Australia, a hell of a road

Back in 2010, we sat down and wondered what would be the best place on Earth to live and raise our kids. We researched and decided on Australia.

Vibrant cities, melting pot of cultures with a down-to-earth laid-back vibe and friendly entrepreneur mates from all walks of life, paired with a sample of the best of all worlds when it comes to nature: gleaming sand beaches, dramatic mountains, lush rainforests, scorching deserts, and so much more.

The road was long and hard, we travelled across the country for two years, working all sorts of fascinating and tough jobs, meeting the most colourful blokes, having the time of our lives, the highest highs and the lowest lows. We exploded four tyres (not all at once, thank god), we got charged by a pack of... dolphins, we got bitten by a playful sea lion, we fostered orphan kangaroos, we slept under a pitch black sky illuminated by the brightest stars in the universe in the middle of ****** nowhere, we broke our back picking anything from strawberries to pumpkins, burnt our skin with mango sap, spent an eye-watering amount in English tests, cooked crabs we caught with a flip flop, ...

We worked very hard to get our permanent residency and finally settle in Sydney and rebuild our life and careers in IT Development and Business Consulting & Research.

A trip for three

In 2019, we were blessed with the arrival of our first baby boy Noah and started to navigate the rollercoaster that becoming a parent is. When really we were mostly expecting a fairly helpless blob (although damn cute, sure) with everything left to learn, we were gobsmacked by the innate capability, drive, relentless passion that inhabited this little marvel of ours from the very start, and that seemed to grow exponentially every day. 

And like any parent I guess, we decided it was our duty to support that in him at all costs. From then started the wildest reseach marathon we've ever done about rasing children, parenting philosophies of the likes of Montessori and Waldorf Steiner. And with the help of many fantastic people around us, not the least being my own mother (who's been raising orphan babies her whole working life), and a few costly mistakes selecting the 'wrong' toys and equipments, we slowly realised that everything we thought we knew about children and what they need was completely wrong. We didn't have to teach him anything, just give him the right opportunities and a supportive environement. We worked our way from flashy plastic and all trick ponies type of toys to where we are now (and that story of our wooden toy journey is for another time)... Only to wish we'd started where we landed, and we decided to share that amazing world of high quality wooden and open-ended toys with everyone to protect the spark of all children growing up free and wild everywhere.

Endless Play Collective was born

So we embarked on yet another journey by opening an online toy store that would allow us to put our skills to good use while empowering our little tribe to chip in for the world we wish to our son and all children: a world of freedom, of empowerement, of creativity, of inclusiveness; of respect for the materials, the planet, the people; of love - and most of all, of endless play.