Our son’s class was dressed in a hodgepodge of costumes pulled from the backs of wardrobes, but together they told a unified story. One by one they recited lines from legendary Australian children’s author Alison Lester’s picture book Are We There Yet?, the true story of her family’s three-month road trip around Australia in a camper trailer. We had owned the book for many years and often read it at bedtime, its pages now crumpled and worn and well-loved.

As I watched my firstborn on the stage, my fourth baby was nestled in a sling on my chest, her pout particularly pronounced as she dozed. I had spent the first three months of her life purposefully soaking her in, memorising the details of her face and her milk guzzle, fiercely inhaling her breath and newness because I knew it was all so fleeting. She would be on the stage in a few short years and I would be the proud, nostalgic mother, in awe of her growth and simultaneously grieving for the years that were behind us, her littleness etched into photos and videos and the pieces of my mind that I had filed away for safekeeping.

The story on the stage took us from the coast to the desert, where the sun beat down on the family who travelled on freeways and red dirt roads and into all kinds of adventures. They sat around campfires laughing at bad jokes, gazed out the window on long driving days and spent every waking and dreaming moment together, in all sorts of places all over Australia.

‘We could do that,’ whispered my partner Daniel, eyebrows raised and hopeful. ‘We could go on a road trip around Australia.’

‘Yes!’ I replied, nodding for emphasis in case he hadn’t heard.

I will never forget the pleasant confusion on his face or the undeniable mix of fear and excitement that pummelled through my body as I realised what I’d just said. Could we really do it? Pack up our lives and hit the road with a rough plan and only the essentials? Spend our hard-earned house deposit on a car and a caravan, and trust that my freelance work would keep us going? It was the very opposite of how we currently lived: darting from home to school and back again, juggling city commutes with extracurricular activities, squeezing in weekends with no plans because the weekdays were full and exhausting and I constantly felt like I was playing catch-up.

A family of six road-tripping around Australia would be a spontaneous adventure that would free us from the sense of obligation that dictated so much of our lives. But I am not an adventurer. I’m rather risk-averse; I prefer to know what’s coming next so I can have a sensible plan and stick to it. Predictability is always my preference. But still, I wondered: what if? Earlier that same day, we had met with a bank manager about applying for a mortgage. House prices had soared in our part of the world and we were interested to see how much we could borrow. He’d printed out the figures for us and the reality was bleak. After years of saving and months of consideration, we could buy a house that needed significant work, in a suburb we didn’t love, and spend the next 30 years paying it off. It would mean continuing to live like we were: juggling and commuting and existing in a cycle of work and sleep, work and sleep. We struggled to make sense of it.

Later that night we carried four sleeping children from the car to their beds and tucked them in tight because it was still cold for late spring. I put the kettle on and wandered over to Daniel, who was already looking at caravan listings on Gumtree.

‘Are we really going to do this?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think we are.’

The days that change our lives are sometimes rather ordinary. There aren’t neon arrows lighting the way, or confetti to celebrate decisions made. Instead, there is the simple, profound acknowledgment of change realised – long exhalations, a quickening of the heart, the splendid dizzying of knowing that you’re on a new path. I felt all these things coupled with the persistent hum of fear and overwhelm, but instead of running from a big decision like I usually do, procrastinating till it disappears into the ether, I ran towards it, arms wide, gaze forward, knowing that I was ready for everything this change meant. Scared, but ready.

In the eight months between that day and the evening we left our house in the suburbs towing our 7m caravan, there were countless moments when it felt too risky and too daunting and just too big. Honestly, I wanted to cancel our plans on every single day of those eight long months. But I’d said yes and in that moment there was no fear and insecurity, just the profound, affirming sensation that it was good and it was right.

Was this my moral nerve? A stubborn act in defiance of my anxiety: the fear that had kept me complacent and unchallenged for over a decade? Was this being fed up with the mundane, the very thing I had basked in, even celebrated, for as long as I could remember? I wasn’t sure, but what I did know was that I was in a golden pocket of time – a real moment of choice and change – an opportunity that would pass me by if I didn’t grasp it. This was the ‘big magic’ that Elizabeth Gilbert talks about in her book of the same name – the idea that wafts into your life with intention and purpose, plants itself in your mind and your heart, and waits for you to take hold of it with both hands. It really was surreal, a mere moment of magic, but it was also digging down and sitting with my deepest, truest self, which is never not confronting. I listened, I resisted and then I acted. Every single time I thought about cancelling the trip, I reminded myself that much greater than the relief of letting this big life change go was knowing that I would be ignoring my intuition to do so. There may have been fear but there was also an undeniable truth and a rousing belief that this was the only way forward.

Choosing new adventures for ourselves seems like such a frivolous, childlike notion, but I honestly believe it’s how we instinctively navigate the world. But, as with so much of our childhood – tree climbing, mud pies and make believe – we lose sight of it as we grow. We get caught up in the rush and the race, carried along without awareness, until the day when something shifts and we step back to see where we’ve landed. It’s here, in this moment, that we tune in and perhaps realise that we’ve wandered too far from the path. Is this what lost feels like? That feeling of being unsettled and knowing that something’s not quite right, even though you’re standing in your normal and you’ve been there for years? For me it felt like frustration and complacency; I was unmotivated, uninspired and, frankly, quite angry. I pulsed agitation. What I knew, more than anything, was that I needed to shift everything about our life and walk in the opposite direction to what we’d planned. So, we sold 80 per cent of our belongings and spent our house deposit on a four-wheel drive and a caravan.

While I knew what the start of our road trip would look like, I had no idea how we were going to get to that point, nor did I know what would happen once we had set off, along the highway. When people asked me what we were doing and where we were going, I would rattle off my flippant, highly unresearched plans, which, in retrospect, were the largest and wildest overestimations of my life. But what I really wanted to scream to all those people who asked questions was: I have no idea what we’re doing or where we’re going but we’re doing it anyway and if I think about it too much I won’t do it! So I just focused on the beginning, getting there one step at a time. In the words of the great explorer Amelia Earhart: the most effective way to do it, is to do it. So, I did. I adopted the mentality that we’d work it out as we went along, which I now know is the very essence of nomadic living. As with most adventures, it was never about the destination but about letting go, shedding our possessions, practising simplicity on a new level of less and simply spending time, together.

Saying yes to this adventure meant also realising that I was responsible for my contentment. The adventure wasn’t so much about where we were going or what we were doing, but it had everything to do with the way I saw the world, the way my perspective shifted, the way I settled into my body as I stood barefoot on the sand, the ocean in front, the van behind, a gaggle of kids shrieking as they raced towards the waves. It has always been about these moments – some lasting mere minutes, others stretching out for days – a strange time capsule of experience and adventure that’s now a collection of memories. We didn’t follow a path but zigzagged instead, pulled by curiosity and consequence, invitation and community. It didn’t really matter where we were going, it was the act of heading off to somewhere, anywhere, and having the freedom to do so. That was our adventure, that’s where I needed to be, in the space where spontaneity lives – the breathing space that’s free of obligation and plans.

This is an edited extract from Practising Simplicity, by Jodi Wilson: Murdoch Books, $32.99, out now.