So what is www.bigaussieroadtrip.com all about? Well... hopefully, by the time we are done, it will be a comprehensive journal about a family of 5 who have travelled around Australia to see the sights and also do some volunteer work around the country! In Mid 2010 we started thinking about what it would take to fulfil a life-long dream... We wanted to bundle up our 3 kids, pack-up the house, jump in the car and hit the road - probably for about 12 months. It sounds so simple ... At the start of January 2013, after almost 15 months on the road; we finally completed Our Big Aussie Road Trip. We hope that you enjoyed following our adventures, trials and tribulations as much as we enjoyed having them!

30 September, 2011

It is finished!! The housework that is.

After what seems like an eternity, we have finally handed the keys to the real estate agent. It was pretty hard work to get the house ready, but it is a major milestone which we have now met. Now we only have four days of mike's work left and then we pack the caravan and head for the sunset (well Canberra anyway).

This is a photo of the kids having a 'carpet picnic' after all the chairs and tables were removed from the house!

27 September, 2011

Flat out like a lizard Drinking

What a whirlwind the last 3 weeks have been!!  Since we've set a departure date, everything has been flying along at a million miles an hour!  We need to give the keys to our house to the real-estate agent on Thursday, so we've been burning the candle at both ends to get the house unpacked and in order to allow the renters to move in!  So in order to allow that to occur, we have moved out to Mike's Parent's place (thanks Mum and Dad) so that we can pack the 'every day' items (like Beds, and cups, and everything that you would normally expect to use for a family of 5 on a 'normal' day!

We  have also been trying to 'downsize' our posessions and so we've had garage sales, we've ebayed a lot of gear, and given some away.  I am truly amazed at the amount of Junk that one accumulates in relatively short periods of time.  We're quite limited on storage and so want to cull as much as possible - we have succeeded on the whole.

Mike has been on annual leave this week to help get the house in order, and it's a very good thing that he is on leave becasue if we were trying to 'dismantle' the house around normal lives it would be an absolute nightmare.

Anyway, we are almost ready to be done with the house and then we can focus on packing for the trip and a few last minute items on the car and Caravan...

I am really hoping that I have more time to update this blog properly when we're on the road - but it's highly likely that I'll still only have 24 hours a day :)

Our plan is still to leave between the 10th and the 13th October - so we'll see if that comes to pass...

15 September, 2011

Leaving Sydney (for a time) will be tough

Now that we are so close to leaving, it is really sinking in that we will be leaving our only real home for a while - that is both exciting and a bit scary! Sydney really is quite a beautiful city, and we will miss it, but I am certain there are other very beautiful parts of Australia that we will get to experience.

Meet the Mason Family

I have officially resigned from work this week, and so there is no turning back now!  Therefore, it is time to 'reveal' who we are!  I didn't really want to make our identity known prior to resigning from my work, but now that we are 100% committed, we are happy to reveal who we are...

As I have mentioned in previous posts, we are a regular family of 5...   There's Mike (30 something) and Liz (also 30 something), along with Josh (7), Natalie (5) and Sam (3).  Josh is currently in year 1 at school, and Natalie and Sam are at preschool a couple of days a week. 

We live in the lovely North of Sydney, and love our neighbourhood, and our home.  I have also been enjoying my job too, so this trip was definitely a hard decision to make, but it is either now, when the kids are young, or after they have left school.  We figure that you can always make another dollar, but you can't make another minute, so we'll bite the bullet and go now.  This is either brave, or stupid!!  I'd like to think it's brave, but time will definitely tell.

So I leave work for the last time (at least I think it will be the last time - again, who knows what the future holds) on the 7th October, and therefore we think that we'll be driving out of Sydney before the 13th of October 2011.  This means we will be leaving Sydney during the first week of Term 4, 2011 and it will be good to leave after the school holidays are over (because it will be slightly quieter, and slightly cheaper too).

Our first destination will be Canberra.

Things are certainly starting to blur.  We've got a house to empty, a garage sale to have, boxes to pack, and all the other things to prepare, but we're thoroughly enjoying it, and are very excited about the times to come.

07 September, 2011

10, 9, 8, 7 ...

Wow, I can't believe how fast time shoots by!!

Heaps has been happening lately, and I just don't have enough hours in the day to document it all fully at this point :(

We've found a renter for the house, and they take possession of our house on the 1st October.  So from the 1st October, we will be officially homeless :)  but we are going to live with our parents for a couple of weeks whilst I finish up work

I will resign from work in the next few days, which puts our departure date around the 10-13th October 2011!  Not long at all!

We've decided we will head from Sydney to Canberra initially, and get some good distance away from Sydney before we start to slow down the pace a little.

We've been accepted into the Sydney Distance Education Primary School (phew - if we'd been declined, I 'm not exactly sure what we would have done!).

We've started packing up all our belongings we want to keep, Ebaying those belongings that we don't need anymore, and preparing for a Massive Garage sale!

We've been crossing heaps of things off our list of 50+ things that we still have to do before we move out.

All in all, life has been hectic!!  But I can now see a big light at the end of the tunnel (or is that just a freight train!!!)

Thankfully, the kids have still had very high spirits about our big adventure, and this has been very helpful.

I am looking forward to coming back to these posts and fleshing out a bit more of the detail, but at the moment, I just can't afford the time - we are all so time poor these days - I guess it's all just about the choices we make about how we use our time...