A digital nomad life can be one of the most rewarding ways to live your life. Identifying work that you love that you can do online, anywhere, anytime, that allows you to travel the world, live abroad, and create an extraordinary life, is a privilege if you can make it work. We’ve spent decades doing just that. Here’s how we did it.
Terence and I lived abroad and worked our way around the world for almost three decades, two decades of that time incorporating various modes of location independence – from seven years of continuous travel living out of our suitcases to living as expats in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
While we’ve lived the digital nomad life – working anywhere anytime, earning our incomes from work we’ve done online – we’ve never called ourselves digital nomads. We’ve been guidebook authors, travel and food writers and bloggers, Terence has long been a photographer, I’ve planned trips and hosted tours, we ran a digital media business, consulted to restaurants, and we’re developing cookbooks.
While we couldn’t have lived our lives and worked our way around the planet without technology – without dragging backpacks crammed with laptops, camera and lighting gear, and gadgets and devices around the world – the technology has just been a tool. We haven’t let it define who we are and what we do.
Let me tell you about our nomadic lives and share lessons to how to live your life as a digital nomad.
Life as a Digital Nomad – Lessons from 20 Years of Location Independence
This Q&A has been created in collaboration with our travel insurance affiliate partner SafetyWing, which offers Nomad Insurance, and provided the questions for us to answer below.
How long have you been a nomad?
Practically my whole life – my parents raised me as a nomad back in the 1970s. I was just four years old when mum took me on my first flight from Sydney, my birthplace, to Perth, on the other side of Australia, where we lived for a while. Dad did the epic drive in his cool Dodge Phoenix across the Nullarbor Plains, which was a dirt track at the time.
We also lived in a popular holiday destination on the central coast of New South Wales for a year or so. My parents ran a beachside French restaurant but it was too challenging over the winter season so we moved back to Sydney. Every school holiday we travelled somewhere, doing road trips up to Queensland or fishing trips on the NSW coast.
When I was ten and my little sister was a toddler, my parents bought a four-wheel-drive and massive caravan with kitchen, separate bedrooms and bathroom. We embarked on a yearlong road trip around Australia – a big trend in the Seventies – that turned into a seemingly never-ending journey that lasted five years.
We went everywhere in Australia. I helped plan the journey using my Jacaranda Junior Atlas – in between doing my Correspondence School lessons, which I often did in the car – but our travels were also serendipitous. If we loved a place, we stayed a while. When we got itchy feet, we moved on. It was a great sense of freedom.
When savings were low, mum and dad found work: fruit picking, commercial fishing, book-keeping. They’d both done the 9-5: mum trained as an accountant at night school and worked for the department of tourism, dad was a proud ‘jack-of-all-trades’, but mainly worked in sales. They were resourceful and keen to give anything a go to be able to maintain that freedom from being on the road.
That seemingly never-ending road trip taught me how wonderful travel was, from all the crazy characters we met to all the magical places we explored. Uluru and Kata Tjuta and Darwin and Kakadu were the most special places for me, along with all the chasms and gorges in the ranges around Alice Springs where we’d often go camping. Those experiences really gave me a love of nature and life on the road.
Terence’s childhood was also filled with annual caravanning holidays in Australia, so we’d both been bitten by the travel bug at a young age. After we met we did some short trips in Australia, but it wasn’t until we moved abroad in 1998 to live and work in the United Arab Emirates that we really began to discover the world. We began with the Middle East and North Africa, then Europe, and later Asia.
After we became guidebook authors, we got to return to Australia to do months-long road trips updating guides for Lonely Planet and Rough Guides, and authored and photographed the bulk of a first edition Australia driving guide for Dorling Kindersley. I got to revisit many of the places I went with my parents, and got to share those with Terence.
How long have you been a digital nomad?
I went to South America with one of those black boxy IBM ThinkPads (one of the first real ‘laptops’)way back in 1997 as a research student. After Terence and I finished our communications degrees – I majored in film and writing, Terence in film and photography; my final project was a feature-length road movie we made together, shooting it in outback New South Wales and Queensland – I returned to university.
I did a master of arts in international studies, majoring in Latin America and Spanish, which included a research year abroad. So I wasn’t in South America to work and wasn’t earning an income – but I was travelling with a laptop for the first time, working anywhere and everywhere, and it was great preparation for the digital nomad life.
I was researching Latin American cinema and had created an itinerary based around film festivals, which were often headquartered at cultural centres or luxury hotels. I spent a lot of time in cinemas, archives and film festivals, interviewing scholars and filmmakers, then I’d type up the interviews in media centres or five-star hotel lobbies – which I never expected to be doing!
