Nick, Amanda, Harrison and Finlay make up our little collective of O’Brien’s. We are based in the Waikato, New Zealand and love living here. As a family we have a passion for exploring our country, getting outdoors and enjoying nature; living beyond typical range!

Nick and I met back in 2005. We have never been the type of people to sit still and watch a weekend go by. Often we would find ourselves taking a road trip to various places around the North Island. Then, not long after Harri was born, we moved from beautiful, small Taupo to the city of Hamilton, where we found ourselves craving the freedom to get away even more. So, in 2018 we began the journey towards our weekend vanlife dreams!

The van was the perfect addition to our family of three! It made it so much easier to do the things we love! Whether we were chasing waves, heading to the snow, or searching for new adventures, it made travelling as a family really enjoyable. No matter where we went, we had the comfort of our home-base with us, which is especially helpful with tired, hungry children (never a good combination)!

Now as a family of four, we had the need for more room than the van was able to provide. Exit van, enter bus! Having sold our van, we are now elbow deep in a bus conversion; turning it into a larger, more comfortable version of what we had. The goal for the bus is to have the facilities and storage to go on longer journey’s, something we didn’t have in the van. We are really looking forward to the freedom this will give us, not having to book ahead in holiday parks so often. Watch this space!

The ‘Original’ NZ Scratch Map came about in early 2020, when we were looking for a fun way to keep track of our travels with the kids. We were not able to find anything at the time, so decided to come up with our own – The NZ Scratch Map was born! Since then, we have gone on to develop more scratch maps with different themes, and there are many more on the horizon.

We love our little collection of maps and have been overwhelmed with the response people have had to them. It has been so exciting to see our initial concept blossom into all sorts of different ideas and we have every intention of growing our little NZ Scratch Map business further!

We also have another business called Flow and Grace which is a boutique surf shop, specialising in importing longboards from Australia. Both NZ Scratch Maps and Flow and Grace trade under The O'Brien Collective umbrella.

Amanda has a background in teaching and spends her days behind the scenes running The O'Brien Collective and relief teaching; Nick spends his 9 ’til 5 as a General Manager in Media. The daily grind still exists for us at this stage of life, but the dream is to have more freedom to travel and explore, particularly while the kids are young. We are working on it! May hard work and determination make the dream come true!

Also, with freedom to travel and explore being our end goal at the moment, we would love to share our experiences of travelling through our blog and encourage others to do the same. Hopefully sharing our experiences will make it easier for others, particularly by giving tips and tricks for travelling with children.

Drop us a comment and let us know where you are at in your journey beyond typical range! Where are you keen to explore? What kind of information would you find helpful? We look forward to getting out and about, gathering the information, and passing this on to you!