24/11/2025
Monday marks 148 weeks of living in a caravan full time!
Single mum, 3 kids, 2 doggos that became 2 kids and 3 doggos when my eldest left for Uni almost 6 months ago.
When we first left Townsville, QLD after our second house flood 148 weeks ago, I had $500 in the bank - our final weeks rent we didn’t need to pay - and a big loan.
For the first 18 months we lived primarily off-grid, mostly free camping, and our weekly budget for food/diesel/activities was between $200-$250, with the rest of my small income as a single parent being paid onto our loans.
At the end of the first 12 months of living on the road - incorporating hunting, fishing and foraging into our food budget to make ends meet, and using a generator to power our laptops and Starlink internet, I finally finished my honours year in psychology and landed a job as a research assistant.
That’s when things got a little easier! Six months later we moved into our newly built, brand new caravan. One that had adequate power, a toilet, shower, washing machine, oven, and loads of solar. Our first caravan had none of those! Not even hot water, or running water!
We’ve come so far in the last 148 weeks (almost 3 years) - escaping the rental trap, floods, and rising cost of living to a life on the road and it really changed our lives.
Was it easy?
To make the decision to take off, no, it wasn’t. Our first 12 months was also tough and frugal, but we knew we wanted to change our lives, so we worked hard at it.
Now we’re reaping the rewards and it is a lot easier having a caravan that has a shower, toilet, washing machine, etc - but we also made it work without the mod cons.
For us it really changed our lives - hitting the road full time. More financial freedom as a single parent, but also the adventures, locations, bonding, and activities.
Just to pre-empt any comments around education - I’ve been home educating my children for around 5 years or so, and no it doesn’t close any doors. My eldest went off to uni six months ago. I write their curriculums myself, which is based on an eclectic approach incorporating Australian curriculum bookwork, interest-led learning, discovery, and travel to museums, cultural centres etc.
Financially, it’s still not easy paying off massive loans as a single parent, but it makes our life more comfortable, and although I work 3 ‘work from home’ research jobs, I am also studying my PhD so it can be a lot of work.
It has all been worth it though.
My children have had such an amazing few years on the road, and we aren’t ending anytime soon.
They’ve swam with whale sharks, flown microlights over the Ningaloo, rode camels and horses, been to the snow, motorbiked in the mountains, jumped off boats for a swim in Lake Eildon, canoed in Burumbeet and Lake Stockton in WA, rode jet skis around Margaret River area beaches, been up close and personal with whales, crocs, dolphins, seals… it has been an incredible life these last few years
It is just want they (and I) needed to help them overcome a traumatic start before we left DV/Trauma behind 10 years ago. We’ve well and truly reclaimed our lives in these past 3 years!