My favourite hotel to work was the grand old Hotel Nacional de Cuba, which was the HQ for the Festival de Cine Nuevo Iberoamericano, better known as the Havana International Film Festival. Many movie stars had stayed there and it epitomised old-world glamour. I was staying with a Cuban family but I spent so much time there that the staff thought I was a guest!
In between film festivals and research, I’d go travelling on my own or with other backpackers I’d met. I was really mixing things up, meeting locals through my research project and connecting with travellers in between, staying in a mix of budget hotels, hostels – private rooms when possible rather than dorms so I could work in my room, and for security – and small family-run guest-houses, especially when travelling solo.
During the trip I had a couple of opportunities to assist on participatory filmmaking projects in Brazil and Peru, teaching these incredibly resilient women in shanty towns how to tell their stories. Those experiences inspired me to both live and work abroad and to find work teaching filmmaking to women – ideally somewhere in South America, but we ended up in the Middle East.
I had a whole 7.5-year academic career in the United Arab Emirates in between finishing my thesis and degree in Sydney and Terence and I deciding to hit the road full-time and travel the world. I was teaching film, writing and media studies to young Emirati women students in Abu Dhabi and then Dubai and Terence worked for the same higher education institution creating digital learning materials for a while.
Funnily enough, in 1999 Intel sponsored a project with my students in Abu Dhabi. The girls were already using Apple laptops and Intel’s brief was for them to make videos on the concept of ‘working anywhere anytime’ to promote the groundbreaking new Intel chips that enabled laptops to run faster and longer. I remember that planting a seed in my mind at the time.
Two years later, Terence started a web design company with a university colleague and began working from a home office, and a couple of years after that we moved to Dubai for my promotion and Terence signed up to Dubai Internet City, which issued visas and where he shared a ‘hot desk’ – quite a new concept at the time.
That was probably one of the world’s earliest co-working spaces – although Terence wasn’t there much, in fact, because it was around that time that we were offered our first Lonely Planet guidebooks, on Syria and Lebanon, and on Dubai. Terence took on the bulk of the work as I still had a full-time job, so I helped him on weekends and holidays.
It wasn’t long before Lonely Planet was offering us more guidebooks and other writing and photography commissions so we decided to hit the road. We basically had a full year of back-to-back contracts. I resigned and we essentially became digital nomads, travelling the Middle East and Europe mainly, with some stints in Australia and South America, working as freelance guidebook authors and a travel writer and photographer team.
We ended up living out of our suitcases for seven years, travelling the world full-time with our laptops, camera and lighting gear. ‘Digital nomads’ wasn’t a term used much back then. It was all about ‘location independence’. But we were living the digital nomad life for many years, even after we shifted our focus to Southeast Asia and began renting apartments in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.
What inspired you to start living and working around the world?
That South America experience, for sure. As soon as I returned to Australia, I told Terence that after finishing my thesis, I wanted to get a job that would make lots of money (I did a PR contract for six months), so that we could travel again, and then I wanted to move to South America and find a way to live and work there.
During my South America trip, whenever I found a tranquil place I loved I’d part ways with any travelling companions and stay on for a week or so to work on my thesis and trip report. I really loved that freedom, the ability to stop, to slow down, to connect with locals, as well as being able to write in these beautiful places.
One of my favourite spots was a hostel that was more like a rustic boutique hotel located on a hill overlooking Lake Titicaca. There was a big kitchen, and balconies, and the views from every level were breathtaking. The town was unappealing, so I spent a solid week there at the hostel writing, on the balconies and in the kitchen.
Another favourite place for writing on the trip was Porto Seguro on the coast of Bahia in Brazil. It was a sleepy beach town back then with cobblestone streets lined with colourful colonial-era houses. I found an adorable little hotel with a pool a block from the beach that was cheap and cheerful.
I’d do an early morning stroll on the beach, return for a breakfast of tropical fruit and strong coffee. Work in my room for a few hours, head out for lunch, work again, then head out late afternoon to explore the town or early evening for dinner, punctuating my day with swims. I drank a lot of coconut water and ate loads of seafood.
That experience taught me how lovely working away could be. Writing was an absolute joy, with inspiration all around me. The staff thought I was nuts, of course, and were continually asking why I wasn’t at the beach, as everyone else there was on holidays. I think they felt sorry for me, as they didn’t understand what I was doing, whereas I was loving the experience of writing in these idyllic locations.
