Family road trip with a difference

Brayden and I have just returned from a mini family air & road trip to NSW. My little sister has been at HMAS Creswell (Jervis Bay NSW) training to be an officer in the Royal Australian Navy. Her graduation last weekend was a big enough deal that half the family flew for 4 hours and then drove for 3 hours to get there! It was the first time we had travelled like this  - my parents, my nanna, my son and my sister's best friend - all piled into the rented imax and off down the southern NSW coast. We had quite a few laughs particularly with my mum and I both chronic backseat drivers and my poor step father trying to negotiate unfamiliar territory with two control freaks (three if you count Heather the GPS voice) constantly 'making suggestions' about speed, direction, stopping for food, not driving over the bumpy lines (how hard is it to stay in your lane!)

Brayden and I hadn't travelled the Princes Hwy since our Big Aussie Road Trip and it brought back a few memories. Tis a beautiful green, hilly, foresty coastline you have over there. Oh to be back on the road...

Lost comments

I just changed the url address of this blog and realise that I have lost all previous blog comments in the process! Sorry, I promise not to do that again...

10 Reasons why you should travel around Australia

(Taken from the hundreds of reasons I can think of)

1) Many feel it is currently safer to holiday in Australia than to travel overseas. Unfortunately terrorism is an increasingly scary issue and one that we now have to consider when travelling overseas. I am not naïve enough to believe that Australia is immune to these attacks but it still feels safer to stay at home. New Zealand is an even safer option but that cancels out all the other reasons! (Although we did do both countries on our grand tour)

2) Our tourism industry and our economy rely heavily on domestic tourism. It’s good for our country to spend our tourist dollars at home (in the broad sense of the word) and your dollar is worth a dollar! The thousands of dollars you would spend on airfares and hotel rooms if you went overseas will instead get you tens of thousands of km up the road or it will buy you a caravan that you can also keep for future family holidays or it will pay off your credit cards before you go…

3) You can actually get to see and know your own country. So many
Australians have travelled or even lived overseas and have seen more of the other continents than their own.

4) You can visit all the people you know around the country but hardly ever get to see.

5) You are totally free to go when and where you please because you have your own transport and house with you at all times!

6) The trip will give your children (and yourselves) amazing childhood memories they will never forget.

7) It will allow you the opportunity to spend REAL quality time with your family.

8) It gives you the excuse to buy a new 4WD.

9) You will develop a new appreciation for your house and your belongings.

10) Travel will open your mind. It will expose you to new ideas and possibilities and awaken your senses. You will feel stimulated and alive like you may not have felt for a while!

Family wins 13 week road trip through Queensland

MOST people can only dream of an all-expenses-paid holiday, but for the Turners that dream became a reality.
The Pine Mountain family scored $35,000 in prizes including a 13-week expenses paid road trip around Australia, plus a complete makeover of their own caravan with their choice of Dometic and WAECO products.
Handpicked from more than 1000 entries nationwide, Ross and Lorraine Turner and their two children, 11-year-old Jacob and six-year-old Ella, will enjoy a tropical Queensland adventure, after they were chosen as ambassadors for leisure products company the Dometic Group, in their Follow The Sun promotion.
The family had to state in 100 words why they would make good ambassadors, as well as submitting photos of themselves and their caravan.
The family will start their tour in Brisbane and then head north to the Sunshine Coast, Hervey Bay, Bundaberg and the Capricorn Coast.
From there they will stay northward bound to Cairns before heading back south, passing through Charters Towers, Emerald and then back to the Gold Coast.
Keen caravanning enthusiasts, the couple said they were thrilled to be chosen for this ambassador role.
They see it as a fantastic opportunity to see some of Australia’s best destinations while being paid to travel around in their newly renovated caravan.
“It is the chance to spend some time together and the caravan fit out is a nice bonus,” Mr Turner said.
“We’ll get to meet new people and see the countryside, something that we wouldn’t have done until we retired.
“We’re fortunate we can do it with the kids.”
Their adventure tour will begin at the Brisbane Caravan and Camping Show on June 13 and finish on the Gold Coast with a huge party September 15.
While on their trip, the Turners will conduct regular happy hours with fellow travellers and locals and post blogs describing their adventures at www.dometicfollowthesun.com.au They will also appear on Channel Nine weekend travel show.
Article by Josephine Gillespie from The Queensland Times

4WD Action Off-Road Expo 2010

If you're in Perth and you didn't get there yesterday make sure you head down to Claremont Showgrounds today for the Australian 4WD Action Off-Road Expo. It's on until 5pm and costs $32 for a family (up to 4 kids).
There are heaps of exhibitors and displays, talks on everything from photography, camping gear and mechanics, and heaps of prizes to be won. If you want to hit the Australian road in a 4by then this is the show for you. Have fun!

