Welcome! (& some FAQs)

Our family of 5 is embarking on a 3 month trip around a decent part of Australia in 2023, and we hope to share some of this amazing adventure here as we go.

We’re pretty excited about what lies ahead, and it’s been a few years in the making. As is usual for our family holidays over the years, Debbie writes in a physical journal throughout our travels and keeps a really wonderful, personal account of things… while I (James) tend to keep an online journal for our friends and family to keep track of us. In case we haven’t caught up with you to let you know what’s happening, or if you have no idea who we are, there’s probably a few FAQs we can tackle upfront here…

Are you camping / taking a caravan or campervan? Hard nope. That’s just not our thing for holidaying… and a 3 month trip is probably not the best time to try caravanning for the first time. So we’ll be staying in motels, cabins and a bunch of Airbnbs along the way. Yep, obviously more expensive overall… but it was mostly a non-negotiable for us if we were going to enjoy this trip as a fam, and so that’s been part of the planning since the idea for this holiday was first conceived.

Where are we heading? Up in the top left is a link to a summary of our itinerary on Wanderlog. As I write updates, I’ll try and reference the day numbers on there so that you can see how far along we are. But the brief summary is:

From Sydney we’re heading south into Victoria, via Jindabyne and Eden, and then along the Great Ocean Rd (with a stop at Phillip Island first). At Portland, we’ll double back and head through the centre of Victoria back toward Echuca. We’ll then head along the Murray River into SA, and south for a stay on Kangaroo Island, before visits to Adelaide and Port Augusta. From there, we’ll head straight up through the centre to Darwin… via Coober Pedy, Uluru, Katherine, and a few other places along the way. We’ll then head across into Central Qld via the Barkly Hwy, and make our way up to Cairns and then Townsville. We’ll head back into Central Qld again to Winton, Longreach, etc, before heading back east to Rockhampton. To round things out, we’ll drop into Hervey Bay, visit Tamborine Mountain, and then head back home to Sydney via Coffs Harbour.

Are you home schooling while you’re away? Kinda, but definitely not formally. The kids will be writing in their own travel journals each day, and we have a maths/English workbook for their grade that they can do a few exercises from every now and then to keep those sorts of things fresh in their mind. But it’s also only a term. So we’re primarily seeing this as an opportunity for them to do some very active learning about the world around them – especially about history, First Nations peoples, and how towns much smaller than theirs operate and function.

What car and how are you packing? A Tiguan Allspace, called Estelle 😍 7 seats means that each of the three kids has their own little bit of space. However, one child in the third row / boot does mean packing space can be a bit limited. We have a 530L Rhino roof pod that will carry pretty much all our luggage. We also have a 20L car fridge that will sit in the boot meaning we can take cold stuff from place to place and not have to buy new fridge essentials in each town we visit (that will be especially handy for a few of the more remote places we get to).

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We are sure we’re going to encounter a bunch of fun adventures together, and help our kids learn about different corners of this beautiful piece of land, and more importantly, the people who live and have lived on it. We hope to share our adventures with you most days – the amazing, confusing, frustrating and fun parts of this adventure. And we’d love for you to join us!

We head off in early April – see you on the road!