Jacko & Chili Dog
Our Story
From wandering to welcoming, but with miles still to walk.
I've spent the last six years living the gypsy life on the road, up and down the East Coast — the long, weary drives, side gigs, cheap motels, rainy nights in a hammock riding it out under a tarp, and multiple nights in the front seat of various cars I've owned. I've seen the good sides of that life and the hard sides of it. I've met people who choose the road and wouldn't trade it for anything. I've met people who didn't choose it — people with no place to go, no place to call home, one bad week away from the street. I've seen them all. Well, most of them.
I was born in Kioloa and raised around Ulladulla, on the South Coast, NSW. I built DrivewayStay from a 1996 Coaster bus, with my red Kelpie, Chili Dog, by my side and a dream. These days, being able to stretch out in an actual bed, out of the weather, is a luxury to me.
DrivewayStay is Australian owned, born and bred — not some offshore platform that doesn't know what it's actually like out here, and not one making mega profits out of Aussie pockets. It's something I've poured my heart and soul into — to help other Australians get a fair go, and to keep my bus running, Chili Dog fed, and food in my own belly along the way.
It's a big part of my mission to bring back a bit of that community spirit that's been lost. I grew up around caravan parks, and they used to be happy, easy places — people actually knew their neighbours. These days, people can be ten metres apart and never say a word. Society's changed, but DrivewayStay is trying to breathe a breath of that "seventies-era free spirit" way of life — where a host and a traveller can actually meet, shake hands, have a yarn, and where someone with a bit of space to spare looks after someone who needs it.
This isn't a big corporate platform. It's a lifetime of experience, sprouted from six years on the road, blossoming into something that might make someone else's life a little easier — whether they're out here by choice, or doing it tough and just need a place to stop for the night.
— Jacko, founder of DrivewayStay