It's two years to the day since we started this thing and as we get asked the same questions quite a bit we've decided to answer them here. Now when you decide to take your kids on a trip around New Zealand for a year in a bus, generally people are super enthusiastic about such an undertaking and wistfully imagine themselves doing it.

If you instead describe it as “we live in a bus with four kids” and travel full-time then you get looked at weird.
Speaking of being looked at weird, there's this comedian who is a Dad with 4 kids who get’s his laughs from the social uncomfortableness of being that guy. He has this line:

“What’s it like to have 4 kids?

Imagine you’re drowning and someone hands you a baby”.

This is a truth for our times, kids and suburbia in this day and age are not a great fit. I think it's probably important to remember we've been there and done that while reading this post.

I also want to be really clear, living in a small space and travelling with 4 kids is not what people would call ideal. It can really be awful, hard and frustrating. We are all human beings just trying our best to meet each others needs and stay connected and failing regularly.
What would be ideal? I’m not sure, but I think our society sees it as a large debt free house with house keepers, nannies, gardeners, the best neighbours and wondering which craft beer to open tonight. If you’ve got that then great stuff, remember the huge numbers of impoverished millennials who can work as hard as they like but without the right connections will never be able to reach such ideals.

What we know, is that for us, living in the bus; is far more social than the “finding-babysitters-but-too-tired trap”, it’s much more adventurous finding somewhere to park than the auto pilot of driving home, and time seems to have stretched back to it’s normal length rather than that terrifying silence it made as it rushed past us in suburbia.
So, with that as the background here are the answers to the most common questions we are asked.

The space question

Firstly just imagine yourself, it’s school holidays and it’s been raining for a week. I don’t care how big your house is, you know what I’m talking about. Now while holding that thought in your mind consider that I also remember living in our house and despite having an enormous kitchen we were often ordering the kids “out of the kitchen” while tea was being cooked because there just wasn’t “enough room” - you know what I mean.

It’s not enough room mentally.

And that’s my point, physical space isn’t precisely the issue, a wise man once said to me that life was all about contrasts.

You can actually get used to any reasonable space, and we’re mostly used to ours. Our home has shrunk but our backyard has increased significantly. We also have the advantage that if it’s been raining for a week we can take our house to the other side of the island to enjoy the sun. We can also head to warmer lands in the winter.

On the flip side this winter we headed south (note for our northern hemisphere readers, this means colder). We could because the bus is so easy to heat. It’s been a special feeling of luxury to feel completely wrapped in it’s warmth while waking up to amazing frosts outside (when the heater’s working properly).

But yep! the bus can be small.

The stuff question

“But where do you put everything?” is another common question. The Tiny House movement has also had this question thrown at them and for people who haven’t gone through the process of destuffing it’s hard to describe the feeling of freedom.

I’m more a hoarder than Ange, who hasn’t got a sentimental material possession bone in her body. She relished getting rid of stuff (like inviting all our friends over to raid our shed of stuff until it was all gone). It took me some warming up to the idea and I’ve done it in stages. But warning - it gets addictive, because every item you give-up you feel like you’ve gained some freedom. Each time that happens you want more of that feeling of freedom and then you start to understand what ‘stuffocation’ means.

This has wider ramifications. Our consumer culture is having a horrific impact on the planet (i.e. plastics in the ocean) and is stealing the planet’s resources from our children. My perspective on the question of stuff is we all need to do this, and if we do, those big houses will all start to feel a little bit sparse if done properly.

The security question

A very common thing said to us is “but you have no security”. What is meant here is land and I’m intrigued as to why we don’t always just say that. This is possibly a topic for a thousand books but here’s a few points I have in response to that question.

Firstly, I’ve tried writing about this before because the phrasing is fascinating to me. But, I’m still not quite happy with my understanding on this topic because it’s gets heavy fast and involves questioning the institution of land ownership and comparing it with concepts such as Kaitiakitanga.

