Delulu. Divorced. Down the East Coast.
Every good story has a plot twist. Mine just happened to involve a divorce, a one-way ticket and a backpack.
I wish I could tell you moving to Australia was part of some beautifully thought-out life plan. It wasn’t. It was more of a “well… everything else has gone to shit, so why not?” kind of decision. I came because my life had fallen apart and booking a one-way flight somehow felt like the most sensible decision available. Because nothing says “emotionally processing” quite like sleeping in an eight-bed hostel dorm with a German gap year student who snores.
I’d spent most of my twenties believing life was something you carefully planned. Study hard. Build a career. Buy the house. Get married. I genuinely thought I was nailing adulthood.
Looking back, blowing up my entire life was probably definatley the best thing that ever happened to me. I just didn’t know it yet.
I wouldn’t necessarily recommend getting divorced as a travel planning strategy… But I also can’t deny it’s how I ended up here.
Because therapy was expensive and Australia is sunny.
On the 1st December 2025, armed with a one-way ticket, a backpack and an unhealthy amount of optimism, I landed in Australia.
I had no plan. No pre-booked activities. No carefully colour-coded itinerary. Just my first few nights in a hostel in Cairns and the slightly delusional belief that I’d simply figure it out as I went.
In hindsight, moving to the other side of the world with no plan was… bold.
Was it sensible? No.
Did it make for a much better story? Absolutely.
I’d imagined myself effortlessly drifting down the east coast, making lifelong friends on every Greyhound bus, stumbling across hidden beaches and becoming one of those impossibly cool travellers who casually says things like, “I actually ended up staying another week…”. The reality?
I spent my first two days with my head buried in my phone, surrounded by approximately 47 open tabs, trying to work out where I was supposed to be, how to get there and whether I’d left it too late to book literally everything. Not quite the carefree backpacker I’d imagined.
It also didn’t help that this was my first time travelling solo, and I’d somehow managed to arrive during peak summer, when half the world seemed to have had exactly the same idea. Every hostel I wanted was filling up. The activities I’d flown across the world to do were booking out. And I was rapidly discovering that “I’ll sort it when I get there” is a lovely personality trait… right up until you’re the one trying to find a bed for the night.
After two days of scrolling, researching, second-guessing myself and achieving remarkably little, I admitted defeat.
Thankfully, Australia has built an entire industry around people like me. People who mistake spontaneous for wildly underprepared. Travel companies line the streets of Cairns, ready to rescue backpackers from their own questionable planning decisions.
I wandered into Happy Travels, explained that I wanted to spend a month making my way down the east coast before finishing in Sydney for the New Year’s Eve fireworks, and handed over my fate.
Less than ten minutes later, they had organised everything. Greyhound buses. Hostels. Tours. Activities. The lot. What had taken me days of overthinking and approximately 47 open tabs on my phone took them less time than it takes me to decide what to watch on Netflix.
I could finally put my phone away, stop trying to organise my entire life from the corner of a hostel dorm and actually start doing the thing I’d flown 14,000 kilometres to do. Experience Australia.
As it turns out, the best part of this trip wasn’t following a plan.
It was finally letting go of the idea that I needed one.
No Plus One Required
There are plenty of organised group tours running along Australia’s east coast, where you spend the entire trip travelling with the same thirty or so people.
For a lot of people, that’s the perfect way to do it. For me… not so much. I wanted to do this (somewhat) solo. Not because I didn’t want to meet people, quite the opposite. I wanted the freedom to decide where I went next, change my plans on a whim, say yes to something unexpected or stay somewhere an extra night simply because I wasn’t ready to leave.
For the first time in a very long time, I wanted my decisions to belong entirely to me. I’d also never travelled alone before. In fact, I’d never really done much alone before.
After spending ten years in a relationship, I’d become so used to making decisions as we that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to make them as me.
And if I’m completely honest, that was terrifying.
There were moments before I left when I wondered whether I’d made a huge mistake. Would I make friends? Would I feel lonely? Would I spend every evening eating dinner by myself while pretending to be fascinated by my phone? Spoiler alert: occasionally… yes.
But those moments were massively outnumbered by the ones I never could have planned for. The conversations with strangers that somehow lasted for hours. The people who invited me to join them for dinner five minutes after we’d met. The friendships that started with, “Is anyone sitting here?” and somehow ended with plans to meet again three cities later along the east coast.
Because here’s the funny thing about solo travel… You arrive on your own. But you’re very rarely alone.
Australia’s east coast is full of people who have all, for one reason or another, found themselves on the same adventure. Some are taking a gap year. Some are escaping winter. Some are figuring out what comes next.
And then there was me… a 29 year old solicitor who’d somehow swapped boardrooms for bunk beds.
Turns out, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Hostels are cheaper than therapy.
One of the funniest things about travelling Australia’s east coast is that everyone thinks they’re off on their own unique adventure… yet somehow we’re all living slightly different versions of the same story.
The same Greyhound buses. The same hostels. The same beaches. The same boat trips. Just in a slightly different order. You’re either travelling north or south, and before long, you realise Australia’s east coast is basically one giant game of backpacker bingo.
The girl you met in a hostel kitchen in Cairns suddenly appears in Airlie Beach. The Danish boys you shared a 4WD with on K’gari somehow end up in Byron Bay. The guy you met on a boat in the Whitsundays casually walks into your hostel three days later like you’ve planned it all along.
It’s a wonderfully weird little world.
And then there are the conversations… Within about five minutes of walking into any hostel dorm, everyone seems to instinctively know the script.
“Where are you from?”, “How long are you travelling for?”, “Are you going up or down?”, “Have you done K’gari yet?”, “You HAVE to do K’gari.”, “Where are you heading next?”, “How old are you?”
That last question always made me laugh.
At 29, I wasn’t exactly collecting my bus pass, but I do remember MSN…
The funny thing is, you end up having exactly the same conversation dozens of times. And somehow, it never gets boring. Because although the questions never change, the people always do. Some friendships last until the next bus stop. Some until the next city. Some until New Year’s Eve in Sydney. And some become the people you still send voice notes to long after you’ve all flown back to different corners of the world.
That’s the magic of solo travel. You set off hoping to discover a new place. You rarely expect to find your people there too.
A little family was formed in my 4WD on k’gari. Aged between 20 and 29, its fair to say I took on the role of granny in this group. Little did we know at the time we met, we’d end up spending Christmas together in Byron Bay & New Year Syndey… just by chance.
My East Coast Route
Over the course of a month, I made my way down the east coast, stopping at:
- Cairns
- Townsville/Magnetic Island
- Airlie Beach
- Noosa & K’gari (Fraser Island)
- Brisbane
- Sunshine Coast
- Byron Bay
- Syndey
One month. Eight stops. Countless hostel dorms. A questionable amount of luggage.
I arrived in Australia thinking I was simply solo travelling for a new adventure. What I didn’t realise was that, somewhere along the way, I was also starting a completely new chapter of my life.
I didn’t know where the story was going yet. I still don’t. But I knew I wanted to find out.
So, I hired a van. And headed south.
LuLu Land 