From Perth to Palmwoods: The IT professional who crossed a continent to find his community
Most people move to the Sunshine Coast for the lifestyle. James McCormack moved here because of the mountains.
"We came around a bend somewhere in the hinterland and suddenly there it was — ocean on one side, mountains on the other, and this extraordinary deep green everywhere," he says. "My wife and I looked at each other. We'd lived in Germany, England, and Switzerland. This reminded us of Switzerland. Just slightly less snow."
McCormack is the founder of LivingTech, an in-home technology support service for people over 50 now operating across the Sunshine Coast. But before he was a local business owner, he was a man in a caravan — somewhere on the Nullarbor, watching wild dingoes circle in the half-light outside his window, wondering what came next.
The McCormack family left Perth in late 2025 after more than eight years building a successful IT support business there. The plan was simple in outline and enormous in practice: load everything into a caravan, pull their daughter out of school for a term, and drive the length of Australia to start again somewhere new.
"People thought we were mad," McCormack says. "Possibly we were."
They were not travelling light. The caravan housed James, his wife, their daughter, and Bluey — the family's Bichon Frise Poodle, who took the philosophical view that any space containing his family was space enough.
"It was a tight squeeze," McCormack says. "For all of us."
The journey took three and a half months. It began in Western Australia's south, where the family stopped at Denmark before crossing the border — a town that sits at the edge of the Valley of the Giants — home to ancient karri trees of extraordinary height — and just nearby, Elephant Rocks: great smooth boulders tumbling into the Southern Ocean like something from another world.
"If anyone gets the chance to visit Denmark in WA, they absolutely must," McCormack says. "It is genuinely stunning."
From there they crossed the Nullarbor — where, at a remote roadhouse one evening, a pack of wild dingoes wandered up to the caravan in the fading light, the first wild dogs the family had ever seen. Then into South Australia, where the Flinders Ranges rose from the red earth in jagged, ancient lines and stopped them in their tracks entirely. Adelaide enchanted them. The Adelaide Hills more so — and in the German-heritage village of Hahndorf, still running its Christmas markets, a family that had once lived in Germany found themselves unexpectedly, warmly at home among the baubles and bratwurst.
They drove on into Victoria and stood speechless at Apollo Bay on the Great Ocean Road, where dramatic rock formations meet the Southern Ocean in a way that stops conversation entirely. Christmas Day was spent in Melbourne with family, including a trip to the Mornington Peninsula. Then the long road north through New South Wales, and the pilgrimage to Sydney Harbour — where McCormack's daughter, who had never seen the Opera House, went very quiet for a long moment.
"She was thrilled," he says. "We all were."
What made the journey possible — practically, professionally, and academically — was technology.
McCormack's wife, who works for a veterans charity and continued her professional work throughout the journey, relied entirely on Starlink satellite internet to stay connected from caravan parks, rest stops, and roadhouses across the continent. McCormack's daughter, enrolled at her Perth school until the end of the year, completed her final term of studies from the road — every lesson, every assignment, every exam — on the same Starlink connection.
"She never missed a day," McCormack says. "Finished the year at her old school, started at a new one here on the Sunshine Coast. Technology made that possible. It is not a small thing."
It was also, for McCormack, a reminder of what he has always believed about technology at its best — that it gives people the freedom to live life on their own terms, wherever they choose.
The family arrived on the Sunshine Coast in early 2026 and spent two months in the caravan at Diddillibah while they found their footing and searched for a home. They eventually bought a house in Palmwoods — nestled in the hinterland, surrounded by the greenery that had first caught their eye — and began the work of building something new.
McCormack noticed immediately that the landscape was unlike anything he had experienced in Western Australia. The Sunshine Coast hinterland, with its deep valleys, dramatic ridgelines, and almost implausible lushness, was something closer to the European countryside they had left behind years ago.
"In Perth, everything is dry and sandy and golden — which is beautiful in its own way," he says. "Here, bananas grow at the side of the road. There are passionfruit and dragon fruit and citrus everywhere. The mountains drop into the ocean. It genuinely reminded us of home. Not Perth — somewhere further back."
His daughter now attends Nambour Christian College. His wife continues her work for the veterans charity from their Palmwoods home. And McCormack has returned to the work he has spent more than thirty years doing — helping people with technology — this time for the community that took them in.
LivingTech
LivingTech provides in-home technology support for people over 50 across the Sunshine Coast. Founded by James McCormack MACS CP — a professional member of the Australian Computer Society with more than 30 years of IT experience — LivingTech offers patient, expert help with computers, tablets, smartphones, WiFi, printers, smart home devices, and one-on-one technology lessons. All visits are conducted at the client's home by the same trusted professional, every time. No lock-in contracts.
You can find out more about LivingTech at www.livingtech.com.au