How many dollars does one need to travel Aus for a year? And how much did we start with?

Great question with no straightforward answer because of a gazillion variables. But I can tell you how we’ve done it if you like. I’ll give you the info on how we’re operating financially. I hope it helps if you’re looking into this for yourself. I wouldn’t call this advice, just an honest layout of how we got here. Right then, here we go.

What did we leave with?

We saved $20,000.

$10,000 for car running costs and $10,000 for living expenses.

How did we work it out?

We calculated the rough kms we’d travel on our lap of Aus.
Then we estimated fuel costs based on the mileage of our last trip from Bris to Melbourne. That took us to about $6000 in fuel.
We budgeted for 2 van services and allowed for about $3000 worth of unexpected car costs (breakdowns etc).
The other $10,000 was based on asking questions of other van lifers and reading a heap of blogs. We looked into the costs of the big non negotiable experiences (whale shark swim, sea lion snorkelling, Spirit of Tasmania) and budgeted $70 a week for food.

We thought that would get us to Perth and then we might stop somewhere on the south/mid west and find a little work to top up the funds.

I had also sorted a little bit of work for myself with my old job. I facilitate a work-readiness program with high school students that runs all over the country. So with a few days work in the pipeline, we knew that could help to top us up.

Also, I naively thought I’d have a lot of free time on the road. So I had big plans to launch this website as we left, contribute to it weekly and try to monetise this and Instagram a bit. But actually, I have little to no free time and I’m writing this now in the middle of the night, after finally getting the kid back to sleep.

So that bit didn’t pan out.

Ok, then how are you affording all these wineries and restaurants?

Yeah, good question. My dad tells me that this trip looks more like a pub crawl. He’s not wrong. This country is abundant with both natural splendour AND breweries/wineries/distilleries. And we’re dedicated participants.

So here’s what happened.

We planned on living extremely modestly. We thought we might get to eat out once a fortnight or something like that, and the rest of the time it would be lentil curries and two minute noodles. But then Andy’s work decided they’d like to keep him. So now he works remotely on a casual basis (civil engineer, for the curious) and he’s averaging something like 20 hours a week.

So all of a sudden we had regular money coming in that we didn’t count on. And no rent to pay.

There are very real pros and cons to working on the road, and enough cons to make me believe that there’s no “best scenario”. Just entirely different experiences. I might do a whole post on that, because there’s a lot to say about it. But since we’re only talking dollars here, I’ll focus there.

It’s meant for us that we never have to ask ourselves if we can afford to have a beer at the local. It’s meant being able to say an immediate yes to any museum visit, penguin tour, boat ride or bike hire without having to ask ourselves what needs to be sacrificed to make room in the budget for it. This is just a mixture of good luck and Andy being extremely good at his job so that they’re willing to let him work from the most ridiculous places in order to keep him on board.

What have we learned? Where did we bugger it up?

FUEL

$6000 for fuel was optimistic. Two reasons:

1- We underestimated how many extra kms we’d be doing with all the zigzagging inland and back to the coast. And then there were other unforeseen kms like circling back to great places after driving an hour back into town for a grocery run.

2- The fuel prices! Ouch ouch ouch. Petrol was so much more expensive than it was for the trip we based our mileage costs on. It only started to come back down about 5 months in.

Next time we’d allow soooo much more for fuel.

FOOD

Ok this is embarrassing, but I forgot that having a kid might make eating more expensive. When we left, she was a little baby, mostly breastfeeding and eating a few small mushy meals. Just sharing with us. Great! Fine!

But as the weeks go on, her appetite grows and before I know it, she’s not just having a bite of my veggie pastie. She’s smashing 3/4 of it. And at $6 a pop, once I consider her pastie desires, the little trip to the bakery has cost $12 instead.

Basically once you’ve doubled the cost of each bakery trip and factored in a $12 kids meal at all the restaurants, little treats aren’t actually little anymore. Who knew?

So next time I have a baby I’ll remember that it costs money to feed them and factor that into the budget too.

And what about accommodation?

Well this part has been a lovely surprise. We’re in a Ford Transit, so we can fit in regular car parks. And we’ve become excellent at free camping or “stealth camping”. We’ve slept in some absolutely incredible legit free camps (and there are plenty around Aus).

But we’ve also just pulled over in heaps of glorious non camping spots. We’ve parked up by the water’s edge, amongst towering forest trees, perched on clifftops and not paid a cent. We are beyond diligent about not leaving rubbish, and being respectful of the area we’re parking in. Everywhere obviously, but especially in these spots that weren’t meant to be camps.

Annnnd we’ve slept in supermarket car parks, Bunnings car parks, outside local pools where we had a swim and a shower. Spent nights in random gravel pits, and under flight paths on the streets of Sydney.

We can go weeks without paying for accommodation. But usually once every week or two we’ll stay in a caravan park and got to town on the facilities. Do massive cook ups in the camp kitchen, have a good, hot shower.

So what’s the takeaway here?

Well, what I’ve learned is that there’s so bloody much to see and do that one could skip all the bougie experiences and have an incredible trip. We’re really lucky to have had the opportunity for Andy to work for a regular income, and I know a lot of people don’t have that luxury. If (WHEN) we do this next time, I don’t know if we’ll take work with us or just save more. But we really would need to have saved more.

We underestimated our van running costs by quiiiiite a bit so we’d have to budget a couple of thousand more for that. Same with food. And I’d either aim for $10,000 in living expenses and then stop and get some work halfway (I’d love a reason to have to stay in Margaret River for a few months) or try to save $15,000 instead. At Least.

Hope this helps! Get in touch if you have any other questions, I’m an open book.

Money Bucks