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Boomers V Millennials
episode • Insight • Current Affairs • 51m
episode • Insight • Current Affairs • 51m
I'm a 73-year-old woman who owns nothing.
Nothing that couldn't fit into a backpack, trolley bag or three cardboard boxes.
Yet I am the happiest I've ever been.
I've always been different. I was born in a pub, as an 11-year-old I was called out at school assembly for never wearing shoes and as an 18-year-old sailed solo to the UK for the traditional two-year working holiday. For my 50th birthday, I backpacked solo through Italy and the Greek Islands.
I was a soldier in the Australian Army Reserve for 23 years, jumped the corporate ship to start my own leadership training business, self-published a book, and backpacked solo through 10 countries over 16 months on a mission to prove it's possible to travel and live overseas on an Australian Age Pension.
Now, I'm a full-time international house sitter.
Victoria Rose outside Buckingham Palace in London. Source: SBS
A blessing in disguise
People are fascinated, or frightened, when they discover I have no fixed address and ask how it started. That journey started with a fortuitous twist of fate when one thing that seemed bad at first turned out to be good.
At the end of 2017, I had been living in a little flat in Melbourne's St Kilda West for 12 years when my landlord had to move back into her property following the end of her relationship. I took it as a sign to take an extended holiday to Europe, something I always wanted to do.
I had everything organised, but just before I left for Italy, the 12-month rental I had lined up there fell through. The next day my yoga teacher told me about her house overseas.
Within a week, I had my first international house sit in Turkey looking after Oscar, a rascally rescue dog.
Over the next 16 months, I house-sat, tending to gardens and looking after beautiful cats and dogs in over 10 different countries around the globe.
In Italy I helped teach English to the children in the local village, in the UK I took care of the cutest Tibetan Terrier named Dougal, in Thailand I looked after two rescue dogs and in Albania I volunteered at a local women's shelter.
I plan to return to international travel in 2025 as I wanted to give plenty of time for travel restrictions to be over following COVID-19.
Victoria Rose says looking after pets while house-sitting brings her an incredible amount of joy. Source: SBS
Living out of a suitcase is liberating
Travel has always been important to me. I don't own a home or a car. I live out of my 30kg trolley bag and backpack, I've been doing so since I first embarked on my solo international adventure and I haven't looked back. There are times when I'm travelling and I see all these houses upon houses and to me, they seem like little prisons in a way.
We collect so much stuff, so much clutter in our lives, we’re mad with materialism and my kids woudn't want the stuff I would have left them when I die anyway. What matters most to me is being rich in experiences and memories.
On my Facebook page, I call myself a 'nomadic warrior' because I believe Australians get too comfortable in their tight little areas of materialism, we're very geographically isolated and we always look to want more. Perhaps it's something we've learned from American culture, but I believe that travelling and travelling light is the key to finding out what really matters most.
Even in this era of the internet, flying and being able to be anywhere in only a few hours, we're still not very understanding of others and often fear those who are different to us.
Victoria Rose in Milan, Italy. Source: SBS
When the world stopped, I didn't
When the world changed and the pandemic hit, returning to Australia into the arms of COVID-19 meant I was locked out of Victoria.
Thankfully, I was able to continue house-sitting in other states and since December 2019, I've paid rent for just seven weeks. People all over Australia request my services through my Facebook page. It's an incredible way to see your own country.
But house sitting is not a holiday, it's a huge responsibility. However the flexibility of being on my own is that I get to choose the location of each house sit and the pets I choose to care for.
It could be said I'm homeless. People ask if I'm concerned about what the future holds but absolutely nobody has the answers, regardless of how well they've planned for the future.
I'd be lying if I said I haven't felt scared at times, but those moments quickly pass as I choose to remain in a positive mindset - the key being that I choose to only deal with the present.
Human extravagance knows no bounds when it comes to instilling fear. Falling prey to dark days and negativity is a constant challenge but it's a challenge that I'm willing to take. I'm not referring to blind positivism, but it's important for me to acknowledge situations, owning responsibility for the part I play and then taking action for a better result.
The ability to choose this mindset hasn't come easy. It's taken decades of reading, watching, talking and learning to absolutely know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am responsible for how I feel.
I can choose to be happy in this moment or choose to not be happy in this moment. I live by one of my favourite quotes by the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocast survivor Viktor Frankl:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
