Back in 2014, we were just two students trying to figure life out. We’d only been together a year and a half when we ended up on opposite sides of the world, Gemma in Australia, me in San Diego.

We met up on the Gold Coast and rented a campervan. Drove from Byron Bay to Cairns with no real plan, just figuring things out as we went.

And somewhere along that road, everything shifted.

It wasn’t just the places. It was the feeling, waking up somewhere new, not really knowing what the day would look like, but knowing it was ours. We both felt it, even if we didn’t say it out loud yet… this was the kind of life we wanted.

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Of course, we had to go back to reality at some point, but when we did, we returned home with a fire in our souls.

We moved to London, started saving, and created Highlands2Hammocks. At the time, it was nothing more than a place to keep our memories and show friends and family what we were up to.

But slowly, it became something else.

People started asking questions. Asking for advice. Trusting what we had to say.

And without really realising it, we started building something.

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A year later, we quit our jobs to finally set off on the round the world trip that we had been planned deep in our souls all those years ago.

We packed a tent and drove north. Backpacked around the highlands of Scotland, trailed through the hills of Ireland, and bustled along the trains of Europe. No guarantees, no backup plan, just a feeling that there had to be more than the life we were leaving behind.

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We then jumped on a plane down under and Australia was where things changed properly.

We arrived in Melbourne as two broke backpackers and immediately got jobs, getting stuck in the honeytrap that is this vibrant city. However, saved what we could and then bought a campervan to escape the metropolis and travel Australia like we had always intended.

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It was here that we went all in on our new passion for storytelling. Late nights working on the website, learning everything from scratch, trying to grow something we didn’t fully understand yet.

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We just knew we didn’t want to stop.