If I’m honest with myself I’ve realised I’m just not interested in land ownership. However this is also mostly irrelevant because my family trumps my own “interest” any day. So then I evaluate spending the next 20-40 years working my guts out to pay off a property to then say, hey boys here’s 1/4 of a house each, sell it when you put me in the old folks home. It’s not compelling, it’s actually depressing in every meaning of the word to me, add in the inevitable collision between our economic systems and climate change… and my partner that hates suburbia and wants adventure…

I think the answer for the question of security is we’ve swapped our “security” in land for what is ultimately the fallback for everyone. We’re forming networks. Having stayed with over 40 families and the subsequent warm connections fuelled by those precious late night discussions has also lead to a humbling sense of awareness of our collective frailties. We've also in the same day travelled from being the “poor family in a bus” to the “rich family with hot running water and electricity” and that changes a few perspectives. It's amazing how relative everything is and it's sad how big the gap between rich and poor is to the point of not even knowing the other.

The food question

Yes food is tough. We’re highly dependant on the super markets and spend over a quarter of our living expenses on food. We try and make the local markets wherever we go for the fresh local produce but it doesn’t always happen. This is possibly our biggest frustration (although we’ve got the coffee sorted). We hope to address the ‘no vege garden’ dilemma in our lives throughout New Zealand in a positive and inspiring way shortly. Watch this space…

The neighbours question

Actually no one asks us about neighbours but we’ve noticed yours. Good neighbours are one of the best things in the world. Bad neighbours are one of the worst things in the world. We had great neighbours before we left. Now we’ve met quite a few of your neighbours. When you pull up in an 11.2m bus and then manoeuvre it into a nearby section it brings out the best and worst in people. We do our best and be really nice and friendly but sometimes… *shakes head* we just drive away. Imagine just driving away for a second, oh yes, that’s the good stuff right there.

The happy children question

We’re often asked if our kids are happy (or have it assumed that they must be wildly happy)? This brings to mind some friends I meet at University who had grown up in the islands with missionaries as parents. I remember my first thought was, ‘gosh living in the islands must have been amazing.’ But, it turned out they hated it and really felt like they had missed out on life and were playing catch up. In other words it’s complicated. When it is all you know it is only much later in life that you get that chance to properly assess it.

So, while we’re waiting for that, can I ask you if your kids are happy? Is that acceptable for me to do so? Is happy a valid goal? I thought it was all about career from the age of 3 anyways, and isn’t happy really just a hippy construct with no basis in the economic realities of our time…

In all seriousness we’re their parents, this is one of the questions we ask ourselves often because we love them. The more important question we ask ourselves all the time is; are we preparing and equipping them sufficiently for the rather unusual future they face with either the affects of climate change and/or the governments reactions to it.

It’s the parents of young children today who generally have the least resources but the most human interest in our politicians thinking about the future (i.e. not their own longevity). 

The future

“You can’t do this for ever?.. can you?… like what’s the point?”
I wouldn’t have thought so either. Since hitting the road however we’ve met older families who have done exactly that. With half the resources we have, who now have grown-up kids any parent would be proud of, who if you met on the street you’d be clueless they were once of that feared and irresponsible breed: “no fixed abode”. Yes I had to face my own prejudices to deal with that fact, so I know you probably have to as well.

I joke to our boys that they won’t leave home, home will leave them. But the reality is I have no idea. Maybe some of our boys will decide on boarding school, maybe we will end up falling in love with some spot of New Zealand after all, maybe we’ll park at airports so our eldest can become the pilot he wants to be. Maybe we’ll head to South America, maybe we’ll fail to keep finding remote work and have to stop for a while and get a “real job”.
Whatever happens our future has exciting and unpredictable possibilities which I really wouldn’t want any other way.

So to conclude, the answer to your questions in a general sense is: don’t worry about us, we’re having the time of our lives, pursuing our dream. Getting out on the fringe is giving us the perspective and ideas we felt we needed and we hope some of that might end up being of help.

Posted by Hamish