We are Emily (6), Oliver (8), Kat and Stu. In the early days of married life, one dream Kat and I both had was to step out of our day to day life to go travelling. A couple of years ago, we had been living in the suburbs of northern Sydney for about 5 years, and with kids and work, life had been pretty hectic. The first few years with kids were a bit of a blur, but life had begun to settle down now that the kids were at school and were getting more independent. What we were struggling with was really connecting as a family and spending time together, as life kept getting in the way. Over dinner one night, one of us joked that maybe we should turn that earlier dream into reality and the seed was planted.

Fast forward a year and Kat and I started thinking more seriously about taking the kids on an extended journey somewhere. Basing ourselves in Europe for a few months was the initial thought, but soon we decided that travelling around our own country would be a wonderful experience for our family (and a bit easier). Kat and I had travelled extensively overseas, both individually and then together before kids, but had not been able to travel much more than camping up and down the coast over the last few years so the prospect of getting back into the adventure of longer term travel quickly rekindled the travel bug in us both. We sat with the idea for a while and didn’t really do much about it, but over the last 12 -18 months things started happening to move that dream closer to a reality.

We started looking for a second hand 4WD and I started researching camper trailers, mainly by wading through a substantial collection of back catalogue “Camper Trailer Australia” magazines that Kat’s boss, Marcel, kindly donated to the cause. We also went to a few camping shows to drool over some of the really expensive models that were way out of our budget. In December 2015, having narrowed down our search to a few models, we stumbled upon a second hand one in southern Sydney which was in great condition, and the owners had just dropped the price by a third. We put the deposit down after the first inspection and the following weekend we found ourselves with a camper trailer taking up a large part of the front lawn. We had planned to get the car before the trailer, but that didn’t happen, so the beloved Toyota Avalon stepped up to towing duties and our first run with the trailer was a week by the beach down on the south coast which was a complete success in spite of 4 days of rain.

A few camping trips with the trailer and about 9 months later we found a second hand 4WD, and with the two most critical ingredients ticked off the list, the last big thing was to work out where we would go and when. It was back to the magazines, which also contained all the great places you could go with your camper trailer. We decided the eastern states could be done in shorter trips from Sydney, so set our sights on SA, NT and WA. I plotted all the nice sounding places on the map and before long we had a route that we could follow over six months or so. We decided that we would wait for Em to complete kindergarten and then let them settle into their new classes for term 1, before taking them out of school for terms 2 and 3, with the intention of coming back for term 4.

As the end of term 1 approached, we locked in a date of departure – 8th April 2017. This was really happening, we both thought to ourselves, brimming with both excitement and nerves. Were we crazy to do this? Could we get everything sorted in time? What would we do with the house? These and dozens of other questions and doubts ran through our heads in the lead up to departure. Somehow, we managed to get all the modifications done to the car, pack up and rent out the house, deal with the myriad of other loose ends we needed to tie up, and before we knew it the day had arrived and we were pulling out of the driveway and heading off. The adventure had begun!