An old sailing mate of mine is going through a winner-takes-all split and he's not in a good place right now.
He wants to use what money will be left to him, buy a small used camper, and go walkabout for a few years. Drive around, cook at the back of the car - that sort of stuff.
I think he's crazy. (I can do this for a week max per year)
What are the annual costs of this lifestyle ? Petrol, insurance, food, repairs, odd Internet? I figure $10-15k? The more the better, I'm trying to talk him out of his initial purchase until he chills..
I think to van living is a great way to go. You pay about $600 a year on insurance. You pay about $700 for rego and CTP. Then its all profit. Compare to living in a house or unit. Council rates, land taxes, strata levies, water, electricity, so on and so forth. What a rip off.
There is a good website, Car living where an Aussie discusses the pros and cons of living in a van. For most of the prehistory of humanity we have been a nomadic species. Its in our blood. If your friend has a skill that he can make money out of no matter where he goes then he should go for it.
A very dear friend of mine does this exact thing, gave up on the rat race well over a decade ago...
Sold out of his hamster wheel mortgage, used what he got, bought a camper off this old lady who had been traveling wih her husband till he kicked it.... its a largish size nissan bus.
I remember his fairwell do, he put on a few bags of pot for the boys and we all got that bent that he spent the first week of his trip camped in the beach carpark down the end of my street.... we hassled him about taking the wheels off the van putting it up on bricks and watching him spend the rest of his days in the 'dang carpark
....swear to god, next day he was gone
Never saw or heard from him for about five years, then one day i went kiting out this place hours away from where i live, first time ever and only cause i'd been in the area working on a mates farm helping him out.... and there's one other kite out, and it's this dude i haven't seen in years....
Still travelling in the van, after the kite session we started another session, and he laid on me tales of his adventures, picking fruit, working where ever doing whatever, the people he'd met, the places he'd seen, the near deaths and the synchronicties..... and the back packer chicks...
Going bowl for bowl till the wee hours, i was left with a certainty that mick jagger and keith richards were p00fter imposters and this dude was the original rolling stone(d)....
Now that the internets come along we keep in contact regularly and catch up pretty much once a year..
He's one of the very few people that know theDoctors true identity, and i know he's reading this now...
So JD.... put down the bong and call ya mum (love ya bro]
I hear ya all, but me still reckon not the best of idea when one's mind is not all there.
Even as a youngster many years ago, I couldn't do it more than a few days at a time. And he's around 42yo.
The upfront would be a chunk of his leftover money too.
Also fear he will lose support, esp. emotional, if he goes walkabout.
Will talk to him again in couple of days. (I also fear he turns to kiting in all this 
)
Careful now,you can get a ticket for sleeping in your car.
)
Living in a car is something I've been planning for many years now. Currently I own a small campervan, but soon after I travel to thailand (11 days woo) I will be upgrading to a full winnebago motorhome. I will be 100% self contained. I've thought long and hard about how to do this, and I think your friend may benefit from some of the ideas I've come up with.
1. Fuel - fuel is expensive, but not so much when you have a diesel engine. There are conversion kits to turn a diesel fuelled car into a 'waste oil' fuelled car. You can use any waste oil and have it converted into a fuel with a relatively simple conversion kit you can install yourself. All you need is waste oil, which can be obtained freely from fast food places (they usually pay people to take it off them).
2. Energy - This one was simple... Solar power. 120watts is what I assume I'll need. There are packages on ebay that sell 120w solar panels along with a 110ah deep cycle battery for $500. Cheap as for free energy for the rest of your life.
3. Internet - I inevitably will need the internet to keep myself entertained and obviously to check out some forecasts! There are a couple of options here. Use a mobile phone's internet package to browse internet. This is a slow and costly service (phone's aren't free), so I've opted for a second choice; Stealing people's wireless internet. There are ways to crack someones WIFI password, which I wont go into, but it's out there on the web if you need it. Some may see this as morally wrong, but it wont hurt their pocket so I say why not.
3. Water - In a motorhome it's quite easy to obtain free water. Use a hose and go reap the benefits of having decent tap water in Australia (or NSW at least?).
4. Job - You'll need some sort of job to keep the money intake for things like insurance and registration and whatever else you may undoubtably have the urge to buy. I haven't decided on a set plan here but cooking within the motorhome and selling snacks to people on the beach isn't a bad idea. Or you can just work here and there along the way doing odd jobs. Web Design was on my list too, I'm quite net savvy though, so this option probably isn't the best for a regular nomad.
