That moment you walk into a Caravan Show saying that you are NOT buying anything and you walk out with a new van and a plan to hit the road – Learning Around Australia was born and they were not leaving the pooches at home…Meet the Peter’s family…. Real Stories | Real Families…
It was a sunny Saturday in May when we decided to take the kids to the Cairns Expo as we usually do when the show comes to town. We have always loved our camping holidays, so enjoy seeing what’s new in travelling & camping gear and of course, continuing to daydream about one day owning a caravan & travelling around Australia. Little did we know we would be starting a whole new life adventure that day!
After telling the kids “we’re NOT going to buy anything – just looking around”, we found ourselves putting a deposit on a brand new Leader Gold family caravan!! It was the first van we looked through, and after looking at all the other family models, we decided that, if we “ever we’re going to buy a van one day”, we’d like one just like this. As we had been walking around and checking out vans, my husband Terry and kids Phoebe & Campbell had all been talking about how wonderful it would be to travel around Australia together. We tried really hard to think of a reason why we shouldn’t “JUST DO IT”… we couldn’t, so we DID!
We had talked for years about caravanning together in our retirement, but all of a sudden realised “why wait till then?” We believe that travelling and exploring this amazing country together as a family is such a great learning experience – especially for children, so why wouldn’t we take them with us? What better way is there to grow closer as a family than to throw us all together in a car and a van and hit the road? Of course, we couldn’t leave without our fur babies, Harry & Charli, so they’re along for the ride too!
I’m a teacher by nature and a trainer by career, so finding lessons in each day is natural for me. I decided to home school the kids, so set to work planning their education around our experience. We all agreed that there would be plenty of lessons for us ALL along the way, so we decided to brand our journey “Learning Around Australia”.
We gave ourselves about 8 months to plan, prepare and make some significantly life changing decisions (Do we sell our house or rent it out? How will we earn a living along the way? Will we come back?! Can we actually do this, or ARE WE COMPLETELY NUTS?!). We took to the internet to see what we could learn from others who had already taken this crazy leap of faith. We found SO MUCH amazing advice & helpful information through Facebook groups, travel blogs and websites like Caravanning with Kids. The overwhelming message from those who were already on their journey was “JUST DO IT – we love it!”, so we decided to join them and finally set off in January 2019.
Although our learning journey has only really just begun, we’re already loving the lifestyle and are thrilled to wake up to a new adventure every day. The kids and dogs are getting into it and, while we’ve already had some challenges, we’re learning as much from those as the fun things we get to do as we explore and play. We’re looking forward to what is to come – the places we’ll go and the people we’ll meet! We are truly grateful to be a part of what seems like an awesome nomadic community. We hope to cross paths with more traveling families like ours and learn from their experiences too!
ERIN – Learning Around Australia
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