Stories of the road…
A nomadic tribe destined to disappear?
IT WAS IN Laurieton that I learned of their coming disappearance. I had seen them, many of them. Passing them on the highways, stopping near them at campsites. I felt thankful that to travel I didn’t need a big and expensive rig like theirs.
They are the grey nomads. The voyagers of the highways. I had given them little thought until that day I met Monte Dwyer.
Monte was selling his books at the market in Laurieton that day. We got to talking about his life as an author and about nomadism of the modern kind. One of the books he was selling was The Nomads at Large, his story of the grey nomads. It is a book of first-hand research into what could turn out to be a passing phenomenon.
They had always been there when I travelled in our little van, their presence and permanence assumed. But by the time I said farewell to Monte that day I was left wondering if they were a modern day nomadic tribe destined to disappear. It doesn’t look like that is happening yet and Monte acknowledges this. “Grey nomad numbers have maybe doubled since writing the book”, he said. His concern is for the future, though, not the present.
The nomads
The stereotypical grey nomad is retired and lives off their superannuation or investments. With their children long-ago grown up and probably with their own families, the retirees may have sold the family home or might be leasing it out long-term. After a lifetime of working they have the funds to invest in a motorhome or in a powerful 4WD with the grunt to pull a caravan. Off they go to follow the sun.
How long do they live on the road? The popular stereotype is that they have forsaken the fixed address for the motorised nomadic life. Sure, many have. Monte says that on his journeys he has encountered only a small number living on the road full time. Most grey nomads make long term roadtrips rather than take to the road fulltime, he says.
The woman I met was one of those who has taken to the life fulltime. I encountered her in the northern Tasmanian coastal town of Penguin. Now in her seventies, she was sprightly, slim, clearly healthy and with bright, light blue eyes. She tows a small caravan behind a 4WD twin cab.
“It’s an old caravan”, she told me as she looked over at her home on the road. “It’s around thirty years old and was made by a small company in Melbourne. When I bought it it was already ten years old.
“I had a 15 room house. It was a lot to look after. Lots of maintenance on account of its age. So I sold it. I’ve been living on the road for 20 years now, starting around 2000. In winter I head up to Queensland. In summer I come down to Tasmania. I just got off the car ferry yesterday and always come here to Penguin on arriving.”
The woman’s story is typical of the fulltime grey nomad — retire, sell the home, invest in a caravan or motorhome, take to the road. Yet I couldn’t get Monte’s comment about her type being a dying breed out of my mind as we stood there in the freshening wind by the sea that evening.
Product of a better economy
Like so many things in modern society, grey nomads are a sociological phenomenon strongly influenced by economic conditions.
“They are a product of the generation which grew up during the economic boom of the 1960s and 1970s, a time of near-full employment and rising incomes. They had the money to invest in housing, which was then affordable. It is the changing economic conditions that makes things like grey nomadism less-achievable to millennials”, Monte said.
Monte was getting at how the growth of casual work and short term contracting produces income uncertainty. With job security precarious for many, they watch how they spend their money. Investing in a motorhome or a powerful vehicle to pull a caravan is less likely to be an option for them. They do not have the discretionary spending capacity, the income left over after life’s needs are met, that their parents’ generation had.
Monte’s comment made me wonder. In our more than six months on the road that year I noticed that most of those towing caravans fit his description of the grey nomad. I wondered how many were living off the windfall from selling their home when prices were high.
There are others out there on the highway and in the campgrounds, however. They are a generally younger demographic spanning the late-thirties to fifties age range. These are short-term voyagers, salaried working people with fulltime jobs who are on their annual holidays.
“Younger people travel and camp, however they do it for shorter periods rather than the grand tour such as the around-Australia journey”, Monte explained. “This alarms the caravan industry because they go for more up-market holidays rather than buy a motorhome or caravan for long-tern travel”.
Will grey nomadism disappear with the boomer generation? According to Monte Dwyer, whether long distance journeys in motorhomes and caravans will be possible for younger generations is questionable, thanks to the social and economic impact of a changing economy. Grey nomads, says Monte, are a phenomenon of the age of affluence of the latter years of the Twentieth Century.
Journeys of shorter duration? That seems to be the emerging pattern, going by what I picked up during our conversation in Laurieton that morning. The great Australian road trip might still attract many, but its days may be numbered.
The rise of the grey nomad road trip
There is no information about how many people live like that woman I met in Penguin. Her lifestyle is made possible by living on a continent that spans many degrees of latitude from the tropics of North Queensland to Tasmania’s cool temperate reaches.
Long distance motoring and camping in a caravan or large marquis tent started with the generation immediately before the boomers. I recall when working for the postal service in the late 1960s how, when their four weeks annual leave came around, some who worked there travelled long distances with their families, towing their caravan and following the Pacific Highway up the coast. These were mostly people who were then in early middle age. The boomers were then in their early adulthood.
The round-Australia trip started to become popular in the early 1970s, a time when road conditions made the journey more of an adventure than it is today. It really took off over the following two decades. Once rocky or sandy roads to out of the way places were paved. The modest and cheap caravan park with its basic facilities gave way to caravan park chains spanning the nation. Family holiday spots went upmarket.
People voyaged the highways before the seventies and perhaps some of them became today’s grey nomads. Who were they? Some were adventurous types. Others travelled for their work as fruit pickers or other itinerants. Others took to the highways when surfing started its rise to popularity in the mid-to-late sixties. They made journeys along the east and south coasts in search of the swells coming out of the Pacific or Southern Ocean. Many still make the journey.
There were no motorhomes at that time, those early surfers making do with any type of vehicle they could afford. Later, the panel van, a vehicle made for urban deliveries and usually a Holden or a Ford, became popular among surfers. The stereotype of the Kombi-travelling surfer might be a cliche today, however like other cliches it has a basis in fact. Starting a little after the surfers, the hippies of the late-sixties and seventies travelled long distances too, though generally less than the surfers as many travelled in search of a place to live in the country.
Destined to fade?
It is just for convenience in talking about it that we divide nomads into categories and times. My first encounter with nomads was in the late sixties, but were there grey nomads before that time? I don’t know. All I know is that it took off around the early eighties and that it continues.
If these changes in travel patterns eventuate, if the number grey nomads and long distance, long duration travellers declines, it will affect the caravan and motorhome industry and, possibly, commercial van park businesses. How will they adapt? One way is what we already see—the installation of more holiday cabins.
A product of past decades of economic and income growth and cheap oil, grey nomadism might turn out to be a phenomenon of those fortunate to be born into those decades when life on the road was a real retirement option.
More stories of the road…