A Sociology of Caravans

For anyone who loves a good academic paper I really enjoyed this one on 'A Sociology of Caravans' by Prof Peter Beilharz from Latrobe University and Dr Sian Supski from Curtin University. For every social trend there is an interesting history and analysis. It's more interesting than you think!

"The caravan is, at first sight, an obvious thing. A little home on wheels, its transience can easily become permanent. Like a snail’s shell, the caravan can offer protection, or comfort of a momentary kind, though some lives will also be lived out within plywood, or aluminium walls, stuck up on blocks in desolate van parks, not only trailing more happily behind the old jalopy into the sunset..."

http://www.tasa.org.au/conferences/conferencepapers09//papers/Beilharz,%20Peter%20&%20Supski,%20Sian.pdf

The dilemma of a crying baby in the night

After getting up to my crying toddler at 4.30 this morning I lay in bed wondering how families travelling with a baby or toddler deal with this situation. My son was 5 when we left to travel Australia and obviously past the problems of waking and crying in the night. 

A baby crying in a caravan park or camping ground creates the obvious problem of possibly waking nearby campers. If it were my bub I would be worried about waking the neighbours and would do whatever I could to shut bubs up as quickly as possible. I can imagine that this would lead to night feeds, getting baby up and rocking them or taking them into my bed, in other words forming sleep associations that baby may not have had before. Within a few nights bubs will be unable to get back to sleep without comforting and it's all downhill from there! How do you retrain your baby or toddler (which usually involves a bit of crying) when you are in a caravan park?

I personally would plan to travel after the youngest had turned 3 but that's just me. There are plenty of families out there driving around Australia or taking road trips and camping holidays with babies. 

We met a family in Broome who had driven from Qld with their 3 kids, the youngest being about 8 months old. Baby was a light sleeper and was being woken by noises from inside and outside the van. She would start crying, and worried about  disturbing the other campers mum would stick her on the boob. She predictably started to wake every couple of hours either due to noise or just for a feed. An exhausted mum and the kids ended up flying home to Brisbane leaving dad to drive the rig back. She told me that she didn't regret the trip at all but realised it was probably better if they waited until their little one was a bit older. I hope they did get back on the road again...

Anyway what does one do about this? Babies and toddlers wake at night, it's part of the deal. For me early this morning it was probably teething or a lost dummy but when it's nothing in particular I let him grizzle himself back to sleep. It only takes a few minutes but in a caravan park I wouldn't feel comfortable doing this.

If anyone has any solutions or thoughts about this please post a comment.

If you're worried about leaving the house behind when you take off around Australia perhaps you could look into hooking up a mini version so it can go with you! Sorry I couldn't help myself when I found these pics. They're manufactured by the Tumbleweed Tiny House Comany. Yep only in America...

 

Welcome to my new blog

Well this is all very new and exciting! I have spent the last couple of months teaching myself how to build a website, set up a hosting account, facebook page, google ads and now finally a blog! It has been an intense but enjoyable education.

It's all in the name of reaching out to those people out there with the 'travel bug', more specifically those with the urge to travel around Australia who also happen to be parents of young children. When I say young I mean those kids still living at home and therefore having to be a part of the journey - this is no grey nomad adventure! Many people have the dream of travelling Australia but think it will be something they do in retirement or when they win lotto. Either way my philosophy is that we can't guarrantee life and the best time to live our dreams is now! Anyway why would you want to miss the opportunity to have an amazing adventure together with your partner and kids and create lasting memories for the whole family!

We spent 20 months on the road, 17 driving around Oz and 3 driving around New Zealand. Although it was a scary decision to leave our lives - jobs, family, friends, pets, house... - for an adventure into the unknown, it was the best thing we have ever done. When our new baby (well he's 15 months now but still relatively new) is a bit older we will hit the road once more. Tassie to Cape York is the plan as we missed lots of those bits last time.

I hope to rant and rave on here about travelling Australia with kids and other interesting topics that come my way. I hope you drop in from time to time...