Van Journal week 10 - Southern Tassie

Van Journal week 10 - Southern Tassie

in our tenth week when we lived in a van in Tasmania, Haylea and I drove south. We had three visitors on three different occasions, but now we were only on the road again.

We wanted to get out and explore some wild parts of the state, but bad weather was still on the side. We completed a last hike near Hobart, then made our way to the southernmost point of Tasmania and explored the region for Hastings.

knowing that our first real foretaste of the untamed Southwest National Park on the Adamson's falls route was only a small taste, inspired us to forge a few big adventure plans for the following weeks!

What we do

This week we came back into the routine of things. Since this blog reads 50,000 times a month, I am sure that many ask what we are actually doing about everything in the world. From the outside it may look like we live the idyllic, carefree travel lifestyle that you often see on Instagram. But as almost always happens behind the scenes, so much more.

We are not "on vacation".

A digital nomadic life is often associated with a lot more work than if you were working 9-5, and most of the time with much less immediate financial reward. What you don't see are the 16-hour days, locked up in a van in front of a laptop screen, or we pack our headsets at 0:30 a.m. after a long night of online lessons. Obviously we don't do that to get rich or even to build financial security, actually that would be a ridiculous undertaking. It is much easier to comfortably secure a permanent job in your hometown.

Together Haylea and I have been traveling for 4 years and have been living on average of less than $ 50 a day. Not out of necessity, but in the pursuit of pure, minimalist existence. To finance this, we worked on several online jobs, including SEO advertising texts, English lessons, SEO advice, building backlinks and even mystery shopping. These were always a means to an end and I personally never felt a feeling of passion in it.

But there is a final goal that, like me, may seem confusing for most people who read this. Since I published for the first time in 2019, my main passion and my focus has been on this blog. I had no idea how I could support this passion for travel/adventure and photography, but I knew that if I was just enough, I could earn enough money to continue.

The thought of spending 2, 3, maybe even 5 years with it to put everything I have to put on this blog before I even earned my living. Money never motivated me, but my passion for raw experiences. If something motivates you in life, then get up and do the things you love.

the fact is that the establishment of a passive income is difficult and requires a lot of (years) self -motivated, unpaid hours. Although the pandemic was not friendly, I knew from the first day how much work it would have. I knew it was easy to build a passive income from their passions, everyone would do it. But nothing that is worth being done is simple.

We are not on vacation here either. Simple is not a word that I would use to describe 8-hour online teaching sessions that sit on hard bathroom tiles of a guest house at midnight. I would also not say that writing essays with 3500 words about the best bird baths or the best workouts for the chest for other people's blogs (with a processing time of 12 hours at 3 cents per word) was easy. Especially with incomplete internet connection. This has been our reality in recent years, while I tirelessly worked on building my own project.

admittedly, sometimes we wondered whether it would not be easier to return to the endless cycle of slave work to save money for travel instead of pursuing a sustainable digital nomadic lifestyle.

But this week our hard work and patience finally started to wear fruit. April was the first month in which I have ever received enough passive income from this blog to completely rely on it as the main wage. The growth is steady and bends around the corner for May, it looks like this trend is outburding April. The work that I did three years ago pays off for us today and will do so in the coming years or decades. If this is not a motivation to continue grinding today, then I don't know what it is.

It is an exciting time for us and a memory that if you want something urgent enough, the universe will be available to you. But first you have to do the work.

If you have survived, congratulations. And thank you for your interest in what we do.

If you want to learn more about how we started online work, I recently updated an old contribution that deals with helping others at the start. If you are also interested in the lifestyle, I am sure that you will benefit from it.
Alt = "We are looking for travel behind the scenes"> behind the scenes

Collins Cap and Myrtle Falls

Before we broke up this week, there was a short hike near Hobart on our list.

Collins Cap near Collinsvale is a little -driven path to a small mountain peak in Wellington Park. We had heard that you can have a breathtaking view of Mount Wellington and the mountain ranges behind the park from above. There was also a waterfall on the way. So of course we drove there directly.

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• Alt = "Mushroom on the Collins Cap Track, Myrtle Forest">
• Alt = "Creek Crossing on the Collins Cap Trail">
• Alt = "Collins Cap Walk Tasmania">

Adamsons Falls

Personally, the Southwest National Park was one of the main reasons for coming to Tasmania at all. Nevertheless, it was over two months and we still hadn't entered the park.

that changed after we had turned wrong a few times on forest roads and had to run the last kilometers on unpaved road (we love our van too much). Although we literally only scratched it off, we certainly felt how Rau this last piece of wilderness really is.

• Alt = "Baumfall on the street to Adamsons Falls">
• Alt = "Adamson's cases Tasmania">
• Alt = "Treefall on Adamsons Falls Track"> That was the lane

Entenlochsee

After we had spent a night next to an old quarry away from a forest road in the middle of nowhere (it could have been Wolf Creek as well), we looked at the nearby Duckhole Lake Track.

This hike was not overwhelmingly beautiful, but it still felt great to be outside in the forest after being couped in the van in front of the laptop! We also managed to discover a wild plat animal that is much larger here than in Far North Queensland.

Hastings Caves & Thermal Sources

The last adventure for the week before packing was a trip to the Hastings Caves & Thermal Springs. This karst cave system is one of the largest in Tasmania and I would say it is the most impressive that I have seen in Australia!

After exploring the cave, we used the thermal pools in the visitor center. It sounds like it is exactly what the doctor prescribed at Tassie Winter's crawl, and it did it for us at first. But 28 degrees was not as warm as I thought!

However, they had some of the most luxurious hot water showers that we had seen for some time, so they absolutely used this offer.

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• Alt = "Hastings Caves Track Tasmania">
• Alt = "Hasting's caves, Newdegate cave Tasmania">

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