Travel Plans Update - Dec 2020

Extending the trip!

If you've been reading our blog for a while you'd realise our travel plans have changed a fair bit since we left! Covid of course has had an impact, particularly with border closures, and we've come up with various solutions. This doesn't overly bother us as one of the pleasures of being on the road without a fixed schedule is that we've been able to adjust our plans to suit our circumstances, rather than having to stick to a preset plan which may no longer be ideal.

Back in August we toyed with the idea of extending our trip by an extra six months in order to give us time to get back up to the north west of WA, which was one of our favourite places from our last trip. Due to the wet season, the top end is an unpleasant place to be in the wet season so it's not the sort of place we could go at our current time of year (December). At the time we discounted this option, but since we arrived in Perth we've reviewed it again, and after much consideration have decided to go with this option. This means that God willing we will now return to Adelaide in June 2021.

 

This will undoubtedly bring some extra headaches. However the difficulty of trying to do a short trip from Adelaide to the Kimberley in school holidays to cover that portion off would have been similarly challenging. The tenants in our house are very happy to extend their time, our house and belongings are already packed up and most things are in a state where we can leave them for an extra six months. Those that aren't will be able to be managed. So extending while we're already on the road is a lot easier than stopping and trying to restart later - in fact quite simply, it probably wouldn't happen.

Mim's parents have kindly agreed to have us stay at their place, which is where we currently are.

So the rough plan for our next six months is:

• Stay around Perth for End of Year Studies
• Go down south to Albany and Esperance for a couple of weeks in January
• Send the kids to Heritage Perth for Term 1, 2021 (term 2's details still being sorted out)
  
• As soon as Term 1 finishes, start heading up north and follow the receding wet season as we head up the coast - probably spend April around Coral Bay and Exmouth
• Head across through the Pilbara and Kimberley to the end of May
• Return to Adelaide by mid-June

 We'll miss seeing those at home in a couple of weeks as we'd originally planned but hope to stay in touch!

As far as this blog goes, we intend to keep updating it as we travel, but clearly in this plan there will be periods where we are just living a normal suburban life, so it's unlikely there'll be a lot to write about during those times.

-- Greg, Mim and kids