No Fixed Address

If the Australian dream is owning a home in the suburbs, is it possible to find happiness without an address of your own? Sarah Tarca left her old life behind to find out

- Sarah Tarca

THE BEGINNING OF THIS STORY reads like the blurb of a chick-lit novel: thirty-something magazine editor trades Louboutins for Birkenstocks and goes perma-travelling. But unlike that cliché story, there was no dramatic break-up or job crisis that inspired me to leave the life I knew behind. Instead, it was the fact my partner Phil and I couldn’t afford to buy a house where we wanted to in Sydney. There was the itch to travel, which I hadn’t done because I’d been too busy building my career. And the big one, the lack of work-life balance. I began to think this way of life was a little bit crazy, and maybe there was another way. So when Phil suggested we pack up everything and “just go travelling”, I said yes. This is not a story about a gap year – we always intended to work because we both had professional skills that could be adapted to a nomadic, freelance life. There was no reason why we shouldn’t try. So we did.

IT STARTS WITH A PLAN