During my whole time in South America I never saw anyone else travelling with a laptop. I was constantly asked questions about it and became very protective of the thing, wrapping it up in a jacket in a leather daypack to conceal it, and taking it absolutely everywhere – even on the three-day trek to Macchu Picchu!
Where have you travelled?
Everywhere in Australia except Tasmania and the far north of Queensland; we only got as far as Cairns. When I did my South America trip, I spent time in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Cuba, and Mexico. Terence and I travelled to the USA, Cuba and Mexico (multiple times) together, and to Buenos Aires a couple of times where we rented apartments to update a guidebook.
It was after we moved abroad in 1998, to live and work in the UAE, that we really began to explore the world. We began with the Middle East, North Africa and Europe – most of the Arabian Peninsula countries, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, and Cyprus.
We’ve travelled most European countries, spending winter holidays in countries like Switzerland, Germany and Austria, and summers in Mediterranean Europe, typically spending a month at a time in a country, Turkey and Greece one year, Italy and Spain the next, and often returning multiple times to places we loved, such as Venice and Barcelona.
We authored and updated guidebooks to loads of European cities and countries, from Greece and Italy to lots of capital cities, doing first editions for Lonely Planet for their series of compact guides, which became Encounter guides, on Milan, Lisbon, Paris, Amsterdam, and Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp and Ghent. For those assignments, at we’d rent apartments, sometimes for a month or two at a time. The difference was that while traditional travel writers on these assignments would get them done as quickly as possible because they were still paying rent back home, the next destination became our home – at least for a month or two.
My favourite apartments were on the Navigli canal in Milan, a penthouse with panoramic views of Brussels, and a canal house in Amsterdam. It was those experiences of living like locals, shopping local markets and supermarkets, cooking at home, strolling local neighbourhoods, and so on, that planted the seeds for our 2010 yearlong grand tour project that launched Grantourismo.
For that project, we travelled the world, spending two weeks at a time in a holiday house and apartments, settling into places to live like locals, connecting with local people, and doing and learning things, such as learning to cook local food.
Our mission was to inspire our readers to travel more slowly, more locally and more experientially, forms of travel that are more immersive, more interactive and more engaging, which we’ve long believed to be more sustainable, more responsible and more ethical.
How have you made an income during your life as a digital nomad?
Initially as guidebook authors, working mainly for Lonely Planet, and later Dorling Kindersley, Footprint, Thomas Cook, AA Guides, and Rough Guides. We used to bounce from one guidebook writing or updating commission to the next and in between guidebook assignments we’d travel to places we hadn’t been, partly for pleasure and partly to gather content.
When we hit the road full-time way back in 2006 to work on guidebooks for Lonely Planet, we were also contributing stories to an Asian travel magazine and Middle Eastern in-flight magazines. Soon after we were invited to blog for a European-based Wallpaper-like retail website, and then we started our own blogs – I had a travel blog and Terence a photography blog.
Around the same time we developed an online presence on Twitter and that lead to a lot of work writing online city guides and country guides for loads of travel sites. It was doing that kind of work that made us think that we should be creating that kind of content for our own site – which was another reason why we started Grantourismo.
Back in those days, projects were fee-based – the guidebooks, magazine stories, and web guides, as well as the yearlong sponsored project that enabled us to launch Grantourismo, which was probably one of the most lucrative fees ever paid to ‘bloggers’.
After launching Grantourismo, we began to get invited on other trips by tourism boards, airlines, accommodation groups, and travel companies, before returning to more traditional travel and food writing and photography for magazines and newspapers.
We joined affiliate programmes and eventually ad networks, which we’d resisted for many years, but after the pandemic grounded us we didn’t have much choice. While we call Siem Reap home these days and don’t travel anywhere near as much as we used to, the mindset we developed during our digital nomad life hasn’t left us.
I returned to Australia at the end of December to stay with my mum, whose health is poor. Naturally I brought the MacBook and en route I wrote in airports, on planes, and in hotels, and now I’m set up at mum’s dining table. That ability and desire to work anywhere anytime will never leave me – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Any tips for those embarking on a digital nomad life?
Travel insurance is essential. For any trips you do, as soon as you buy your flights and book accommodation, buy your travel insurance to ensure you’re covered in case things don’t go as planned. We love SafetyWing’s Nomad Insurance. They call it travel medical insurance, because it covers medical emergencies, such as accidents, injuries, illness, ambulance, and emergency transport, as well as travel delays and disruptions, lost luggage, and your technology.
