Author and satirist Sir Terence David John Pratchett once said “wisdom comes from experience”, and that’s precisely the philosophy travellers Chris and Tania Lloyd subscribe to.

One year into their trip around Australia, the Lloyds live and breathe their brand “Lentil Bit Wiser”, a play on the popular saying “A Little Bit Wiser’”, which Tania explains pays homage to the conviction that there is wisdom in learning through hands-on experience.

“We’re learning about Australia by seeing things in “real-life’” not from behind a TV screen or in photos from someone else’s holiday,” she said.

“The word swap of ‘Little’ to ‘Lentil’, reflects our plant-based lifestyle, where we aim to not only be healthy for years to come, but create as little harm as possible on this planet we call home.”

What motivates a person to compartmentalise their life into boxes and hit the road indefinitely varies greatly. For many, the prospect of the simple life is a compelling alternative when you’re looking out from the hamster wheel on the daily grind. The prospect of the unknown — the open road with no final destination — is freedom on a platter.

For the Lloyds, and many full-time travellers, the transition to move to a more environmentally friendly way of living — travelling in a caravan — was a no brainer.

“We are happy in knowing that we have considerably reduced our environmental footprint,” Tania said.

“We have been disappointed to see so much rubbish left in camp sites and on the beaches so if we see it, we pick it up. The number of times we’ve seen adults and kids drop something look and it and just leave it there is disheartening,” she said.

“Living the van life, we have also enjoyed being powered completely by solar, and we lasted 170 days continuously off-grid before having to plug. So, one day, when it’s time to live in a house again having a self-sufficient off grid house will be one hundred percent top of the list.”

Cramming your entire life into a caravan one of the most challenging things you’ll ever do. It isn’t just handed to you on a platter. It’s hard, and it’s emotionally draining. Whilst friends and family envy your seemingly endless, idyllic holiday, getting to the start line is the hardest part.

It’s not just the challenging game of Tetris determining where to put your tangible things in a 20-foot space, but wrapping your head around selling everything you’ve worked hard for knowing that someone else is going to enjoy the fruits of your labour. Tania said turning the Aussie dream into a reality was a scary feeling, one that oscillated between stomach churning and a tummy fluttering with butterflies.

“Call it a mid-life crisis, escaping during a time of unknown, or simply an adventure we probably should have done in our early twenties. After we both turned forty during lockdown, we realised freedom to travel is not always guaranteed, so it was time to get out and start exploring!”

Not surprisingly the Lloyds love their lentils, and Tanya said that cooking vegan meals in the van is like cooking before in the house, with meals made in under 30 minutes using only one or two appliances.

“Our cooking has always been about good taste, healthy nutrients, in minimal time. All our meals are made either in a wok pan on the caravan’s gas cooker top, in an air fryer or our George Forman steamer. The latter two, we plug in with the inverter running to cook,” she said.

After being diagnosed with Celiac disease just after arriving in Australia 11 years ago, (and immediately moving to a gluten-free diet), Tania said she has experienced a wealth of health benefits.

“Through the journey to try to restore my health, I went vegan almost seven years ago. It was all new to me and I went cold-turkey – a vast change from growing up as a farmer’s daughter eating meat,” she said.

“The changes were immediate. I no longer had acid reflux, bloating, grogginess and was able to maintain stable weight with minimal effort. Chris slowly joined me and since leaving the mines to live the van life he is now 99.9% vegan — he enjoys a splash of dairy milk in his cuppa.”

Tania said sourcing ingredients as a vegan on the road is easy, as there is always canned lentils, beans, legumes and fresh fruit and veggies.

“Our go-to healthy snacks are hummus — we buy it by the bucket — carrot sticks, plain crackers, rice cakes, and fruit. I like frozen fruit on a hot day, and we enjoy things like “munch”, a nut and seed mix from Woolworths.”

Tania said the best thing to come from the pandemic was the advancement and acceptance of technology, especially technology that allows remote work.

“Before the pandemic, the reason for not taking our business on the road was not that the technology didn’t exist, but that people hadn’t embraced it. Clients still wanted in person meetings and although there’s a place for face-to-face relationships, a two-hour drive for information that could be shared via email or a 20-minute phone or video call was not a good use of anyone’s time,” she said.

“Since lockdown, zoom meetings, shared data drives and comprehensive emails have been fully embraced in the effort to be ‘contactless’ and this adaption and acceptance is what has allowed Chris and I to take our brand and marketing business on the road,” she said.

“Running our advertising business only requires an Apple laptop and a decent internet connection. Before deciding to live life on wheels, our office had multiple large 4K monitors, drawing tablets, fancy desks and all the frilly extras that make you feel professional, but the reality is none of those extras are needed to deliver great results. All we really need is the years of experience we already have locked away in our brains.”

After spending Christmas in Perth with family, 2023 will see the Lloyds heading east as they embark on their second year on the road, living the Australian dream — completing a full lap of Australia.

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Welcome to the latest Guest Recipe in the ‘Fellow Foodie – Traveller’ series – a collection of recipes from travellers we’ve met on the road.

Lentil Parsley Stew

From Chris and Tania Lloyd – Lentil Bit Wiser

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 1 onion
• 1 teaspoon of crushed garlic
• 1 tablespoon plant based butter (or normal if not vegan)
• 1.5 tablespoons gluten free soy sauce (normal if not GF)
• 1.5 plant-based beef stock cubes dissolved in 1 cup of water
• 1 cup almond milk (even if not vegan, use almond as it gives a nutty flavour)
• 1.5 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon garlic and herb salt
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 can brown lentils
• 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• 1 packet (10g) chopped fresh parsley
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 2 sticks celery, chopped
• 1 -2 tablespoons of cornstarch (optional)
• 1 cup steamed basmati rice
• Pappadoms (optional)

Method

Stew

• In a frying pan add butter, garlic and onion and cook for 2 mins to soften onions.
• Add stock cubes with water, soy sauce and milk.
• Add all dry ingredients, (EXCEPT the cornstarch. Also keep a little fresh parsley aside for the end).
• Strain and wash lentils then add to the pan.
• Cover with a lid and cook over LOW heat until the carrots are soft (about 15-20 minutes).
• If you would like to thicken the sauce you can now slowly add the cornstarch, however if you’re like us and enjoy the juice soaking through the rice, leave it un-thickened and don’t worry about the cornstarch.
• Serve the stew over a bed of your freshly steamed rice and sprinkle your left over fresh parsley on top and some black pepper.
• Heat up some warm poppadum’s if you like to have something crunchy to eat with your stew.

Rice

• Cook the rice as per your preference, we steam ours.

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