Road Tripping Families - 1 Year Expense Budget

This article has been written and provided by Trekking Downunder.

We are a young family of 5 currently overlanding around Australia full-time. Our experience includes Outback remote travel, road/homeschooling, blogs, budgets, reviews, radio and digital magazines. We hit the road in early 2018 and have never looked back! We share our knowledge of travelling with kids and hope to inspire other's to take the plunge and live a more meaningful and intentional life! -Ryan and Amy

15/3/18-14/3/19 Blaxland, NSW to St Marys, TAS (Furthest points-Mt. Isa QLD to Cockle Creek TAS)

I’ve said it before and I still think it to be so true, It sure does take a lot of love and dedication to spend 24/7 with your family, especially in a confined space. Well we have successfully lived in an 18ft van with 5 people for 1 year = 12 months = 365 days, without incident.

Sure we’ve had our challenges; building our blog, working remotely, lack of sleep, a toddler who grew all his teeth over the first 7months of our trip, a very ‘Mr Independent’ toddler for the last 3months of the year, schooling disasters, a van upgrade, learning to work on water shortages, travelling the outback and a handful more. Each ‘challenge’, whether we created them, would have experienced them back home or simply had no idea they were coming, was triumphantly overcome and we adapted to every single one. We have rarely argued or disagreed- but rather we grabbed hold of the freedom we were handed the day we left and we legged it ahead into the face of adventure.

We originally left due to having no family time together with Ryan working big hours and now after a year... we will never be the same and we are all so very excited for many more years of travel ahead!

• 📆365 days.
• 🛣 Km’s Travelled = 35,766km
• 📍Litres of Diesel used = 6,531.11L
• 🚌 L/100km average =18.26L/100km

💰$49,515.79 = $949.60/wk*

(*Minus major outliers- Christmas expenses, major car expenses, major van expenses and business expenses)

💎$57,131.88 = $1,095.70/week**

(**Inclusive of absolutely every expense we had over our first 12 months)

We are looking forward to year 2 and making a few adjustments to our priorities, improving our spending habits. How will we do this you ask? We will share a review, with our ideas and goals in a ‘First-year expense budget breakdown’- check out our website for updates!

• ☕️ Coffee; Kill for a Cuppa- Gidgee’s Bush Camp, Morven, QLD*
• 🍴 Meal; Home Cooked Meal- Justine & Rick Barrett, Kettering, TAS
• 🎡 Experience; Climbing to the Summit of Mount Kosciuszko, NSW
• ⛺️ Camp; Free camp- Hills of Trial Harbour, TAS
• 🤠 History Rich Town; Port Arthur, TAS
• 🌅 Sunrise; Apex Park- Longreach, QLD*
• 🌄 Sunset; Camp Ground- Granville Harbour, TAS
• 🌌 Night Sky; The Common- Birdsville, QLD
• Bay/Beach; Honeymoon Bay- Freycinet, TAS
• National Park/ Parkland; Victorian High Country, VIC
• ⚠️ Trip; Sandy Cape Track- Arthur Pieman Nature Reserve, TAS
• 📸 Photo taken; (Drone) Looking over the ocean towards Trail Harbour, TAS
• 📝 Blog; The 7 Most Common Pressures when Lapping Oz
• 🎙 2WEB Outback Radio Interview; The Most Recent, February 2019
• 💰 Addition to our set up; Upgrading to our AOR Matrix PT
• 🎥 Most watched movie; Hotel Transylvania 3 and Captain Underpants
• 🎶 Most played music; The Greatest Showman, Original Soundtrack
• (*Still topping the list after a further 6 months travel.)
• parks
• 😂 Funniest Moment; Prior to our 15km return hike to the Kosciuszko Summit- Lucas informing the family 100m into the walk from the car to chairlift..... that his legs were too tired to possibly go any further. We did manage to get him to the top and back down again surprisingly.
• 🤩 Proudest Moment; Ryan and I launching our First (digital) Issue of ‘Outback Traveller Magazine’ in January 2019.
• 😪Saddest Moment; Receiving the phone call that our beloved 10yo fur baby Ollie had been hit by a car and taken from us 4 days before Christmas.

Keen to read more about of Amy and Ryans awesome Lap of Oz? Check out their website or follow them on Facebook!