Over the past few days it has truly started to sync in that this isn’t a long weekend anymore… and I have been reflecting on the good, the bad and the ugly of our experience so far. What did I do right, what did I do wrong? I am hoping that you can learn from my challenges and that my solutions will save you precious time.
1. Slow wake ups are well and truly gone
We go from deep sleep to a little hand grabbing your ankles and asking for breakfast. Our kids don’t have a bedroom anymore… so from the minute their eyes open it is ON! As they don’t have much rest during the day, they are full of beans as soon as the birds start to wake up.
Solution our bed is at the front of the van and their bunks at the back, separated by a paper-thin concertina door. Over the past few days we have been trialling ‘iPad TV’ in their ‘bedroom’ (read shut the concertina door) to keep them quiet a little longer in the mornings. Works well!
2. There is no daycare/au pair/swimming lessons… we are on 24/7
Our girls are almost 2 and 3.5 – the perfect age to travel as there is no schooling involved… however it is also a super active age, especially for young Celeste – who is always on the go.
Being on call 24/7 must have been the most difficult thing for me and Warrick as well – I am used to running my own business from home and we have had full time au pairs since the girls were born. From 8am to 4am I was running a ‘normal’ work life and my brain was 100% engaged. This doesn’t happen anymore – well, actually, my brain is still really creative and wants to turn everything it comes across as an opportunity but it keeps getting interrupted by cute little voices with amazing little shells/leaves/sand [insert daily special here!]. Don’t take me wrong, it isn’t a bad thing but it takes time to adjust and find a few ‘Fabie’ hours in the day.
To keep the kids occupied, what we found works well (for 20min blog power sessions)
- $1 bubbles from Kmart (buy 20!) – it’s a great thing to get them out of the van first thing in the morning or when you are trying to cook dinner
- pick flowers, leaves or pebbles. Send them on a chase to find different colours and shapes – this works quite well if you are at a coffee shop!
- find out where the best playgrounds are, and visit them morning, lunch and afternoon
- locate the undercover playground or wet-weather activities – we found a circus-training facility in Byron Bay when it poured, was a godsend
- keep the afternoon sleep routine for the little one, whatever it takes!
- Peppa Pig and the rest of the troops on ABC2 – we sit the kids on our bed and they watch TV when we are cooking dinner.
- wake up 45min before everyone, pull out the laptop and do some work, in the dark!
3. You are going to do more laundry than ever
Invest in a washing machine if you are travelling with kids and don’t want to waste hours doing the washing at the park’s laundrette. Apart from the $ saved (it costs generally around $4 a load at he caravan parks) we find that the real savings are time savings: no need to wait around for someone else’s load to finish. We wash when it’s suitable for us. We have a front loader (that Warrick retro-fitted in the van) and let me tell you, I put a load on every single day. You can also pick up a twin tub portable machine for as little as $150 dollars from most caravan shops.
Kids get dirty, clothes get humid and smelly, sheets and towels get a work out (dirty feet, leaking bottles etc) – I wash more often than when we lived in a house. I started by doing the washing when we woke up. But then I had to wait about 90 min (front loader) for the cycle to finish…. sometimes we would be gone before then. Then we’d come back and it was starting to rain or was too late for the washing to dry. I now put a load on every evening and I hang it first thing in the morning so it can start drying right away and I can go stand up paddling. I do towels / sheets on 90 degrees so they last longer between washes (if the kidlets don’t throw them in the muddy puddles that is)! I also always use a prewash spray (woolies / Safeway home brand works well) on all stains.
4. Keep the basics, and shop as you go
Gone is the well-stocked, fully labeled walk-in pantry – what we are dealing here is one drawer and 2 narrow shelves. The good thing: I know exactly what I have and don’t have. The bad: we need to head to the shops every 2nd or 3rd day – and that is generally with very tired little people in tow. What a difference from my quiet, Sunday night online shopping and grocery pick up the next day.
We find that if we do a big shop to cover a whole week we simply have nowhere to store the fresh produce: the fridge fills up quickly and the freezer and Engel are already almost full. We keep the basics such as 2 cans of tinned tomatoes, 1 packet of pasta, 1 big packet of wraps, 2 cans of tinned tuna, tinned coconut milk, 2 dozen eggs and long life milk and refill when we shop for the fresh stuff.
We also buy meat in bulk (e.g. 2 kg rib or eye fillet on special), cut it and freze it.
5. Thank God for the Dreampot!
As you can probably tell if you have read a few of my posts, I love food but I prefer stand up paddleboarding, blogging, Excel and even cleaning to cooking dinner (I don’t mind baking cakes, must be the ‘Swiss’ in me). Imagine my luck when I ‘researched my options online’ and came across Mr Dreampot who promised me I could be having a glass of wine while my dinner was cooking itself. I was sold.
The Dreampot is a thermal cooker (think big thermos) that slow cooks your food once you have pre-cooked it (5 min on the stove). It doesn’t use any electricity at all, is very portable and can cook up to 2 different dishes at the same time. I generally put dinner on when Celeste is having her nap and it is ready by late afternoon. So I can go for a paddle instead of cooking 🙂
6. Ditch the camera bag
We have upgraded our DSLR camera for the trip – and as you do with anything ‘new’ you want to wrap it into cotton wool and protect it from shocks and bumps. Over the first few days I brought the ‘camera bag’ everywhere we went. Then after a week I started to be lazy and only brought it with us every 2nd time… And of course that’s when the most amazing things started to happen. I could literally frame the picture in my mind – but the camera was still nicely tucked in it’s safe, shock proof, in the van.
After a little bit of research I was convinced it was ok to let go of the ‘bag’ and that my new little baby would survive hanging around my neck. I don’t miss any single shot now and the bonus is that I look like a pro!
