I began working as a remote software engineer in 2011 because I wanted to choose my place to live without sacrificing having a job that I liked. At first this meant living in Dubbo, NSW but after a while my wife and I realised I could do my job from anywhere, so we went on the road on our first lap of Australia in the New Age Caravans Manta Ray.

This van is as close to a hotel on wheels as I could find. I had spent years obsessing over the different models from New Age, always staying up to date with all the major details, so it was amazing to set off on the road in this amazing vehicle.

To optimize between awesome features but affordability we went with the 18' Manta Ray, but after a few months living in this van we realised we were missing out on very little. It had decent off-grid capabilities in the basic setup and we were able to spend about 50% of our time free camping and working from the road with little to no camping costs.

New Age design truly fantastic caravans, I loved living and working in this van, and it wasn't until we found the Trakka Jabiru that we ever considered an upgrade. This was due in no fault to the Manta Ray itself, but I've always been striving to be more and more off-grid and find new amazing places to work.