TWO IN A TENT

MARTHE SNORRESDOTTER ROVIK

LLOYD THE BUS, EVERYWHERE

When Norwegian-born actress Marthe Snorresdotter Rovik had her first baby, she knew she wanted to leave the city. She didn’t care that she’d be away from her agent and her network, she just felt in her bones that she needed to raise her daughter out of the city.

Her husband, Jed, who had always wanted to live in the country, jumped onto Gumtree and found a cottage to rent in Margaret River before Marthe could change her mind. They leased their city home and shifted down south, where Jed was able to continue his y-in- y-out iron ore job. It paid the bills but it did take him away from his family for weeks on end. When Marthe was pregnant with their second child, they started to wonder if there was a different way they could live their life.

‘We were always talking about how we could consciously design our lives so that we could be together. It just didn’t feel right, raising children alone. We landed on the decision that maybe we didn’t need more money. Maybe we just needed to have less expenses.’

So they sold everything: their Fremantle house and almost everything in it. They ended the lease on the Margaret River cottage and bought a 12.5 metre bus called Lloyd. Jed, who quit his FIFO job, transformed the bus into an offgrid home with a kitchen, a pot-belly stove, solar panels and a composting toilet.

For the past year and a half, the family have lived full time in the bus, making their way slowly from Western Australia to Tasmania and New South Wales, stopping at beautiful camping spots on beaches and farm land for weeks at a time. They also camp on private properties in exchange for work.

‘We’ve used community notice boards a lot, which has been really fascinating: everywhere we’ve gone, we have been inundated with people who want to accommodate us,’ says Marthe. ‘I think people just really welcome the type of lifestyle that we’ve chosen, to kind of break free from the chains a little. And a lot of people have land, but they don’t have accommodation, so if they need a little bit of help around the place, someone completely selfcontained, who can chip in … a lot of people welcome that.’

Their rst stop was Kalbarri, 600 kilometres north of Perth, where they spent eight weeks on a beachfront property in exchange for four hours of raking a week.

‘Jed was plodding around with the girls running naked in this huge private block right on the beach, just raking leaves, you know. We were like, wow, we can make our travel budget last for a really long time.’

Marthe says they have everything they need in the bus. The girls, Ellida and Embla, have one drawer each for their clothes and one little chest that Jed made that stores their toys.

‘We have warm, cosy beds to fall asleep in every night. We have a bath for our kids, we have a shower with warm water. We have a full kitchen. We have a full-size fridge, we have a freezer. We haven’t compromised on any of the comforts, because we knew we wanted to do this for many years.

‘It’s the best decision we’ve ever made. There is not one single night that I go to bed without saying to Jed, “How amazing is our life?” We get to go to bed together every night, we get to wake up together every morning, we get to watch our girls grow by the minute and they get to have their parents around, which is like an unfathomable luxury these days. I feel really grounded and really strong as a family. I know that whatever happens we have our home.’ n

Words Annabelle Hickson Photography Louise Beaumont

Words and photograph Tess Durack

Grady races across the stony ground as the tent bounds and billows away on the wind. ‘Get it, get it!’ I yell, and he makes a lunge, crash tackling it to the ground just before it scoots across the muddy water of a small dam. He’s only eight, but the tent is light enough for him to hold above his head triumphantly as the wind threatens to take both of them up, up into the air: my small boy and our tent.

It’s a imsy thing, really. Just three walls of netting and a zip-up ‘door’ with a small net ‘window’ you can open and close. It’s held upright by two sets of poles. If we put up the y, there’s more poles and a bunch of pegs to push or hammer into the earth. But unless rain threatens, we rarely use the y. It blocks the breeze. And the stars.

In still weather we can put it up in about four minutes at, my son and I a well-oiled machine. ‘Hold the pole.’ ‘Got it mum.’ ‘Hooks on.’ ‘Yep, done.’ ‘Tie the top.’ ‘Righto.’ All set. When it’s windy, he climbs inside to hold it down in lieu of pegs while I get our sleeping gear. That evening next to the dam, it got away from us, an unexpected gust sweeping it up like a stray balloon.

According to the label it’s a four-man tent, but they’d have to be pretty small men. It ts my son and me snugly, along with the battery-powered fan to get us through the nights when it’s still 37°C at midnight. Add a bottle of water, my book, his comic, a small torch, and we are set for each night.

Mosquitos are an ever-present enemy and keeping them out of the tent requires vigilance. We’ve mastered the quick entry. Standing at the zipped door, feet on top of our shoes, I count down, ‘Three, two, one ... go!’ I unzip it fast. My son favours a dramatic leap while I go for an inelegant commando roll, then whip around to zip it back up.

Sometimes other things get in. One morning an enormous centipede swirls out from under my sleeping mat. Stick insects are regular visitors, and crickets, too.

Thankfully, it keeps other things at bay. One night, camped outside of Katherine in the Northern Territory, the storms circle us as we lie panting in the heat. I’m reading, my arm propped up against the netting on the side of the tent when a huge cane toad jumps up onto it. I feel its awful wetness on my skin through the netting and screech. We watch appalled as it slides slowly down the side of the tent and plops back into the wet grass.

At Umagico on the tip of Cape York, a local camp dog adopts us. In the evening she rests against the side of the tent until it collapses in and she can sleep beside us. During the night she gets up from time to time to snarl away other dogs. The tent wall springs back until she returns from her prowling and leans her warm weight against it.

My son nudges me awake early one morning at Lorella Springs (in the Northern Territory). I look up sleepily to see a young wallaby about a metre from the tent. His mum is further back, watching cautiously. My son and the joey gaze at each other before it’s beckoned away, back into the bush.

At Mataranka, south of Katherine, we oat down the springs with a family of ve who invite us back to their enormous campervan for dinner. ‘Where’s your rig?’ asks the dad. ‘Down there,’ I point. ‘What? In the unpowereds?’ he asks, astonished. ‘That’s one way to do it.’ >