Introductions - why travel in a 69 year old coach?

Matt and I have been talking and dreaming about travelling Australia in an old bus, since we were dating, over 30 years ago.  But life got busy between bringing up our 4 beautiful children, running a small business and serving at our church. So our dream was on hold, and then life changed in 2010.  Long story short, I am in intestinal failure, as a result of a rare auto-immune disease called AutoImmune Autonomic Ganglionapathy (AAG).  I have been living on Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN - intravenous nutrition) since mid 2012.  It involves connecting up to a drip every night for 12-20 hours, through a special intravenous catheter in my jugular vein. Living on TPN is a life saver, but isn't easy and comes with lots of risks. These include developing sepsis from an infection in the IV catheter (I've had it twice and it's not fun), and liver failure. So each day of being well and alive with my loved ones, is a gift for me. The TPN is prescribed to meet my individual needs and is required to be kept refrigerated until in use. I carry the fluids and infusion pump in a backpack and each time I connect or disconnect the infusion, it's a sterile medical procedure. Matt is my champion carer.

Holidaying and travelling is not a straight forward procedure for us, but a complex and well co-ordinated and planned process; to know exactly where we are going to be, so as to pre-arrange the delivery locations for my TPN, as there is a 24 hour window for them to be shipped from Baxter Pharmaceuticals and to be returned to the fridge, before they are no good. (TPN is extremely expensive as well). I also use a lot of medical consumables that need to be stored. Matt and I decided that the best way to be able to do this, was to travel in a bus with fridges and storage space. Our first bus was a 1967 Scenicruiser Coach, that was big enough to fit the 6 of us, but this bus was unreliable and spent far too much time on the roadside broken down. Although we had wonderful holidays together as a family in it, including being volunteers for some farmers on outback stations, it was not the Ansair Flxible Clipper coach that Matt had fallen in love with, back when he was 13 years old. That was still a dream away, as they were rarely available for sale, yet alone at a price we could afford. Come 2017, one became available in our price range, but it would need a huge restoration. We sold the Scenicruiser to help fund the restoration and thanks to a lot of support and working bees from the members of the Flxible Clipper Club of Australia, we were able to get our affectionately named Clipper 'Bridget', on the road.  It took 10 1/2 months of hard work and dedication from Matt to transform the rusty wreck to being fully engineered and registered, Matt then fully customised the interior to meet my needs, during the COVID lockdowns and then lovingly designed and painted her to be the beauty she is today. And now, we are finally able to afford both the costs and time off work, to finally start ticking off our bucket list and travel Australia in an old bus.