude having breakfast at Lake Karakol, Tajikistan
We decided to blog about that journey and, as we moved from Brisbane to Kenya (in 2014) soon after the trip, we decided to keep the blog going and keep writing about our continuing adventures.
In 2016 we moved to another East African country and called Tanzania home for three years. So after sharing the amazing sites of Kenya, we had the incredible opportunity to also discover what Tanzania had to offer. We managed to nearly visit every corner of this enormous country, but also ventured outside its borders to check out some more of the African continent.
another gorgeous sunset in Africa
During our five years living in East Africa we managed trips to Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Malawi, the Comoros, Lesotho, Madagascar, the Seychelles, Tunisia and Zambia. Add to that the few countries we had already been to prior to moving to East Africa (South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Egypt, Ghana (Jude only), Morocco (Jon only), Nigeria (Jon only), Mauritius, and of course Kenya and Tanzania), and it brings the total number of countries visited in Africa to 20 (22 for Jon). Not even half of the total (54), so we will have to come back to check out the remaining 34…
After our 5 years in East Africa, we moved back again to Brisbane at the end of 2019 and spent nearly 1.5 years there before we settled in Esk (a small town about an hour west of Brisbane, QLD) to work on our red Land Rover Defender 130 (Lara 3). We have completed converting our dual-cab ute into the very best 4wd campervan you can imagine, and have been enjoying extended trips with her through Australia.
Lara heading up a sand dune
In 2024 we moved country again, now calling the United Arab Emirates home. We are looking forward to all the opportunities to explore a new corner of the world, and will write about those adventures here. Hopefully we’ll share some adventures with you?
We are always happy to help. If you have any questions (for example about our overland trip, or about our current built), please leave us a comment and we will get back to you!
Hopefully at some point we will share some adventures with you and we will write about it here!
Cheers,
Jon & Jude
Looking for information about our big overland trip from Malaysia to Europe, or want to know how to use our menu?
We have tried to make it easy to find stuff on this website. If you click on the logo at the top, you will see all posts we have ever written in reverse chronological order (newest at the top). But if you are interested in only specific posts you can use the menu to filter the hundreds of stories.
For example, if you are interested in reading everything about how we built our own 4wd campervan from a Defender 130, you click on the menu option ‘building 4wd campervan‘ and then select the build – Defender 130. You can also find all our information about each country we drove through on our big trip under ‘overlanding info per country‘. This includes information on border crossings, fuel, sim cards, food, road quality, etc.
If you are a bird lover too and would like to see which birds we have spotted, head over to the menu option ‘birds of the world‘. That’s where we try to keep a record of all the birds we have seen in the different areas we lived in (Africa, Europe, Australia and hopefully soon the Middle East).
You can find all our stories from our trips based on the destination via the menu option ‘travel blogs’. If you open that section you can see for example our ‘African travels‘ grouped together. They can be further filtered if you select ‘Kenya’, ‘Tanzania’ or ‘other African countries’ as there are quite a few adventures in the African travels category. Or you can click again on African travels to see all posts written about Africa if you don’t want to use any further filters. All our European trips can be found in one section too. Just select the country or region you are interested in reading about.
If you are more interested in reading our adventures based on the activity we were doing, select the menu option ‘Stories by type of activity‘ and then select for example ‘adventure racing‘ or ‘diving & snorkelling‘.