If you asked her at chapter 1, you’d get a different answer. Elaine grew up in a family that was torn apart, she went on to live with extended family members and longed to be part of family.

Then she met Henry at a dance hall. Elaine was a competitive Latin and ballroom dancer; Henry loved to dance too — and he offered her something she had never had: the promise of an adventure. He had arrived in Australia as a teenager after the war, having travelled from China to England on one of the few ships in the convoy that wasn’t lost, and grown up a world away from where he was born. While he was racing sidecars with the St George Motorcycle Club, Henry always made time to take Elaine dancing.

When they married and their first daughter arrived, Henry’s work as a boilermaker looked set to take him away to job sites around the country. Instead, they made a different choice: the family would go with him. So began twelve years on the road. Through the late 1960s and 70s, Elaine and Henry raised three daughters in a caravan, following Henry’s work during Australia’s post-war construction boom — from tropical Cairns to the southern tip of Hobart. The woman who had longed for a home of her own found herself living an extraordinary, wide-open life. It was, as the title says, the adventure she always wanted — just not the one she had expected.

Elaine never set out to write a book. In her 70s she began scrapbooking her daughters’ childhoods, and realised she had a bigger story to tell — so she wrote it, sitting with Henry as they recalled their life together. She never planned to publish it either. But after Henry passed, and after Elaine was diagnosed with terminal cancer, one of her daughters read the manuscript and couldn’t put it down. As a family, we decided to publish it, so that Elaine could go knowing her story would live on for generations to come. It was our last gift to her.

Elaine has since passed away. Sharing her book now is how we keep her story travelling — and we would love for you to be part of it.

“This book is everything to me. It’s the start of my life, my husband’s life, creating our family, and taking every day as it came. I hope it brings joy to anyone who reads it.” — Elaine J. Hales