5. Food - This may be pretty controvorsial/taboo to some of you, but to others it's a completely safe and accepted way of obtaining food. Dumpster Diving. Major food outlets and supermarkets throw away a huge amount of perfectly good produce and packaged food. There are dumpster diving groups all around Australia who go out together and get free food. Good way to meet people - and good way to recycle.
So that's it. My guide to a free and plentiful lifestyle. All in all, your carbon footprint will literally be close to as nil as you can get it. In my humble opinion it's a great way to live without a permanent job (life stealer) and when you throw kitesurfing in the mix and travellin the beautiful Aussie coast, what can top that!!
vandwellers.org/
Plenty of information from someone who has been doing it for years.
The key to doing it successfully seems to be maintaining appearences, keeping a low profile, not annoying anyone and maintaining good health.
Breaking into someone's wifi connection is wrong and illegal. Its stealing. Why do it when you can get a fast 3G or 4G connection via your phone or modem. Its cheap, $20 or $30 for a few gig and it works.
Why take food from bins when food costs so little to buy? You can buy pasta, tinned tomatoes, potatoes and sausages. All cheap food and it keeps you going.
adolf, you're right I sure will be doing everyone a favour by getting outta their hair 
You're also right that I may change my mind, but for now and the past five years I've known, from living in a campervan here and there, that this is the lifestyle for me. When I think of the alternatives; debt, stress, loss of life (aka. work) and the general mindset young people posess (earn money, disregard life) simply doesn't appeal to me. I'm only 21 and I'd like to take the advice from older people when they say these are the best years of your life, make the most of it.
Also, I forgot to mention something about secure sleeping; Close to police stations is a great idea. A friend of a friend once told me about that idea and I thought it was genius. Nobody will bother you. At worst, you'll get a rude awakening by the cops asking you to piss off.
Anyway as time goes on, wardriving and leeching off other people's wifi will become less popular for a few reasons.
Firstly wifi protection will generally increase as time goes on. My parents recently had to go with Bigpond ADSL and they were provided with wifi modem that has WPA protection built in.
Secondly more service businesses will provide free wifi to attract customers like McDonalds does now. I could imagine service stations doing it to attract business.
Thirdly the price, speed and coverage of paid for mobile Internet access keep improving for the customer.
Looking for wifi you can crack open just would change one form of dependency and cost from one hand to another. You may spend hours looking for crackable wifi and you may want to camp somewhere out in the bush which is miles from any house.
I agree with MobyDisc. The ability to crack wireless internet is less likely as WPA-2 is pretty solid. I could be wrong, but assuming a decent key, I don't think there really is an easy way to crack it unless you have a really really long time. The mention of cracking wifi is probably more relevant to the earlier encryption methods.
Of course the other question is 'why?'. Telstra can provide reasonably cost effective wireless broadband. At $150 a year for 10Gig, that should be more than enough for someone that should be getting out and doing other stuff. If not, a lot of libraries have free access, as well as the usual coffee shops and so on that provide it.
Living the dream - eating out of bins and camping in McDonalds leaching free internet access and using their bathrooms.
I took off 10 years ago in an old Kombi Campervan, best thing I ever did ( at the age of 55). You find lots of free camps ,there is a publication that can be purchased showing all the freecamps around Oz, and there are some beachfront rippers! Cornation Beach in WA is a classic, camp right there, was about $10 a night when i was last there about 4 yrs ago.Showers if required can be purchases for a coupla bucks at truckstops, and sometimes info centres.
After 18 months I graduated to a troopy and caravan, and have been travelling ever since. Plenty of work if you want it almost anywhere, ( caravan parks, resorts etc are always looking for people that know how to change a tap washer etc)
Internet access is easy , get a preaid stick from Telstra etc, and a 12V adapter and your cooking. gas or solar will run your fridge
Its a wonderful life out here, often I get the comments "I'd love to do what you are doing", I just smile and think " so do it !"
I wish you all the bast mate,you will make the best friends travelling .
pierrec,
As much as possible, try to make sure your mate can talk through his problems as it is not a good place to be. 
Remind him that no matter how bad things seem at the moment, they will, in time get better.
Best wishes for your friend.
If you copy a DVD or hook in to someone elses internet, you are stealing from the person that you would normally pay for this goods/services, all this is the Aussie way , maybe becos a lot of us came from convict stock??
I am not judging, just offering an opinion
I used to work at a grocery store and you have no idea how much good food they throw out simply because the "expiration" date (or more like sell by or best use by), or it doesn't "look good". It really pissed me off. They don't even allow you to give away some of the stuff to people willing to take it off your hands and they even put locks on the dumpsters at night for fear of theft...stealing something that is going to be thrown away anyways. total BS
In all honesty, dumpsters are cleaner than half the restaraunts and stores we pay to get food from anyway.
