Our Story
Before moving to Canada, we had never seen snow or hiked a trail, let alone summited a peak or taken on a multi-day backcountry adventure. We had never seen a bear, eaten a dehydrated meal, watched the sunrise from a peak or canoed on a glacier-fed lake. We had never lived in a van, snowboarded, snowshoed, gone ice-skating on wild ice, experienced -30C temperatures or scaled a Via Ferrata.
We chose to make these experiences a reality by taking a chance, leaving everything we knew behind in Australia and moving across the world to Canada.
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In 2020, like the rest of the world, we found ourselves in the middle of our home, locked down, 600km from the nearest city, our families and the rest of the world, wondering how on Earth we got here. It wasn't a literal question, pondering what the government had done to get us here, the segregation of our town from others, creating invisible borders we couldn't cross and locking down the entire country from the outside world.
The question we found ourselves facing was how did we get here in our own life.
The forced inability to move, explore, adventure and travel led us to face the reality that we had unintentionally become stuck in a routine rutt of over-working, paying off debt we'd acquired, a rotation of bills, rental payments, cooking, cleaning, shopping, wash, rinse and repeat.
Over, and over, and over again.
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Now, there is nothing wrong with that life, in fact after our years of travel, living in a van, a bus, shared accommodations with 8 - 150 other people and moving every 6 months, we now crave that stability and routine. But in our late twenties we suddenly realised that the years were flying by, and the life we were building together was full of beautiful things, but was maybe missing many other beautiful things.
We knew we needed a change. We knew we needed something new; a fresh adventure. After throwing around ideas of what we wanted to do to shake things up, Brandon came upon the idea of moving to Canada on a Working Holiday.
After researching our options amidst the lockdown, we came across a company that could help us with every step of the elevated complexity of moving overseas during a pandemic. Call us crazy, irresponsible or stupid (we have heard it all), but it was the best decision we could have made. In November 2021, with a suitcase and backpack each and a one-way ticket, we boarded a plane to Canada.
After the longest journey we had ever flown, we landed in Vancouver, where we were questioned by immigration, delving into the required documentation, job offers, quarantine plans if we tested positive upon entry; all things needed for immigrating at the time. With our vital piece of paper, our work permit, in hand, we were officially in Canada and beginning our working holiday journey.
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Over the next two years, we would find ourselves living a life full of the things that we were missing, namely time with each other, new experiences, pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone and seeing things we would never see at home. We worked in jobs that didn't consume our lives, mentally or physically, met people from all over the world and different walks of life and began to do things we had never done before, whilst growing individually and together.
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We worked Winter in the Okanagan and Summer in The Rockies. Winters were spent learning to snowboard, snowshoeing, having white Christmases and just living life in conditions we had never experienced before. Summers were spent on trails, up mountains, in the sunshine, amongst wildflowers and wildlife. The off-season periods gave way for further travel, road trips in our van across provinces, to islands, into the USA and over the East Coast, soaking in everything North America had to offer.
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​​​​​​​​​​​​After two years we weren't ready to go home, so when the opportunity presented itself to continue our working holiday adventure we went for it. The RO programme, through S.W.A.P, allowed us to aquire another 2-year IEC working holiday visa with our Australian passports. And so we continued to live, work and explore Canada and the USA. After a brief period of time back home to Australia, we returned to the mountains we had come to call home. We upgraded our van to a bus and stretched our travels as far south as Colorado, down the west coast and continued exploring the Canadian Rocky Mountains.
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From arriving in the midst of the most uncertain period of time this century, to now, we have experienced and learnt a lot!
There is so much we didn't know before coming here, both travel and working holiday related. We hope that through Two and a Ute we can share some of this and help others make the most of their own experiences travelling, living and working in Canada.
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Thank you for being here and supporting us and our little love, Two and a Ute.
Chelcie & Brandon
Why 'Two and a Ute?'
When we originally started our YouTube channel, our intention was to film our then-planned travels, around Australia in our Toyota Hilux 4x4 ute. Then life pivoted and took us to Canada and 4x4 life in the desert quickly turned into van and bus life in the mountains.​ We kept our original name because, for now its still the two of us, and our ute back home just waiting for more Aussie adventures in the future.
We always intended for Two and a Ute to show some real-life travel by two 'real-life,' everyday people. We want to bring people along on our journeys and show that it's never too late to make a change in your life if you need, have the means and the mindset to get out there and make what you want of life.
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We hope that we can inspire and help people to seek a life that they dream of. It isn't easy to leave the comfort of routine, secure incomes and a level of 'certainty,' but at the end of the day, nothing is really certain or secure. Dare to be brave, make a change and don't be scared to break the mould or expectations of yourself and less importantly, others.
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