How did you find your first few weeks of caravanning?
Did you find you had to change things around in the van or that you had packed too many clothes?
I am dying to hear your tips !
Narooma News
Tantalising Trial Bay Gaol
Redland Bulletin
6 tips to get better photos when exploring Australia
QLD Top 5
We have the same aged girls as you. I definitely agree that sleepins are the thing of the past 😉 so much energy at dawn.
Another tip for future travellers is pack, then take half out and then take another half out again and that’s all the things you really need. The amount of things we have donated to charity is crazy.
We made Busy Bags to entertain the girls in the car but it has come in handy to help our eldest in nap time. Helps her sit still and be quite. Have a look at http://ourfamilygetabout.wordpress.com/ for our Busy Bag ideas. Love watching your page guys and hope to meet you on the road 😉
Oh my GOODNESS Justine, those busy bag ideas are awesome!!! Thank you for having left a comment – and indeed would love to catch up on the road!
Hi fellow traveller, I found you through Kellie, The Blonde Nomad. My hubby is learning to SUP on our travels and loves it! Such a great hobby for touring Oz!!
Glad to find your blog. I’ll be following with interest.
Cheers, Heike
http://www.heikeherrling.com
We have packed up so much of our stuff and sent it home, we had totally over packed! The transition of having a child 24/7 was our biggest learning curve, we found we needed to “stop” every so often to let Zac just do kid things like painting, watching movies, he was getting totally over stimulated and just needed a break from exploring every now and again. Chalk is a great thing, you can usually write all over the slab at the van park and hose it off before you leave, that’s a super fun thing to do. The shopping thing, man can I relate to that, I actually use that as my time out, leave Zac with Corey and I grab a coffee and stroll down the aisles, it is actually quite relaxing when not rushed! I am a super menu planner so I get only the necessities and hen don’t have to think about meals every day, we also buy as much fresh produce as we can!! I really need to get my camera out more, if ind myself being lazy and using my phone all the time!!!
Just stuck the SOLD sticker on the house sign and ready to head off in the fifth wheeler on Aug 21. I’m a writer (writing small town stories) so i figured I had best get out and see some. But so much to learn. Just two of us (kids are four -legged, old and blond, so we have a few challenges. but that is life! I just had to pick ten DVDs from my 145!!!!!! 🙂
Fantastic!!! When are you heading off Jenn?
Umm, the dogs are BLIND, not blond. My apologies if I offended any blond dogs! 😉 We are doing what I call a soft start. We are setting up ‘home’ in a van park not too far away to find our feet, stay close to old dad and meet writing deadline for book 3!! But we drive out the driveway Aug 21. Terrified, excited, and everything else.
Hi Fabienne. Love your site, thanks so much for many good tips. We are in our final week of preparing, planning to leave Cairns 8th Jan (next week) for a 12 month trip around Australia in our fifth wheeler. Home schooling 3 kids aged 7, 9 and 11 so am trolling the net setting up resource pages, downloading apps and programs to help me and generally setting up a basic schedule for study and helping around the caravan so we all have a chilled out time and don’t get too worked up over school work or keeping things clean and tidy! We are leaving our business in the hands of a manger but plan to work a little laong the way. My husband is an electronics technician so yes, he knows all sorts of cool ways to make a caravan/motorhome/fifth wheeler more ‘connected’ IT-savvy, secure (cctv etc) and can install rearview cameras, DC lighting, install solar, batteries, fix television coverage etc. I think he will be handy for some other travellers as we head around Oz so we have decided to set up a basic system whereby he charges $20 for a ‘look’ at someone’s problem (we have found in the past that he gets asked all sorts of questions etc and has his brains picked by caravanners for ages and this takes his time away from our family – I put my foot down and said if someone wants your knowledge, they can pay a small fee for it. If they then decide to get him to do the job, we will deduct the $20 off the cost. I think this is fair and ensures that if someone is just tyre-kicking for advice, then they can ring the local shop or go online themselves and not waste my husband’s previous time. After all, the whole point of travelling is for us to reconnect as a family and return to appreciating the simple things – not getting busier than ever! Anyway, I digress…… thanks for the tips on storage etc. I have put some in place already. I will follow your blog with interest. are you guys permanently on the road? Thank you and see you sometime somewhere maybe!! We are driving an F250 dual cab and have a Crossroads Cruises fifth wheeler. Heading south from Cairns and going clockwise. I just set up a wordpress blog two days ago (not much on it yet) and still working it all out but you can look at it: http://www.coxiesdothelap.wordpress.com.au/ Jodie, Dave, Evelyn, Elouise and Oliver.
Hello Jodie and thanks so much for your comment. Sorry I have been on ‘holiday’ mode! I would love to see your fifth wheeler! Will check out your blog 🙂 Are you heading to Tassie as well? I am sure we might run into each other the way 🙂
Let’s keep in touch!
Hi,
Just started planning out big trip… we have two girls who will be about the same age as yours now… just wondered what size Dreampot you have.
Liking the articles — keep them coming 🙂
Happy New year
Hello! how exciting, 2 girls as well!
Our dreampot is the large one!
Greetings,
I have enjoyed reading bits and pieces of your website. My wife and I and thinking seriously of take a 12 month trip of this great land with 2 kids (7,11 & 15). Just a question I thought I would throw out there and see if you have run into any travellers doing it caravan/camper free? We were thinking of staying in accommodation and some tenting. Farm stays can offer good deals as do some caravan parks for extended stays and looking at the costs it pretty much balances out. Not to mention less wear and tear and fuel costs.
Any thoughts or advice would be mush appreciated.
Hi! I’m still in the can I go do this stage,, solo parent with four kids. Advice wanted!! Puhlease!