Buying Freedom

The Cost to Travel around Australia in a Caravan

It’s a bit cliche but TIME waits for no one. And it’s sneaky. When your busy not paying attention it passes by so quickly. One day you realise that there’s only a finite amount of it left.

And there’s so many things on your bucket list left to do.

Number one on our list is a big one – travel Australia in a caravan. A whole year of really living life – hiking, exploring, beach combing in new places instead of just being busy ‘making a living’. Or just existing to pay our bills.

If like us, you are still of working age, the concept of giving up your source of income for a lengthy period to idly circumnavigate Australia is fraught with complexity.
I won’t deny that there are many competing emotions. There is the occasional battle between head and heart. Our minds are so traitorous, so good at destroying what the heart wants.

But we have taken a leap of faith because here we are. On the cusp. In a few short weeks we hit the road.

So what is it costing us to buy complete freedom to travel around Australia for an extended time frame? How much did we have to save?

Firstly, we are completely debt free with very few expenses. It’s a great feeling of freedom and it’s much easier to save money when a big portion is not going to bills and loans.

There’s only three necessities for life on the road. A vehicle, a home and money to spend. It’s that simple.

We had the car already, our trusty Landcruiser ute, so that was easy but we purchased a caravan within our means and saved cash dollars enough to last the length of time we envision.

We know we need $900 per week minimum as our spending budget – it’s been tried and tested on previous trips. That’s for food, fuel, camp site fees and a small amount for miscellaneous costs such as tours, entry fees and gas. $45K was our savings target. Enough to last us 50 weeks. PLUS another 5K in the bank is set aside for car and van expenses – registrations, insurance, maintenance. PLUS another 10K tucked away as an emergency fund – which hopefully we won’t need to touch.

To be comfortable with the thought of giving up work to travel for a long period these savings goals were absolutely essential to achieve prior to departure. I wouldn’t do it otherwise as I don’t want to spend the trip fraught with worry about money.

And we’ve worked hard to achieve this target. Long hours at work have been worth it because I knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Every fortnight it got a little closer.

To keep in perspective we remind ourselves that we went on a three week holiday tour to Italy in 2019 which cost us $30K. I love holidays and it was absolutely fabulous but only 3 short weeks.

Double that amount of money and we are buying a whole year of freedom to travel this beautiful country. That for me is priceless. The memories we will create over that time span will be amazing.

The benefits to our mind, body and soul cannot be under estimated either. We will be in a perpetual relaxed holiday state of mind for a year. Communing with nature out in the fresh air every day with no stress or pressure. It’s gotta be good for our health. Every sunrise and sunset will be ours to enjoy. We will learn to eat simply. We will exercise more naturally just seeing new things. We will socialise with like minded people more. We will read lots and learn a different pace of life.

So, we are buying ourselves a year of freedom to travel Australia in a caravan. I have a feeling that it will be the best value for money purchase that we have ever made.

Some things in life are priceless