Perth travel vloggers Jessica and Stephen Parry-Valentine of Flying the Nest release first kids book

Ever dreamt of quitting the nine-to-five grind to swap your home for a stylishly converted van and life of adventure and new experiences?

So did Perth couple Jessica and Stephen Parry-Valentine.

Unlike most of us who leave these dreams in the bedroom, the duo spent six months converting an old cargo van before embarking on a year-long trip around Australia with their toddler, Hunter.

This trip, which took them on a full lap of Australia, has inspired their first children’s book, Our Home on Wheels.

“We started writing the book as we were driving around Australia. The locations in the book are from real-life experiences that we had,” Stephen shares with Today during a special trip to Cairns to tell family they’re expecting their second child.

“The entire book is based on our little family’s stories. We love that these are not only stories that other families can have because Australia is open, but we’re hoping to inspire people to go to locations that maybe they didn’t think of.”

The couple weren’t strangers to travelling before this adventure.

After meeting in 2007, and jet-setting together as much as they could during uni breaks, they landed their dream jobs: primary school teaching for Jessica and marketing for Stephen.

With the career, he says, came pressure to get married, have kids and climb the corporate ladder.

Instead, they did the opposite. After saving for a year, they quit their jobs at the end of 2014 and booked one-way tickets to Hawaii.

“We had the goal of travelling full time for one year, to have a selfish year before we went back into the real world,” Stephen says.

“Because I studied a bit of film, I thought let’s make a video that we can send home to our parents … it was purely just to keep them in the loop.

“We started uploading them to YouTube, that was the best place at that time, and we started noticing other people watching. People beyond our family and friends were tuning into our adventures.”

Slowly but surely, this YouTube audience grew as the couple uploaded daily videos of the fun and exciting side of travelling as well as the more mundane and logistical.

The Flying the Nest brand has now amassed over 2.1 million followers across YouTube, Instagram and Facebook as well as their travel blog.

Across the social media platforms they share their experiences travelling in over 80 countries, from India to Egypt and most recently Japan.

The idea for the Australian road trip was sparked in 2017 after their honeymoon, which they split between Croatia and driving a van around the UK.

Yet it wasn’t until they returned to Perth in 2020 to start a family — the strange time when the world was turned on its head — that it was made a reality.

“We all know what happened in March of 2020, the world locked down, so we focused on bringing up a family at home,” Stephen says.

“We were twiddling our thumbs after full-time travelling for five years, so we had itchy feet and were ready to go, but Australia was blocked off.

“That’s when we decided, why don’t we go back to that dream of 2017 and get a van and start kitting it out? So that’s what we did.”

Within the book they’ve captured some of their unforgettable memories: watching the camels in Broome at sunset, swimming at the Great Barrier Reef and eating purple lilac ice-cream in Tasmania.

It was illustrated by Ashlee Spink, who the couple met online after she sent a drawing she did of them with their ultrasound announcing they were pregnant with Hunter. They loved it so much they hung it in the nursery and asked her to illustrate the stories of their trip.

“One of them (the stories) is when we went to the Bullura station in WA, which is one of the most beautiful farms that looks like stereotypical Australia. I wouldn’t be surprised if Crocodile Dundee was filmed there,” Stephen laughs.

“We wanted the story to be from Hunter’s point of view, and what she was thinking at the time … you can have what is called a donkey shower, so essentially you fill up a bucket, warm it up with fire, put it above your head and tip it over your head.

“One of the pages talks about having the donkey shower, so the illustration is a donkey under the bucket.”