The Exposé
Learning to Code
While Travelling Australia
Here's what nobody tells you about learning to code in your forties, from a caravan, with two border collies competing for lap space: it is completely, gloriously possible.
The story starts with a problem I couldn't ignore. I was running accounting work on the road — GST, BAS lodgements, client reporting — and watching the same tedious manual processes eat hours I could have spent watching the sunset at Winton. I needed tools that didn't exist. So I decided to build them.
I started with the basics. No prior programming experience, just a registered BAS agent with a fierce intolerance for inefficiency and a decent Wi-Fi signal from a Starlink dish bolted to the awning. I worked through fundamentals at 5am before Mike woke up, with a coffee in hand and the Australian outback on the other side of the flyscreen.
The learning curve was real. There were nights I wanted to throw the laptop into a campfire. But there is something about the freedom of the road that makes you bolder — you've already made the big leap, so the small ones feel manageable. Each error message became a puzzle. Each solved bug felt like cracking the NT border for the first time.
What I discovered is that accounting and code share the same DNA: both are about systems, logic, and eliminating error. The mental models transfer. And the AI revolution meant I didn't have to do it alone — I treat AI as a brilliant junior developer who never sleeps and never complains about the humidity.
Today, I build apps, automation tools, and digital products that I'd genuinely use myself. Nomad Trak came from needing exactly that kind of tool on the road. Digital Toolkit Hub came from wanting to help other small business owners do what I figured out the hard way. And there's a third project — one I'm keeping close to my chest until launch — that might be the most ambitious thing I've ever built.
The caravan kept moving. The code kept shipping. And I kept proving to myself — and anyone watching — that reinvention doesn't have an age limit, a postcode, or a prerequisite beyond the willingness to start.
