2023 was hands-down the perfect 12 months of our lives. In January, my husband and I stop our jobs (I’m a journalist, he’s an electrician), purchased a camper trailer and set off for an enormous lap of Australia with our five-year-old twins.
We left Sydney and travelled south to Tasmania after which up the center of South Australia, earlier than exploring the Northern Territory and eventually spending six months travelling down the coast of Western Australia.
We jumped off waterfalls, swam with whale sharks, floated down sizzling springs, took helicopter rides over gorges within the Kimberley, and camped proper on the seaside the place we lit fires within the sand, ate a humiliation of freshly caught seafood and swam with turtles and dolphins proper off the shore. We actually lived the dream!
I’m positive all of it sounds nice, however you in all probability have two burning questions at this level: how a lot did it price and the way the bloody hell did we afford such an extravagant journey?
We talked with numerous households on the street about this, and I can provide the inside scoop.
Firstly, right here’s how we did it.
Prices
Common weekly bills:
– Boring stuff (home, automobile and medical insurance, council charges, telephone payments): $400
– Gasoline: $500
– Groceries: $400
– Alcohol: $70
– Lodging (campground charges): $280
– Consuming out and takeaway meals and coffees: $300
– Experiences (e.g. swimming with whale sharks): $300
– Different (e.g. repairs, fishing sort out, clothes): $250
Complete: $2500
These bills diverse broadly week-to-week. For instance, our first week in Broome price us $680 in lodging on the RAC Cable Seaside caravan park, and our second week price us nothing as a result of we have been free tenting on the Dampier Peninsula.
Weeks spent travelling lengthy distances took an enormous toll, with diesel costing as much as $3.50 a litre in distant locations and being guzzled up on the lengthy highways. In the meantime after we stopped for per week, the gasoline invoice was blissfully zero.
The opposite large price earlier than we left was clearly our camper trailer. We didn’t do what most households on the street do and purchase a caravan, as a result of we didn’t need to additionally should improve our automobile (a Toyota Prado) because of towing capability.
So we went with probably the greatest off-road Australian-made camper trailers as an alternative – a Cub Drifter, at a price of about $65,000. It meant we may go to extra distant locations on rougher roads, however we didn’t have the posh of an inside lavatory or inside kitchen.
How we paid for it
As a lot as I manifested it, sadly we didn’t win the lottery. So in brief, we prolonged our mortgage, rented our home on AirBnb earlier than we left, after which rented it long-term whereas we have been away.
Plus, we offered my automobile and the rest we may discover of worth that we didn’t want anymore (goodbye to our OzTent RV5 and most of my designer clothes).
We left with $40,000 in financial savings and $100,000 borrowed from the financial institution, plus $900 per week in lease from our home.
We returned with … not a lot cash, and numerous unimaginable recollections.
How everybody else is doing it
It’s honest to say that many of the households we met on the street have been privileged, like us, to personal their very own houses. And people households are break up into two camps: Those that have rented out their homes to fund a part of their journey, and people who have offered up every thing and have the money within the financial institution and no set place to finish their journeys.
We did meet some younger folks, largely in rooftop tents, who have been doing an enormous lap. They usually, in addition to some households we met, have been funding their journeys by doing occasional work on the street. Tradies have been choosing up jobs simply, as have been nurses and folks working within the mines. There have been different individuals who used their lengthy service go away to fund their travels.
We discovered most households we spoke to managed to stay to a tighter finances that we did. Some, who had spent longer away, have been spending simply $1100 to $1500 per week. Lots of households stayed largely in free camps, some had given up alcohol, and others very hardly ever ate out.
Everybody was dwelling the dream a bit in a different way, however they have been all making it occur.
Our checking account seems fairly unhappy in the intervening time, however we have now completely no regrets. It’s the perfect factor we’ve ever performed and I don’t know if we’ll ever have a 12 months fairly prefer it.
Hannah Stenning is a contract author.