THREE MONTHS ON THE ROAD

Our first campsite in Outback Queensland after 3 months on the East Coast

We’ve now been on the road for 3 months (!!!) and so I thought I’d share some of our learnings, big and small, to give you an insight on what life is like on the road and some of the information I wished we thought of, in a little bit more detail.

After three months on the road, there is no doubt that our family bond is stronger than ever. It took a while, especially early on, but now we take it all in our stride and we love being together.

Living with your family 24/7 isn’t easy

It’s crazy how we, as humans, are not used to living together 24/7 (though COVID did change that a bit). Work and school takes up so much of your life, you don’t really think about it. A whole new realm of frustrations appear when you are with your family nearly 100% of the time and in a relatively small space. It took over a month to get used to having our 3 year old with us full time. She normally goes to child care 4 days a week, for 8 hours each day. Even having Scout in your space 24/7 takes some adjusting. 3 months in, we are far from perfect but we have much better routines and understand our space a lot better. You better make sure your relationship with your partner is extremely strong too! The key to success is communication, love and of course, understanding.

The weather impacts you in more ways than one

I have to be honest here, in researching our trip and the time of the year we were leaving / travelling, etc, we made sure we were “following the sun”. I honestly thought we’d hardly see rain. WRONG! It has been a particularly wet time for the east coast of Australia. You have to remember that no one is in charge of the weather and it cannot be controlled. Well, that and climate change really (side note, we can do something about climate change). I would have to say that close to 40 to 50% of our trip so far has been wet. This impacts plans (when to do tourist activities, etc), mental health and even costs when things break. When we have had long stretches of rain (sometimes up to a week without much of a break) you can absolutely see and feel the impact on your mental health. We also did not consider the cost of the weather with things like our awning breaking several times, including severely, due to the rain and wind.

Things break

Speaking of things breaking, the tally of things breaking is an ever growing list. We never thought about the cost of these things. The biggest cost was definitely our awning being destroyed during a fierce storm - thankfully insurance covered most of it but it still took $1000 out of our pocket. Then there’s the smaller items like a broken iPad screen, jandals (thongs), mobile phone screens, caravan parts and the list goes on.

Consider more than a budget

Our budget has absolutely blown out. Primarily because of unknown factors such as our awning breaking & travelling to New Zealand for a funeral. We knew our weekly expenses were tight and I (yes, specifically “I” here) thought we could do it. But when you get into it, you realise that you are travelling for an experience and not to just sit around your caravan doing nothing. We got to a stage where we realised that trying to be frugal was going to be a big regret. We didn’t put our jobs on hold / quit our jobs to travel Australia for 12 months to regret things. We are lucky to have finances available, but as a politician would put it, “austerity measures will be put into place”.

You drive more than you think

As part of our budget I estimated how many kilometres we were going to drive. Doing a lap of Australia is roughly considered to be about 15,000 km. I took that and added 10,000 km for additional driving. Well, here we are a quarter of the way into our trip and 10,000 km already done! Hahahaha… oops! Time to recalculate….

Summary

There’s nothing else I would rather be doing with no one else in the world than what we are doing right now. Do I wish it was easier? Without doubt! But the positives far outweigh the negatives and the growth we are all getting from the challenges really is amazing. Bring on the next few months and let’s see what it brings.